Every hardcore
Geek that I have ever met has had some sort of geek
ailment.
Not all geeks are alike, and neither are their ailments. As a general disclaimer, I am a geek, I have stupid ailments as well. This write up is partially
tongue in cheek, but there is a lot of truth if you know one of these sort of Geeks.
When you get into dealing with people who are Geeks with a
capital G, you see a whole different
strata of individuals. Capital G Geeks are the ones that are physically incapable of letting a conversation pass without interjecting some Geek
factoid. These are the people who one up you with their better videocard/more debilitating bout of
depression. They always have some sort of technical or medical
babble that goes on about 2 minutes too long, and invariably irritates people after they've heard a couple of good tirades about the terrible
bursitis that they've developed from reaching over to hit whatever
keystroke combination allows them to shout at their team mates playing Counter-Strike. Let's break it down by Geek type:
- Overly Dramatic Goth Working At A Call Center With Too Much Home Networking Experience
Typical Ailments: hypersensitivity to fluorescent lights, carpal tunnel syndrome, migraines, insufferable self pity. - The Arvid Geek (check out Head of the Class)
Typical Ailments: Allergies to anything with furanything that contains carbon, severe asthma, astigmatism, eczema. - Home/Garden/Finance/Health Geek (She or he knows way too much about things nobody cares about, and will tell you about them as long as you are within range)
Typical Ailments: pain of some ligament that you didn't know existed, Epstein Barr virus, sensitivity to wool, incessantly upset stomach - Master Of His Universe Geek (he has multicolored self designed business cards advertising himself as the president of some failing venture he's running out of the spare bedroom at home)
Typical Ailments: permanently snowblind and must have screens over all of his monitors, carpal tunnel syndrome, myopia, limited depth perception. - Geek of All Trades
There is nothing that this guy doesn't know or hasn't had happen to him. He cooks gourmet dishes and burns himself hideously (though you don't see any scars). He rides motorcycles and gets hit by tractor trailers (still, no scars - this guy is GOOD). He can build a house, ride a horse, skydive, perform a pelvic exam, sing opera, and knows every genre of music, literature, film, blah blah blah. He knows about wine, beer, liquor, and illicit drugs, but he is allergic to all of it so he doesn't do it (much). He is susceptible to spontaneous combustion, seizures, brain surgery, complete loss of bone mass, etc.
A special subset of the Geek of All Trades is the Elderly Geek Know-It-All - which is what the Geek of All Trades eventually matures into. What's truly entertaining is when the stories start to mingle with each other and he forgets what is truth and what is fiction. I know one of these Geeks. He is 60, drinks Coke and Jack Daniels' exclusively and smokes a pack a day. He tells me he used to work at NASA and that he can run a mile in under 4 minutes. He will also ramble on about physics, mixing in information about invisible dog fences and why they cause cancer.