I've talked in the past (Here) about the choices we make as geeks.
Since I know none of you will read a long rant, I will provide cliff notes of my thoughts for you to flame/discuss. Here they are, in no particular order:
- Is our knowledge and mindset a burden?
I was at the grocery store earlier today. I realized that on every visit to the grocery store, I rarely consider what I'm going to buy. I might be thinking about the US Military or the next release of FireFox, but more likely than not I think about the grocery store as an abstract system with inefficiencies that I wish I could improve.
Everyone else there seems to be preoccupied with buying groceries. God forbid. This isn't some statement of superiority; I would love to be able to go to the grocery store and simply BUY GROCERIES. That rarely happens. In other words, the brain is always churning, even when I want it to shut off.
- The role of the woman; do we have the better end of the stick?
Many of the people on anandtech are happily married or in relationships. This is for the rest of you.
Many geeks seem to hold the opinion that if only women knew who they really were, they would be attracted to them. Sorry, but you're wrong in almost all cases. There is, of course, the odd woman that finds geeky intelligence very attractive, but the odds of finding an attractive version of said woman who is also single are, well, really low.
So most of you successfully substitute real women with games, internet surfing, roleplaying, current events, debate, and a long list of hobbies. And you look longingly at the pictures on your desktop of the beautiful but unattainable woman.
Do you feel that you really have the better end of the stick? That Joe Six Pack with Dumb Blonde is somehow missing out because he lacks your depth and intellectual freedom? Deep inside of you, there must be that little voice that says you're not really living life.
- The geeky girlfriend versus the normal girlfriend
My room has a binary blanket, a binary pillow and a binary clock. It has an LCD monitor and two to three laptops, a glow-in-the-dark keyboard and a floating globe. (Yes, I'm a huge think geek shopper.) It is full of science fiction books from Asimov to Herbert to Stephenson.
The first non-geeky (i.e. normal) girl I ever slept with saw my room in this state and didn't even bat an eye. Yes, we did it under the binary blanket. This was a girl who dated guys that started phone calls with "wut up, jizzy dawg" before me.
My first geeky girlfriend (don't get me wrong, she was an attractive little malaysian girl) and I had *competitions* over things like binary blankets.
That's a huge differnce. So which one was better?
In reality, I had a much better time with the normal girl. She was spontaneous. She didn't have any particular intellectual leaning (or any particular intellect at all, really) and so we never argued.
But for the same reason, I never felt a strong emotional connection to her. With the geeky girlfriend, the slightest facial expressions or single words could speak volumes, but with the normal one, there was no such depth.
So yes, there's some random thoughts floating around in my head. Flame away...
Since I know none of you will read a long rant, I will provide cliff notes of my thoughts for you to flame/discuss. Here they are, in no particular order:
- Is our knowledge and mindset a burden?
I was at the grocery store earlier today. I realized that on every visit to the grocery store, I rarely consider what I'm going to buy. I might be thinking about the US Military or the next release of FireFox, but more likely than not I think about the grocery store as an abstract system with inefficiencies that I wish I could improve.
Everyone else there seems to be preoccupied with buying groceries. God forbid. This isn't some statement of superiority; I would love to be able to go to the grocery store and simply BUY GROCERIES. That rarely happens. In other words, the brain is always churning, even when I want it to shut off.
- The role of the woman; do we have the better end of the stick?
Many of the people on anandtech are happily married or in relationships. This is for the rest of you.
Many geeks seem to hold the opinion that if only women knew who they really were, they would be attracted to them. Sorry, but you're wrong in almost all cases. There is, of course, the odd woman that finds geeky intelligence very attractive, but the odds of finding an attractive version of said woman who is also single are, well, really low.
So most of you successfully substitute real women with games, internet surfing, roleplaying, current events, debate, and a long list of hobbies. And you look longingly at the pictures on your desktop of the beautiful but unattainable woman.
Do you feel that you really have the better end of the stick? That Joe Six Pack with Dumb Blonde is somehow missing out because he lacks your depth and intellectual freedom? Deep inside of you, there must be that little voice that says you're not really living life.
- The geeky girlfriend versus the normal girlfriend
My room has a binary blanket, a binary pillow and a binary clock. It has an LCD monitor and two to three laptops, a glow-in-the-dark keyboard and a floating globe. (Yes, I'm a huge think geek shopper.) It is full of science fiction books from Asimov to Herbert to Stephenson.
The first non-geeky (i.e. normal) girl I ever slept with saw my room in this state and didn't even bat an eye. Yes, we did it under the binary blanket. This was a girl who dated guys that started phone calls with "wut up, jizzy dawg" before me.
My first geeky girlfriend (don't get me wrong, she was an attractive little malaysian girl) and I had *competitions* over things like binary blankets.
That's a huge differnce. So which one was better?
In reality, I had a much better time with the normal girl. She was spontaneous. She didn't have any particular intellectual leaning (or any particular intellect at all, really) and so we never argued.
But for the same reason, I never felt a strong emotional connection to her. With the geeky girlfriend, the slightest facial expressions or single words could speak volumes, but with the normal one, there was no such depth.
So yes, there's some random thoughts floating around in my head. Flame away...
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