I’m not sure how much geek cred I have but I’m pretty sure I fit in a few checkboxes. According to this geek test, my score is approximately 24%.
When I was a little girl, I always wanted to know things. When my parents wouldn’t answer I was told to check the encyclopedia. There were two sets of encyclopedias at my childhood home, Britannica and Salvat. Those were my tutors when I couldn’t get a straight answer. So I always knew more than my cl***mates because while they played Super Mario I was reading information or watching cartoons. I never liked sports but if it was sunny outside I played with my neighbours. You could say I was a tom boy. I liked to pretend to know martial arts and loved climbing fences and trees. I have enough scars on my knees from riding my bike, running in dirt, and climbing on places I wasn’t supposed to. But I also had dolls and teddy bears and played Mommy with my female neighbors. Growing up was hard for me because I moved around just as much as an ARMY kid. I had to make friends and then lose them. From pre-school to high school, I went to 10 different schools. The longest I spent at one school was 2 years straight (5th and 6th grade). I did spend 4th, 9th, and one semester of 10th grade at the same school though, but only a year and a half was continuous. But like I said, I moved a lot so I’ve been to school in 3 different countries (Puerto Rico, Brazil, United States).
No matter where I went I never fit in but I always made friends. My quirky personality held together my little group of friends. I was obsessed with being accepted into the “in crowd” until 7th grade. Gradually I stopped caring and turned into a cyber nerd.
My first email was created with iname.com. iname was cool because you could choose an alternative domain for your e-mail address. But then mail.com bought it and I dropped the account. I was in 5th grade. Back then it was cool to make your own e-mail server using a third party site. I ended up having over 10 e-mail address at these different websites. From Sailor Moon mail to Pokemon mail (@pokemon.zzn.com), etc. I’ve used plenty of aliases since then and stuck with Lady Mystery when I was 13-14.
When Napster was cool to use, I was part of the elite Champaign Room crew in the Alt server. Of course, at the time I didn’t know what a Champagne Room was but the people were nice in the chat room. It was a colorful group with Dan the Navy boy, CapitalKillJoy the ***, Shawn the adopted father, Brad the aussie, and a few others whose name/alias I can’t remember. I always had help for my homework and music collection there. When the Napster servers began to die out so did my cyber life. I moved again and spent a year or so without internet. I got into reading Anne Rice books and other fiction including cl***ics like Dracula, Frankenstein, Romeo and Juliet, etc. I discovered goth poetry and got into writing horrible prose (as seen in my Poetry section).
Nerdy games I’ve played include Pokemon trading cards, Dungeons and Dragons, Dance Dance Revolution, and Otaku World paper dolls. I didn’t play for a long time any of the above but admit I liked it while it lasted.
Being the youngest of 4 children and my older siblings being born in the 70s, I grew up watching 80s movies so I know a lot about movie references from that decade. Take ‘Not Another Teen Movie’ for example, I’ve seen most of the movies they make fun of. I’ve had a healthy dose of Bollywood, Japanime, and foreign flms besides Hollywood. My brother introduced me to anime in its original language with English subtitles when I was in 3rd grade, my first anime series were Lum, Ranma 1/2, Tenchi Muyo, Bubblegum Crisis, and Gundam Wing. Of course I became an expert reading subtitles at such a young age and pretended to know Japanese.
When Wikipedia was all the rage for free information I hopped on the information wagon and read articles about anything that caught my interest. It reminded me of my childhood days.
I created my own website when I was 15. Sure I had web pages in Angelfire, Geocities, and Delphi, but I was lucky enough to score some free web hosting from an internet contact and when that went dead I got some space from my boyfriend until I bought iniara.com and my own web space in late 2005. I’ve been a self hosted webmistress ever since. Everything I know is self taught. I remember the first php script I installed, it was a web counter. I didn’t know *** about php or Javascript then. I understand some now but not enough to modify behaviours, just the aesthetics. I’m not a programmer but I know how to look at code and modify it.
What can I say about growing up geek? I love information, movies, music, animation, technology, and art. I’m a socially inept person that strives to express ideas, thoughts, and likes, in any form with like minded individuals. I wish for a greener planet, cleaner ocean, peace in the Middle East, and the end of world hunger. I know what I am and what I can do. Are you a geek too?
