Things Geeks Should Know
If you know one, are one or want to be one, you may find that geeks are passionate people who are obsessed by a particular subject, such as computer science or technology. A geek can be introverted or shy, but once you get to know them, you can discover a wealth of information that could prove to be useful someday. While the language of Klingon or the social hierarchy of a role-playing game might not have real-world applications, consider some other skills that many geeks should know.
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Fix Things
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If any of your gadgets, like a remote control, radio, alarm clock, DVD player or hairdryer does not work and you have no idea how to fix it, take it to a geek. A geek, even if they are not familiar with the item, might enjoy the challenge of finding the inexplicable reason your gadget stopped working. Now there is no guarantee that he won't take it completely apart to find out that the batteries needed changing, but hopefully a geek should understand the mechanics of the item and can put it back together again.
Know Facts
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Being able to calculate the tip on a restaurant check in her head or spit out conversions from a U.S. system of measurements to a metric system just skims the surface of the amount of knowledge a geek needs. Any fact, like the average speed of a cheetah when it has a cold or how many Terracotta warriors were created for Emperor Qin Shi Huang to prepare him for the after-world (over 7,000) could be useful someday -- and at the very least, a way to start a conversation with incredibly dull people. A geek should delight in gathering information and storing it away for a rainy day or a boring group of people.
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Foreign Language
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Forget romance languages like French or German -- the languages that count are the ones that build programs and computers. Start off with a basic language like HTML to create websites and Web pages. From there, try Visual Basic .Net, C# or Java. These object-oriented languages can help create programs for both Microsoft and non-Microsoft based systems. Perl is a great language to learn for the geek who enjoys computer-generated imagery, or CGI, found in animated movies and in video games; being able to speak in fluent binary code helps as well.
Break Things
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Yes, a geek should know how to fix things as well as break a few of them. Picking a lock to grab the keys you left in the house, hacking into an account with a forgotten password or using a seemingly innocuous household item to chase off intruders, does not only mark you as a geek, but as a hero. Un-bricking a smart phone, breaking into a fried computer to retrieve important documents or cracking the meaningless gibberish of code to locate and destroy the virus that fried your computer are also legitimate ways to break things for a better purpose.
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References
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