I just read a blog entry by Dave Hay called "Geek is Cool". He talk about how he now is proud to be a geek, after he realized he is one:
I realised that I am a geek, I’ve always been a geek and I may well be a geek forever.
I have been a geek since 7th grade, back in the early 1980’s. That’s when the computer club in my school started. I spent many hours, both during the breaks/recess and after school, in the computer room, learning to program and use the computers. My parents were not too happy… "You need to do your homework, so you get good grades and get a good job after you graduate." Little did they knew that what I learned on my own would be much more valuable than most of the other things I learned in school. 🙂
Back then, geeks were not popular. All the girls were into the jocks and "normal" guys. Someone like me, member of the computer club and the role playing game club (yes, we even had that!) were considered very weird.
I graduated, started working, first at Microsoft and then (after my military service in the Swedish Airforce) at a company developing IVR applications. That company went bankrupt, and I got a job as a journalist at a computer publication. I was still the resident geek, all other writers had a journalistic background and learned about technology, while I was brought in as a technical person they could teach to write. I developed some internal systems while I was there, initially just to help myself in my daily work, but soon they were used by the whole staff.
I then met my wife-to-be (now ex-wife) online. This was in 1996, she did not even tell her dad until after we were married how we met. 🙂 That’s how many people looked at technology then. It is just a little over 10 years ago…
Today I meet girls who like geeks and even look to date geeks specifically. We are now more popular, and when most people have computers, I think they appreciate the geekyness more. So it has never been a better time to be a geek. 🙂 I am a geek, and I am proud of it!