there's no mights or ifs, I am a nerd.

Growing up I'd say I was part nerd, part cool guy and part stoner. That is, I really didn't fit in anywhere.

I wasn't cool enough to hang with the really cool guys (also I was dirt poor) and I wasn't smart nor imaginative enough to hang with the real nerds (although they didn't mind when I did, even if I didn't play D&D and talk nerd gibberish). Real stoners (Spicoli's) were rare, just a couple of friends in my neighborhood who grew pot and shared it (I'd give them a buck or two when I had it).

Then I started dating (and then married) a brainy nerd-type and leaned that way as much as I could. As an old(er) man I'm feeling like all three again, of course within the limits of the law and my wife's tolerance.

EDIT: I failed all the nerd testing on this thread except for Egghead Software and DOS boot-up configurations.

You bought a Diamond 3DFX card even though not one game was released supporting it and you just watched the four CD based demos until Longbow finally arrived.



(raises hand)

Not one game? Are you sure about that? I remember getting Need For Speed 2:SE and Motoracer by Delphine with the card.

...Deep Thought, Hactar...

Old is having used a keypunch machine to "type" up the computer cards for your program.

A Nerd is the guy who can tell what's on each card by just looking at the hole patterns...


Cheers,
4 <S!>

i have an Atari Portfolio and did some minor programming on it. We used punch cards in college, 1977, leaving our batch carefully rubber banded together so the computer master, a 15 year old whiz, could send your program to the mainframe in the Research Triangle (Raleigh, Durham) to execute and you got your printout the next day. our batches usually included a 'move' in an ongoing Star Trek adventure.

Oh, god, I came close to that, as I recall.
But I quite happily fail all the references
in this thread to comic books, video games
and D&D stuff, never was Asperger enough for
that.

How about, if you had to use MX% on your email
addresses? And knew what it meant to push and
pop on a 6502, or a 6800? If you know what the
migration from Xtrek to netrek was about, and
how much .edu computer time was consumed by it?

You might be a nerd if you see a formula for lift on a t-shirt and know that they've gotten the expression wrong.

Or someone asks what makes a wing work and you deliver a forty five minute lecture that devolves into an argument with yourself.

That was later. The very first run of the card had a nifty CD with 4 demos, and that was it. Janes Longbow and F-15 was due to arrive any day! Yeah, right.

You remember typing on AOL for hours passionately discussing the differences and benefits to extended vs expanded RAM in shelling out DOS 6.2 games in Windows 95.