I am a geek because...

[dlavery]

- I knew the names and life stories of all seven Mercury astronauts long before I knew anything about Joe Dimaggio, Joe Lewis, Joe Theisman, or Joe Namath (why are so many sports figures named "Joe"?)

- I give out my office phone number in hexidecimal code.

- I learned to use a slide rule just because I thought it was cool.

- the first biography I ever read was "Einstein: The Life And Times" by Ron Clark

- I was the first student programmer ever hired by the Fairfax County, VA, school system - in 1974.

- I still have a copy of the first program I ever wrote, and it's on paper punch tape (but I don't have a TTY tape reader to read it anymore! )

- I have way more robotics/computer t-shirts than Evulish! (I've had a lot longer to collect them) But the really sad part is some of them are now approaching 25 years old - and I still wear them.

- my set of "Dungeons and Dragons" related materials collected during college took up more shelf space than all my non-engineering / non-computer science text books combined.

- every athletic endeavor in which I have participated has been a fundamentally "individual sport" (martial arts, scuba diving, rock climbing, bicycling), and I have always shunned traditional "team sports."

- I have way more power tools than any sane person should have.

- I built my first computer by hand wire-wrapping the whole thing together on 12 breadboards, following a set of "suggestions" (they weren't really instructions) in The Bugbook - Volume 2.

I'm going to stop now, becuase I am getting depressed as I read back through this...

-dave