At work a couple of weeks ago, while I was busily working, everyone else was standing around talking about some arcane newsworthy subject. Someone asked what is/does blah blah blah mean? Someone looked it up on the net and read out the answer.
One of the staff said, “What did we do if we needed an answer before we had Internet access?”
And someone said, “Ask don’t ask.”
I may not have invented the internet but I was the internet.
A couple days ago a cell phone was found in one of our meeting rooms. The lady who found it brought it to the person who sits next to me, mostly because he knows everyone and asked if he recognized it. He did not, but suggested she call him to see if the name came up out of his contact list. While she was dialing the others in the area were complimenting him on how smart he was, SMRT smart.
Turns out that this person wasn’t in his contact list and they couldn’t decide how to proceed. I called over asking for the phone number and dialed it. They (a little patronizingly) pointed out that the phone was just going to ring in her hand. I replied that yes, but if they didn’t answer it the voice mail message would probably tell us who owned the phone. They were all very impressed and decided I was smart enough to get an “A” too. I despaired that common sense is so very rare.
One of my friends, big dude of Swedish extraction (wrists the size of my ankles, arms like my thighs; I was about clavicle height to this guy) used to introduce me as his bodyguard. We both did martial arts and he dabbled in historical reenactment. We’d sometimes cross-train, teaching each other different stuff from our respective styles. I’d beat him (or at least outlast him) most of the time, even in grappling on a good day. Thus, the half-joking intro.
People say I’m pretty funny… funny lookin!
Apparently I haven’t any.
Chuck Norris is always calling me for help.
Most of my cred comes from my hiking group. It has a small group of core leaders, but hundreds of occassional or one timers joining events. It’s not too unusaul to get to a hike and hear people I don’t know talking about rumors of something I’ve done. For example, I will carry ice cream packed in dry ice (or watermellons) to mountain tops to share with everyone. I’ve also carried women through big stream crossings and many other things that to me aren’t all that big but get me the “that guy” rep in the group.
Funny thing is sometimes I tell people what I have in my pack to share and they’ll just think I’m joking. Even when there is smoke (fog?) coming from my pack because of all the dry ice.
A coworker once introduced me by saying, “Kite can diagnose by looking at a patient’s dawg.”
Unfortunately dawgs were never allowed in the building. 
Just an hour ago, someone I have never met before walked into my cubicle and said he heard I was a SME. That’s pretty wienie, though, isn’t it?
I did hear from a coworker the other day that it came up in a meeting, “If [Tully Mars] ever quits, we’re screwed.”
A couple of years ago, I was vacationing at a Caribbean resort. We were lounging around in a pool near the swim-up bar. The Entertainment Chick suggest an arm wrestling contest. I was paired up with a guy that was larger than I and he looked like he had done a bit of weight training. About 5 seconds into the match, I knew I would no problem taking him down, but I delayed it a little to avoid making him look bad. Then I realized that I didn’t want to tire myself out before the second round, so I decided to end it. When I bunched up my shoulders, a lady standing behind me gasped, “Oh, my God!”. Afterward, she introduced herself, ran her hands over my back, commented on my muscles, made me feel like a bad ass. So much so that I won the rest of the matches and I was the arm wresting champion for that week. Thank goodness, my wife was a good sport about it. The lady and I have crossed paths since and we still stay in touch through email from time to time.
In the early days of the Internet, I played on various MUD’s and posted at various bulletin boards. Quite often, here’s what would happen when I met people who only knew me from online:
Person 1: Hi, this is Superhal.
Person 2: No fucking way! YOU’RE Superhal? I thought you’d be some huge badass.
Me: And you were right!
Or:
Person 1: I heard that you should do it this way.
Me: Where’d you hear that from?
Person 1: I read about it at amd.com.
Me: Oh, I think I wrote that article.
Person 1: YOU’RE Superhal?!?
“YOU’RE Superhal?!” <– I get that a lot. I wonder how people think I should look like from my online persona.
Three that caught me off guard:
Last weekend, I was at my youngest nephew’s birthday party and the kids weren’t listening, so I told them to sit in their chairs.
One of the other moms stopped and looked at me and said, “You know, my husband says my kids are too young to play capture the flag - I think you could not only get them to do it, but they would kick some ass.”
I just called the guy at the military gym to book a room for lunch hours to do P90X. I have been away from the gym for almost a year, dealing with various health issues. He (who I have met once) said, “We are so happy you are coming back.” (did not even think anyone had noticed I was gone)
Lastly, my sister, who was talking with her sons about homework and said to them, “if you are really stuck, call Auntie Poysyn, she knows everything.”
Wrong thread.
I’ve heard to my face on a couple of occasions after sparring matches in kickboxing:
“Jeez, you’re a tough little fuck.”
Even though it mostly implies that I’m good at taking punches, it still fills me with glee.
I read the title as needing a comma. “You’re hardcore, Cred” But my name isn’t Cred.
An existing client introduced me to a new client yesterday as “the genius”. And no, I don’t work in an Apple store.
At various SIGGRAPH conventions, back in my computer animation days, I had a reputation for being the expert on the program I used - being introduced as “This is Gaffa and he knows everything about DGS.” But my best was talking to a Pixar engineer who recognized my comp.graphics.animation handle from my badge, and thanked me for my posts about Renderman, that I was one of the only people in that group who actually understood how to use it correctly.
OK, it is kind of sad on the Chuck Norris scale, but still…
From my stepdaughter to her mom, before she was my stepdaughter.
He’s a no-it-all, but a humble know-it-all.
From my manager to the department director.
The solutions team took a week to resolve the problem. Projammer reached the same conclusion in 30 seconds.
Aeons ago in the days of 1200 baud, a BBS user asked why my posts were so short. A past teacher of mine responded that I say more in a few words than most people do with paragraphs.
Not exactly epic, but made me feel good.
No. You got respect from Pixar. That is not sad. That is the opposite of sad. You had someone who helps produce some of the most awesome things that people discuss frequently and say “Even when it’s bad, it’s damned good” bow in acknowledgemnt before you.
Strut, friend. Strut tall and proud.
“So what the hell is a (obscure sex toy/practice)? Is Miss V in the room? She’s the one to ask.”
“No, I believe it, if Miss V said it, believe me she has a source to back it up.”
“She may be little but she’s got a lotta bitch in her.”
From pretty much any teacher/principal I’ve ever worked with:
You found (insert random animal)? Take it to limegreen. She’ll know how to take care of it. She’s not afraid of anything.
Not much on the cred scale, but pretty impressive to a junior high kid.
I think he’s saying we all our hardcore cred, not just you.
