Nerdy STUFF
nerdy-stuff.htm
©
Copyright, 2012, R. Fleischer
What ARE nerds,
anyway:
Tech Nerds
Description: These are the power players in the
business world because they have the most money. This is the guy
who needs the latest gadget, can configure your computer in a
snap, and actually bothers to read the instruction manual that
comes with a digital camera. He probably has at least a little
knowledge of computer programming, optimizes his web browser to
do absolutely everything for him but fix his fancy coffee, and
could probably take over the whole world with nothing but an
iPhone and a maniacal laugh. Whether he's a Mac or a PC, he is
all nerd.
There are certain things that all geeks/tech nerds have in
common: an intense interest in a very specialized field, fervent
enthusiasm for a set of hobbies, a group of other people who
share their obsessions, and probably a little bit of social
awkwardness. Sure, there are people who fit these stereotypes
exactly, but there are enough permutations and substrata of each
of these categories that there has to be some leeway. And some
people combine traits and interests from a number of these worlds
into one big ball of übernerd. You might be a
nerd if you have at least two monitors for your main PC, and
think that defragging is 'so 1998".
Mad Scientists
Description: You can't mess with the original.
These are the chemists, engineers, physicists and other general
crazies who are more comfortable in the controlled confines of
the lab than in the messy, messy real world. However, they are
responsible for the food we eat, the cars we drive, and the drugs
we take—even sometimes the illegal ones. Without them, we'd still
be using stone wheels and struggling to start a campfire with a
flint. They are our saviors, but total bores at dinner parties.
Substrata: Mathematicians, Pharmacologists, Bio
Researchers
Gathering Place: American Association for the
Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting
Knows Way Too Much Useless Information About:
You wouldn't even understand it if I told you.
Music Snobs
Description: They think they're cooler than you,
but they're just as geeky as all the other castes. Rather than
just being a hipster into the newest and hottest bands and
changing their tastes according to the zeitgeist, this person is
also a fiendish collector of a certain genre of music. Whether
it's late American bluegrass, German opera, early East Coast
hip-hop, or Baltimore booty house, they have a finely tuned and
exhaustive collection and scoff at anyone who never heard of
whichever undiscovered "genius" they're researching.
Substrata: Pick a genre, from disco to classical
guitar, and it has its own snob
The Wonk
Description: This nerd has decided to use his
brilliant mind for evil, not good, and gotten into the political
game. He has been in more legislative bodies than female ones,
and knows all the key players in all of them. There is not one
minute detail of parliamentary procedure, voting district, or
legislative record that he has overlooked. He lunches with
lobbyists, suppers with strategists, and drinks with demagogues.
They keep Meet the Press in business and fall asleep
with the CNN crawl running through their little heads.
Substrata: All that matters is Republican or
Democrat.
Gamers
Description: These are the people who live and
die by video games of course. They play interactive Halo with
strangers online, twist and twirl Mario on screen until their
retinas bleed, and engage in
strange Pokemon battles on our roof. They have a special
place in their entertainment console for their Playstation, Wii,
XBox, Game Cube, Classic NES, rescued Sega Genesis, and thrift
store Atari. When not in front of a TV they play on hand-held
devices in the car and on the subway. No, video games aren't just
for kids anymore. The kids grew up and became nerds.
Substrata: Based mostly on which genre they like
best: sports games, platformers, role playing, and the like
Sports Fanatic
Description:
Many might not consider this
rabid sort of sports fan a nerd,
but he displays all the
traditional behavior of one. He
has minute statistics memorized,
he dresses funny for special
events, he probably hasn't scored
in a long time, and he doesn't
engage in the thing that he loves
most in the world. The wins and
losses of his favorite team mean
more to him than anything and can
affect his mood for days. More
than just a casual viewer, don't
dare ask this guy, "How about
them Yankees?" unless you want to
hear a rant about how the
managerial Kremlinology of the
team has adversely affected ERAs,
RBIs, and designated hitters in
alternating away games.
Substrata:
Football fanatics, Statistics
junkies, Cheeseheads
Gathering Place:
Tailgate parties
Knows Way Too Much
Useless Information About:
Fantasy sports league drafting
Eagerly Anticipating:
Opening day of Major League
Baseball
1. How to figure out how much electricity
your house is using at any one time:
Look at your glass dome power meter on
the outside of your house/apartment/condo/whatever. You
will find a flat horizontal disc that slowly spins, with numbers on it.
On the plate/card/whatever, that surrounds this spinning disc,
are a mess of numbers and characters that show the type of power meter, voltage, and
various nonsense things. Typically the last thing on one line of
this nonsense is something like this: 7.2 Kh.
Yours may not be 7.2. No matter.
Whatever yours shows, multiply that by 3600.
In this example 7.2 x 3600 is 25,920.
Next, watch the
spinning disc. If it is spinning relatively slow,
synchronize one of your eyeballs on the seconds-hand of your
wrist watch...hold it up to the meter.....the synchronization
point should be ANY number/line on the spinning disc.
A
convenient place is "0", because most of these spinning
discs will have a black area just before the zero point, so it is
easy to get the correct number/position anticipated.
What you are going to do
is to time the number of seconds it takes to make
ONE FULL
REVOLUTION of that disc. Let that time be called T.
The number of watts your household
is using right then is the number on the line multiplied by 3600,
in this example that is 25,920; and divide that by T.
In the example I
made up, suppose the disc took 14 seconds for one full
revolution. The wattage your house is using is 25,920
divided by 14. That is 1851 watts.
Suppose your electricity rate was
12 cents per kilowatt-hour. You are using 1.851
kilowatts. $0.12 x 1.851 shows your cost is
22.2 cents per hour.
If the disc is
spinning at a high rate of speed, you could count TEN
revolutions, then divide the results by ten.
2. The Queen Elizabeth 2 was more fuel
efficient than a H3 Hummer.
3. My lathe spindle is threaded 1-7/8 x 8 tpi
4. The seat hinge clip from an early 1980's
Airhead is PERFECT for securing the trigger group of an Romanian
AK-47.
5.
This is a photo of the first computer. It had many
thousands of vacuum tubes, and you only see some of the
computer in this photo.
The tubes created a LOT of heat.
Today, our household computers all have many tens of
thousands, well, millions actually, of more computing power.
6. ONE ampere is equivalent to 6,241,500,000,000,000 electrons per second.
7. Maybe nerdy, but may well be useful:
Do you know your neighbors? Go to this
website and type in your address, and you will get the address and name and
phone of everyone who lives near you.
http://neighbors.whitepages.com
8. Website covering carburetors, cylinder head design,
superchargers, of the 1920's:
http://old-carburetors.com/1927-Dykes.htm
©
Copyright, 2012, R. Fleischer
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