Sunday, February 17, 2008

Geekiness is catching

My long-suffering husband puts up with a lot of geekiness, including piles of New Scientist magazines all over the house, the occasional drunken rant about creationism, and lots and lots of geeky friends.

For example, he came to join a group of us for after-work drinks on Friday night. The other people there were friends from my last job, all of whom have a science background. We got to talking about the wonderful BioRad PCR ad, and a few of us even sang the best part ("Who's Your Daddy?").

Hubby smiled politely.

On to another pub, with other, non-scientific, friends. And Hubby starts a conversation about an article he was just reading in New Scientist. Specifically, "the whacko files" - the ten craziest scientific experiments of all time, from the November 3rd issue (we have a backlog situation).

From the least geeky person in one group, to the geekiest in another...

Resistance is futile; the geek shall inherit the Earth.

7 comments:

  1. That video is AWESOME! I can't believe I hadn't come across it yet.

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  2. Your husband can't be that long-suffering--you just went on your honeymoon not too long ago! Is he aware he has years and years left of this to endure? :-)

    I solved this problem by marrying another geek. Not a science geek, but a computer geek. It's hard to tell which one of us is geekier....

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  3. Well, we've been together for over 5 years, so a lot of his suffering was as a boyfriend and fiance!

    Hmm, two flavours of geekiness in one house - interesting! I dated another scientist once (from the lab next door) and said never again, but the main reason was that we spent way too much time talking about work. A geek in a different field sounds like it would work well though!

    UR - it's only been around for a few weeks (I think) but it's gone 100% viral. Several different people have sent it to me! Now you get to initiate the chain in your group of geeky friends!

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  4. I married a geek of the same type, and it is wonderful! I do have a slight fear that the longer we are married, the lesser the chances that anyone non-geeky will understand what we are talking about.

    Oh, and I have started the geeky chain by sending him the video already!

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  5. I think the problem of no-one else understanding you happens whenever you spend a lot of time with someone. When I was an undergrad I lived and socialised with 6 other girls for 3 years, and the core group of 4 of us essentially had our own language by the end of it. We still lapse into it when we all get together, which at the moment happens every time someone gets married! All our husbands / boyfriends are very confused by it.

    I'm glad I started a new infection of the BioRad video, it deserves to be passed on I think!

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  6. It is indeed.... :) Although I always take it as a warning sign when talkig with non-geeks and one of them says something about me being a fountain of information.

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  7. Yup, I've had that too. For me it's usually a polite way of saying "you've had too much beer*, stop talking now please".

    *or caffeine, both have the same effect

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