# Are you weird? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [February 7, 2012, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-weird/612113 "2012-02-07T19:58:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Jasper\_Kent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a9a28c/32.png) [@Jasper\_Kent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasper_Kent)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2012, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-weird/612113/81 "2012-02-12T22:13:29Z")
I’m 52 and childless by choice (seems to be a lot of us here). I have no religious affiliation. I’ve never owned a cell phone. I have no tattoos or piercings but nearly all of my friends do. I’m an animal lover but I eat meat and have nothing against hunting per se. I do not own a car, but I love to drive. I enjoy healthy food and junk food equally. I vote blue in a red state (kind of pointless, I know, but I vote anyway). I don’t own a gun but I have nothing against people who do. I love cats and dogs equally. ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2012, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-weird/612113/82 "2012-02-12T22:45:47Z")
> [@Jasper\_Kent](#): > > I’ve never owned a cell phone. > I love cats and dogs equally. Weird. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2012, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-weird/612113/83 "2012-02-12T22:47:02Z")
I have fairly poor social skills, which makes others identify me as weird. Plus I’m an engineer, and everyone thinks engineers are weird. I have both technical and artistic interests. Most people are either one or the other. I like to build robots, tinker with cars, and write my own software. On the other hand, I also play several different musical instruments, I like to sketch (wish I could paint but I’ve never taken the time to learn), and I like to write creatively (I’m not good at it, but I like it). I like old things. I shoot muskets (real, reproduction ones). One of my cars is a kit car which is a 1960 Beetle underneath, but with the kit it looks like a 1929 Mercedes. My desk at work is cluttered with puzzles and oddities. When I need to take a short break, I mess up and solve my rubick’s cube. That’s my version of a smoke break, since I don’t smoke. ---
**Author:** ![Michael63129](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3da27b/32.png) [@Michael63129](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Michael63129)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2012, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-weird/612113/84 "2012-02-13T00:05:04Z")
> [@FE3O4ENAIL](#): > > I am not able to repurpose inductors since they are not marked. Do you test them to determine their specs? > I do not find that I can use surface mount components, too small. I usually go by a combination of experience (knowing what a particular inductor is capable of) and trial and error for inductors which aren’t marked (they often are, but with a code like 221, indicating 220 uH); for example, when making a switching regulator, I will try several inductors before finding one that has the best combination of inductance and power loss (I also rewind them if they are not quite what I want). There are also these small blue inductors that use resistor color code dots (two on top, one on the side, read from top to side), which I use for low power inductors where values are more critical. As for SMT parts, I only bother with larger parts, plus in some cases it is worth using them, such as high value ceramic chip capacitors (these aren’t marked, but I made a capacitance meter to read capacitors like these) and power MOSFETs (the kind found on computer motherboards have about the lowest on resistance you’ll find, if only 30 v or so). ---
**Author:** ![florez](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b9e5f3/32.png) [@florez](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/florez)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2012, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-weird/612113/85 "2012-02-13T00:43:29Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > . Do you successfully hide what you consider to be your weirdness? > ! No, I am pretty authentic about my weirdness. ---
**Author:** ![Rachellelogram](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rachellelogram/32/8689_2.png) [@Rachellelogram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rachellelogram)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2012, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-weird/612113/86 "2012-02-13T05:19:40Z")
I’m weird in that I’m atheist, unmarried, never been engaged, childless, and have never been pregnant. Also, compared to my hometown contemporaries, I’m weird in that I actually got out of there. Most of the people I went to high school with still live in the same city… or if not, then the same county. Most of them married a classmate and had kids. Even the ones who went off to college at the same place I did (or even farther away) settled back at home afterward. I guess some people don’t like being far from family, but I couldn’t get away fast enough. Given my druthers, I’d like to be living on the west coast (I’m from the midwest). ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2012, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-weird/612113/87 "2012-02-14T17:14:42Z")
Well…I WAS weird in high school. I actually paid attention to what was going on with the cool kids in other parts of the country and was one of the very few to dress in mini-skirts and follow fashions. I liked the music, and the louder the better! I also listened to Broadway showtunes and read alternative magazines, Rolling Stone, Circus music magazines. Everyone else seemed like little bland dull copies of their parents, I swear, I’m not making it up! No one was interested in Woodstock, or meditation, or anything ‘cool’. I was stuck in a school full of dullards who planned their lives after graduation as: get knocked up so your high school sweetheart would marry you; live next door to your parents; have lots of kids, supported by your husband who signed up for a job at the factory right after graduation… They weren’t all like that, of course, there were some college-bound kids, but they were a small interconnected group, too, not allowing outsiders like me in! (I was not born in those parts, you see, wrong ethnic group, too.) I couldn’t even hang out with the ‘loser’ group, as they actually were true losers whose home lives horrified me. So…I was weird when I was young. Parts II and III of The Weird Life (my young adulthood and my now middle age) are available and will be revealed upon request, if anyone wants to know. ---
**Author:** ![Misnomer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/misnomer/32/14897_2.png) [@Misnomer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Misnomer)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2012, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-weird/612113/88 "2012-02-14T19:30:15Z")
I’m a 40-year-old woman, and probably the weirdest thing about me is that I don’t have or want children but I _love_ kids and babies (and I’m very good with them). There’s other stuff about me that’s unusual or unexpected, but nothing that’s particularly weird. Not weirder than the loving kids/not wanting them thing, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2012, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-weird/612113/89 "2012-02-14T21:38:11Z")
I was practically mundane and boring by San Francisco standards. For North Carolina though, well… I’m a Rennie, so that makes me not only weird, but warped. Is it weird that I make my living with technology, but half of my phones at home are rotary dial, and that I bought a Merlin phone system so they’d be usable on VOIP phone “lines”? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-weird/612113.md?page=4)