Wednesday, March 10, 2004

I am, among other things, an incredible geek.

I have been for most of my life, despite having something of a nonstardard geek childhood. In many ways I think this has crippled my development as a geek, but it results in a much more varied life overall.

I was pretty physically active as a kid, partially because of my parents signing me up for things I wasn't particularly interested in. I wasn't encouraged towards anything violent(my mom is something of a pacifist) although I did get to take Tae Kwon Do and Judo for short periods at various times. So no football. I was introduced to gymnastics, bless the maker, and it is a continuing passion of mine to watch and enjoy my awkward attempts at it. (tumbling especially, but there's a place near my home with high bars, rings and parallel bars, which I've been going to)

I never really had any social problems as a kid. I did have mostly geek-like friendships, but I hit puberty early so I never got tormented or anything. I did pretty well, mostly, in high school I did theatre and cross country, later founding a martial arts club, which probably didn't survive my graduating class, and doing a lot of art my senior year.

I did spend a lot of time reading, and on the computer in my private time, but I've often felt like I'm catching up from behind on such matters. After high school I began to realize the power and importance of computers and technology, and science in general, and began investing time much more heavily in those areas.

As a result I often feel like a second class geek. I started with the dating and socializing pretty early, and never had many issues with that(save the self generated ones), and have lots of life outside those contexts. I don't have deep detail filled knowledge of computers or geek life. Most of my ability in those areas is largely powered by a relatively small dataset, and massive extrapolation. And I don't really have time to replace that, in a general sense. I'm too busy extending my knowledge in frontier areas, cognitive science, and current trend-based information.

When I have a few years of quiet time, I'd like to play some video games that are largely considered mandatory, and perhaps explore the wayback machine a bit. install a custom linux machine rather than use automated distros, with production software. Spend some time on open-source projects with silly or idealistic goals, like openS/WAN(it's dead now, I know) or pygame kinds of things. But that's probably not going to happen soon, unless I happen to find some way to obsolete myself in my current projects. And by then, of course, there will be even more to do, no doubt.

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