What's the nerdiest thing about you?

[Jman]

After seeing the "what's the most extraordinary thing you've posted about yourself.' thread, I really wasn't able to come up with anything that would really make me stand out...I'm smart and a big nerd, but that's pretty common on these boards (and really, in life). Nothing big there. And then I thought...well, with a big bunch of nerds, what's the nerdiest thing about them?

So, Nerds Unite! What's the nerdiest/geekiest thing about you?

Me? I have a spreadsheet that lists every roller coaster I've ever ridden, including location, year built, speed, height, inversions, etc.

Yes, I'm a nerd.

[tdn]

I have a shelf on my bookshelf that's sagging to the point of breaking under the weight of a role-playing game's rulebooks.

[DeepLiquid]

I never thought I was a nerd, until I realized I can quote hours of dialog from Voyager, Buffy, Witchblade, Firefly, and now Big Bang.

[MegaBee]

I have a tattoo of the Starbrand.

[olivesmarch4th]

I took off work to play Diablo III.

[MostlyClueless]

At age 28, I still build Lego vehicles. They've become a lot bigger and better, though.

[Nava]

A few years' back, my team had a Nerdiest Contest. I beat the physicist and the mathematician-turned-programmer by virtue of a Master's in Theoretical Chemistry.

[Nzinga, Seated]

Originally Posted by Nava

A few years' back, my team had a Nerdiest Contest. I beat the physicist and the mathematician-turned-programmer by virtue of a Master's in Theoretical Chemistry.

I'm not a nerd, but I'm a nerd groupie who always wished I could be a nerd. You are my new nerd hero.

[Loach]

I'm a nerd but I can pass as normal.

[Winston Smith]

I'm a pretty hardcore IT Guy™. I've forgotten more about tech than most people learn in a lifetime, and I can build complex business computing environments practically in my sleep.

[CalMeacham]

Originally Posted by Loach

I'm a nerd but I can pass as normal.

I'm a High-Functioning Nerd.





I don't know what the nerdiest thing about me is. I read math books in bed, which drives Pepper Mill nuts. I always carry a book with me. I memorize long but interesting numbers (although I can't recirte pi to a hundred places, or anything like that)

[overlyverbose]

I absolutely love reading Medicare, Medicaid & health reform legislation. Fortunately, that's a large part of what I do professionally. Today is my lucky day!!! I can't wait to get my hands on that ruling.

[hogarth]

I play a bunch of play-by-post and play-by-email role-playing games.

[Silver Tyger]

Where do I begin?

The nerdiest, in my opinion: I create my own languages for fun. No, I can't talk in any of them. Most of them were done before I knew anything about phonetics and need to be redone. The nerdiest thing about that: the vast majority are for Thundercats fanfiction.

[Sister Vigilante]

Originally Posted by hogarth

I play a bunch of play-by-post and play-by-email role-playing games.

I co-own a roleplaying play by post website. I haven't actually RPed on it in quite a while but others still do and I maintain all the tech parts of it. It's Star Wars.

[Philster]

I'm on the SDMB.

[Weeping Wyvern]

I have memorized over 100 digits of Pi.

I often write in Tolkien's Evlish alphabet.

I'm working on creating my own 13-month calender.

Yep, I think I'm pretty nerdy.

[Rich G7subs]

Umm... I secretly enjoy ABBA. There...I said it! I feel so relieved now!

[tapu]

Originally Posted by MostlyClueless

At age 28, I still build Lego vehicles. They've become a lot bigger and better, though.

Originally Posted by Nzinga, Seated

I'm not a nerd, but I'm a nerd groupie who always wished I could be a nerd. You are my new nerd hero.

Mostly Clueless is mine. How can you not love an adult who makes LEGO stuff??

[ftg]

Originally Posted by CalMeacham

I don't know what the nerdiest thing about me is. I read math books in bed, which drives Pepper Mill nuts. I always carry a book with me.

A couple nights ago, I browsed thru Hardy and Wright's An Introduction to the Theory of Numbers (5th Edition) before dropping off to sleep. I wanted to ponder some stuff about quadratic fields. The part about Euclidean quadratic fields was quite interesting.

I also like to take a book (and a crossword) with me when I'm going to be in a waiting room. I am baffled by people who come into waiting rooms and just sit there.

Recent books read: In Pursuit of the Unknown: 17 Equations That Changed the World by Ian Stewart, Simon: The Genius in My Basement by Alexander Masters about Simon P. Norton, and All Facts Considered: The Essential Library of Inessential Knowledge by Kee Malesky. Books like the latter are good for reading in little bits here and there.

That's just the nerdy stuff I'm doing now. The stuff I did when I was a research professor in Computer Science is really over the edge. E.g., I proved that the generalized version of a simple board game is PSPACE-Complete. And that was for fun. The serious stuff is ... not explainable to mere mortals.

[Michael63129]

I have a very big hobby in electronics, which involves making circuits that may contain thousands of parts in them and take hundreds of hours/days to build (yes, I keep track of how many hours it takes, as well as days, number of parts, IC chips, as well as parts per day, etc). To get an idea of how big, I have made 71 circuits (excluding some simple circuits I made) which collectively contain over 100,000 parts (many of which I get from electronics put out by the curb, although I also spend ~$500 a year on parts), going back to 1995 when I was 10 at the time. All of the stuff I have made is also self-designed; some of the sections may be based on existing circuits that I saw in books or the Internet but for the most part I made them using just my knowledge about electronics. One example is a circuit, which I call a matrix generator since it produces a rectangular/square matrix of cells/pixels on the screen (a CRT, with custom-built driving circuitry, or LED dot-matrix display, the latter meaning up to 100 or more 8x8 displays put together) which works like a computer's video card, a form of dual-port memory which uses a couple memory chips such that one is being read to produce a video signal and the other is written to by the CPU, then swapped around during vertical refresh (a similar circuit is used in the monitor to generate the actual video signal, except the address lines connect to a binary counter so a serial clock/data line can be used).

[Dung Beetle]

I have a wedgie right now.

[olivesmarch4th]

Ooh, I've got one. Not for me, but my husband.

My husband included a veiled reference to the X-Men in the acknowledgements section of his dissertation.

On the other hand, I got it right away...

[Feyrat]

Pretty much everything.

[Taomist]

The nerdiest thing about me is that I don't believe I've dated any guy who WASN'T a geek/nerd. But I suspect I'm more of a groupie than a geek myself. (I am nerdy enough to know there IS a difference twixt the new, not geeky enough to remember what it is. )

I can't quote for shit, so nerd-quote cred is out.

I've done tech support for computers and printers but only built one of my computers myself in the last 18 years of computer ownership, since I'm aways around guys who think they can do it better. (They may be right, but I have done it myself and would do it again so neener)

I named all 3 of our pets after Dresden Files characters.

I'd wear MrTao's Jayne hat unironically if we didn't live in the middle of the Tattoine desert. (Seriously, the Sarlaac pit location is about 30 miles from here!)

When the word 'captain' comes up, I think of Picard, Kirk, Reynolds and Harkness, not 'the guy who's flying our plane'.

I've taken off work on the release dates of every online mmo I've ever played, which still doesn't amount that many; EQ was my first, not very geek-worthy.

I've somehow ended up with CEs of the last few games I've played, mostly because people think I'm geekier than I really am. Seriously, what am I going to do with this Malgus statue?

I have a Figureprints statue of one of my WoW characters...again, Mr.Tao thinks I'm geekier than I am. (Now, one of my DAoC Friar...THAT I'd love!!)


But I don't min-max for anything, solo unless I'm grouping with friends, and generally treat most mmos like a sandbox. I explore until I'm bored and then move on, unless there are players worth killing ingame; THAT is fun.

When cleaning out the room of MrTao's sons, who are moving out of state, I refused to throw away the Black Knight <with detachable legs and arms!>, the Darth Vader cookie jar, or the Star Wars comic books. They are now mine!


I am, at best, a borderline nerd.

[UncleRojelio]

The website I maintain devoted to my ham radio activities.

[MostlyClueless]

Tapu; How you doin'?

[campp]

Big train fan. I photograph them, talk about them, and build models.

But NO, I do not have a striped engineer's cap. That would be silly.

[kushiel]

I have a Hylian shield tattoo.

I convinced my coworkers to go as hex colour codes for Halloween.

I'm a walking internet meme encyclopedia.

I used to skip school sports days to stay at home and play video games: pretty much the definition of a gaming nerd.

There was this one smutty fanfic site that required mailed in age verification. Well, there was a script error on one of their pages, so I saved the file, opened it up in a text editor, noticed they referenced a flat file text database for the menu, so I downloaded that file and voila...they didn't protect the actual story files, just the file that generated the menu. And thus I had my naughty fanfic.

[Tio Gringo]

I just asked my wife and here is what she said:

Originally Posted by The Wife

The fact that you know the answers to just about every strange question… Also your jokes sometimes, but I love ‘em.

[gotpasswords]

I installed a Merlin Legend PBX in my house just so I could use rotary phones on a VOIP line.

[Max Torque]

Originally Posted by MegaBee

I have a tattoo of the Starbrand.

Hey, me too!

[Hari Seldon]

Research mathematician with nearly 100 publications. Could anything be nerdier?

[Eliphalet]

I run Science Fiction cons in my free time. I take more vacation for that than I do my actual free time travel.

Even at Cons I do not work, I usually travel to so that I can spend time in the local history museums.

I play trivia games at work.

I spend hours researching miniscule insurance rules and reverse-engineering programs written before 1990 (granted, that's part of my job)

I'm on the Board of Directors of a non-profit with the term "Geek" in it's title.

Eli

[Rachellelogram]

I play WoW.

[cuberdon]

My nerdiness is atm mostly confined to culinary endeavors and thus somewhat disguised. Because, who thinks that cherry pie, coconut pudding, or blueberry coffee cake are nerdy? They haven't seen my date-sorted list of spices currently in stock, nor the date-sorted shelves of grains (pearl barley, sticky rice, basmati rice, flat dried rice noodles, round dried rice noodles, pearl tapioca small, pearl tapioca large, Uncle Ben's rice, homemade egg barley, 10 lbs jasmine rice), nor the date sorted shelves of legumes (navy beans, adzuki beans, brown lentils, black beans, yellow split peas).

[DeepLiquid]

I take it back, I am not nerdy at all! I'm in awe of the nerdiness described in this thread; well done!!!

[Sir T-Cups]

I have an encyclopedic knowledge of the Godzilla universe.

I can identify every monster by name, description, and roar.

I know who fought whom, who won and who lost, and could surmise pretty well who would win in people who never fought.

I also have a stuffed Godzilla toy I bought on ebay.

[Chronos]

The nerdiest? Let's see...

I once wrote a Turing-bot that got more romantic action than I did.

I once used pickle juice to fix a mistake in a chocolate-chip cookie recipe. And it worked.

Everyone dreams about flying. But while I'm dreaming about flying, I'm also designing experiments to determine how I'm flying.

My Halloween costumes have included the set containing Chronos, the Aurora Borealis, a Newton's Cradle, the vacuum energy, Great A'Tuin, and the Principal of Superposition.

[ctnguy]

My degree in Mathematical Computer Science? My compulsive Wikipedia editing habit? The box under my bed that contains a collection of 1:500000 topographic maps of the whole country? Any one of these things.

[kushiel]

Originally Posted by rachelellogram

I play WoW.

Once hot chicks invade a nerdy thing to giggle about how nerdy they are, it ceases to be nerdy.

Now, if you were a theorycrafter...

[Asimovian]

I don't think I'm a particularly nerdy person, but most people seem to react that way when I start discussing the physics of bowling.

[Rachellelogram]

Originally Posted by kushiel

Once hot chicks invade a nerdy thing to giggle about how nerdy they are, it ceases to be nerdy.

Now, if you were a theorycrafter...

I'm not hot. I don't giggle. I have 12 13 85s (forgot about the DK I just dinged). And, I never cop to being a girl outside of my own guild, where it's hard to avoid, because Vent.

Does that help?
--
Mage: 3
Priest: 2
Paladin: 2
Druid
Warlock
Warrior
Hunter
DK
Shaman

[Trinopus]

Originally Posted by MegaBee

I have a tattoo of the Starbrand.

DAMN! That's nerdy, but also cool!

All I got is that I'm a furry.

[Manda JO]

My husband speaks to our 8-month old son exclusively in Latin, and has since the baby's birth. He's spent years training for this: hours of study a day, immersion conferences, and a collection of Latin children's literature that pretty much the complete set--much of which he had to order from overseas. At least 70 titles, if you count the Asterix as "children's lit".

But it doesn't get nerdy until you see all the preliminary work he's done to translate roleplaying systems into Latin. It's got to be ready to go when the boy is ready to roll up his first character, see.

So I guess the most nerdy thing about me is who I married.

[crazydoglady]

Not sure if this is nerdy or just lame but I used to live under a flight path and really got into watching the planes land, what direction they were coming from (it changed and I always tried to find out what the factors were), trying to ID the airline/plane model etc. It was my dream to see an A380 and although one has landed here in Montreal, a few times I think, I never saw it. May have heard it once. This then led me to aviation videos online. I can now pretty much armchair quarterback any landing, takeoff etc., with the best of them. My favourites are go arounds. Love them. Love a person who does the responsible thing. Goddamnit I almost squee at go arounds. And yes, I know that's odd and that in some circles go arounds can (sometimes) be seen as an overly conservative move.

Also love to watch the Ballet of the Snow Plows. It's so ... organized! So precise! It makes me feel warm inside.

[gaffa]

Originally Posted by ctnguy

My compulsive Wikipedia editing habit?

Been there, do that. Managed to get a couple of articles to GA status solo, would to get another one to FA if only someone would produce a table editor that was worth a damn.

70 articles in my watch list.

[The Hamster King]

I have a tattoo of the Utah teapot. In wireframe.

[Ambivalid]

Originally Posted by rachelellogram

I'm not hot. I don't giggle.

How are these attributes 'nerdy'?

For me I'd have to say it's probably the fact that my T.V.-when on-is constantly tuned to either PBS or cable news.

[MeanOldLady]

^^ Ooh, re: this. The dial on my radio has not left the public radio station for something like three years. Aside from that, I'm only mildly nerdy, and don't have any extraordinary tales of getting a bunsen burner set for my birthday. I wear glasses and compulsively edit everything I read (except the things I write, oddly), but I've never taken a day off work to play video games. That kills me, by the way.