Here’s an article that I think is pretty insightful.
We are different to other people. So very different.
And why is this? What is it that makes us different? And why is this dangerous?
The short version is that geeks dig it when something doesn’t work right because they get to dive in to the guts of the system to figure out what’s going on.
Just a few minutes ago Angie sent me an email, obviously annoyed, because one of her applications wasn’t working right. Her reaction was that of frustration because it was hampering her ability to do what she wanted to do. When I’ve run into the same problem on the same application before, my reaction was more along the lines of, “Oh, that’s not right, let me see here, what can I do to fix…maybe here…oh yes that got things back. I wonder why it did that. Is there something I can do to hack together a fix so it won’t do that again? I could report a bug, nah; maybe there’s something I can change in the registry…”
You are magically nerdlicious!
That’s really funny. When something goes wrong (as it often does, my computer, printer, internet, TV, car and stereo have formed an alliance), I actually SAY, OUTLOUD, something to the effect of:
God, why? I’m a really good person. Please cut me a little slack.
And then I laugh at myself for being ridiculous.
And then I add, ‘…no, seriously.’ and usually hit whatever flat surface I can find with my palms.