Childhood Tid-Bit of Nerdome

Here's a little tid-bit from my childhood to help you grasp the kind of person I was.

I remember one day asking my father,"Dad, do you think I'm weird?"
"Of course not, Son! You're completely normal." He told me in earnest.
I was devastated.
After all, the kids at school thought I was. I had worked hard for that reputation; wearing eyeball rings, eyeball necklaces, a t-shirt with iron on googly eyes, sunglasses with holographic eyeballs, and being the class clown.

I was trying to find my niche in this world and I thought being weird was it.

Me participating in Drug Awareness Day.


This was also about the point where I became interested in computers. I found it fascinating to enter my parents' computer registry and tinker/deleted registry keys. They weren't so fascinated with the software damage. It was equally as fun to hack into my Jr. high PCs and change settings around to the frustration of the teachers.

Then came high school, a time of trial for everyone. The more obvious brand of weird wouldn't work here, that much I knew. And the last thing a kid wants is to be made fun of so I said goodbye to my eyeball jewelry, and hello to blue hair, Magic the Gathering cards and an anime club.

I'm starting to realize why my mom put me in karate classes right before high school.

It was at this point when I became an adept PC user. This time I used my powers for good and worked on creative techy projects at an ROP class for computer service and repair. Yes, I still deleted registry keys but it was under supervision.

Nerd’s Worst Enemy

Everyone has their enemies. Spiderman has the Green Goblin, Wolverine has the Sabertooth, Batman had the Joker and nerds…nerds fear spiders. There’s just something about an eight-legged, six-eyed, fanged and skittering creature that gets to the majority of nerds. Yet I’m torn between two instincts around spiders. One side of my brain says, “Wow, get your camera!” and the other goes, “Yeah, that’ll smash it real good!” As creepy as they are, I can’t help but be fascinated by them. But I will never touch one.

Out here in the country we live side by side with all kinds of arachnids.

From the large and dangerous:

Location: Side porch

To the small and inconspicuous:

Location: Bathroom

From the weird you’ll only find in the sticks:

Location: Front door

To the intrusive:

Location: In my FRIGGIN' shoe!

I’m afraid that the black widow is no longer with us. They’re too aggressive and I’ve learned that if you let them alone, they only breed. In our last barn I didn’t kill any and I ended up having to eliminate almost two dozen, in the dark, by flashlight and armed with a 5 lb. sledge hammer.
*skitter skitter*
*SLAM SLAM SLAM!*
It was very efficient.

The moral of this post? Don’t live in the country unless you have a sledge hammer.

To Game or Not to Game

Now that's an easy question.

A good buddy of mine once calculated that if he had spent as many hours in college as he had logged into World of Warcraft he'd have a Bachelors degree. And that's with only one of the many video games he played. Massive multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG) like World of Warcraft are severely addicting. I used to play one of the first MMORPGs, Ultima Online. Hours upon hours were spent making a virtual character better when it could have been spent making myself better. Had I put that kind of time into real world hobbies, who knows what I could have accomplished or what kind of memories I could have made and shared. That's the con about video games; memories aren't made and skills are left untapped. What good are video game memories since you can't even share them with your children?
"Son, you should have seen my Orc shaman. I got him to level sixty with a complete set of purples to blow any Alliance scum into the next shard."
Would he or she even understand what you're saying, or care?

On a personal level, I've been slowly weaning myself off of the gaming addiction over the course of several years and have found that I enjoy making masks, woodcarving, playing the guitar, researching herbs and being creative with Photoshop. Plus, it gave me a chance to rekindle old hobbies again like photography and writing. And it doesn't stop there, I've become a better communicator and my attention span has increased.

That's not to say that I'm 100% against video games. Everything in moderation, because too much gaming is self-destructive.

Introduction

Hello and welcome to my blog, “Nerd Gone Country”. I’m your host and former nerd, Ian. Please, hold your applause until after the post.

Here I’ll be posting all sorts of things; adventures with my two month old son, adventures in the country, adventures on the job as a postman and many other things I hope you find interesting.

I’m sure you’re wondering, “Just how nerdy were you?” and “How did you go from geek to outdoorsman?”

Well, I was so nerdy that the only club I joined in high school was the anime club, which was devoted to watching Japanese cartoons. I was so nerdy that I carried stacks of Magic the Gathering cards in my backpack so I could duel my friends at lunch. I was so nerdy that my favorite class was computer service and repair, and I programmed my own computer game and I enjoyed Dungeons & Dragons. I was on the fast track to wearing bifocals and pocket protectors. Then something amazing happened. I got a girlfriend.

Erin and I have been together for nine years and married for five of them. It was she who opened my eyes to the other part of myself. She helped me realize that my many years in the Boy Scouts has had a significant impact. Heck, if I were asked what I’d rather do, camp or play video games, my knee-jerk reaction would be camping. Slowly I became more confident in the outdoorsman half of myself which blossomed into wanting my own property complete with animals. As if feeling complete wasn’t enough to tell me that Erin and I belonged together, then came a dream proving that she and I had a connection unlike any other…

It happened one night in my Jr. year of high school. I was somewhere between sleep and consciousness when I found myself in a dark room with the only light seeming to come from me and my bed. I began to concentrate on Erin, to try and communicate with her, and there she was standing next to me. She smiled pleasantly as I tried to talk. Nothing I said made any sense, it all sounded like mumbled and slurred speech. Then I lost concentration and woke up. The next day came and I immediately found Erin at school.
“Did you have any dreams last night?” I asked.
“Yeah, a weird one. I dreamt I was on a cruise ship when out of nowhere your head appeared, floating in midair, and began to talk nonsense to me.”
Chills swept over me. So I researched what happened and it’s called, “dream walking”. It only happened once but it was enough.

I know it seems like I regret my nerdy past, but I don’t. I made great friends and fond memories. Well, there is one thing I regret; the amount of time I spent playing video games. But that’s a subject for another post.