The Geek Scale

When I tell friends and family that I don't rank particularly high on the geek scale, they often don't believe me. They have no idea. I seem like a geek compared to them, but that's only because they don't know the geeks I know. Here is an IM exchange between two friends of mine.

HockeyKing (not his real screenname) is Chief Technology Officer of a small IT company. He is a computer geek who is like me: his friends and family probably think he is a super geek, but they have no idea.

VetteGeek (also not his real screenname) is a real geek.

HockeyKing: still liking the droid?
HockeyKing: or finding issues not happy with?
VetteGeek: oh yeah
VetteGeek: I installed a C-64 emulator
VetteGeek: I was playing "The Castles of Dr. Creep" on Sat
HockeyKing: what's a c-64 emulator?
VetteGeek: Commodore 64

I can't compare to that.... This is a guy who has installed an application so his new phone can act like a 27 year-old computer. Wow.

I'm a geek, but not that high on the geek scale. For instance, I:

• am a math teacher (of sorts) who was never on a Math Team.
• run Linux on my home machine, but I generally use the GUI instead of the text-based terminal and I don't compile my own applications.
• have some superficial familiarity with Java, but don't know Python, LISP, or any low-level languages at all.
• I liked the original Star Trek series and some other sci fi stuff, but I never watch SyFy network.

Anyway, I admit to being a bit of a geek, but compared to real geeks, I am quite the dilettante.