The status symbol of a geek; what defines a geek has been defiled. By who? Quake players with a penchant for 1337-5P341<. Well, they invented it anyway.

1337-5P341< does not make you a geek! A geek is identified by superior English strung together with bombastic words that evoke the response, "Speak English please." That, my friends, is a true geek. Not a wannabe who replaces letters with words and go "1337 h4x0R m3 0wnz 411 Y0U12 13453 4123 13310N6 +0 U5!" A geek is not comprehendable already using words you find in the dictionary.

I’m fine with 1337-5P341<; just don't use that as an excuse to glorify yourself as a geek. There were geeks before John Carmack made MDL files commonplace.

It’s time to ask yourself this, people. Are you a geek?

I could quantify the speaker of this supposed sentence as a member of such a class with enough eloquent proof to indicate without any uncertainty that the premise of yours truly being the subject matter is a tautology.

Call me a smart aleck without a penchant for books. I was having breakfast with my collegemates when the subject of our previous progress test on catch-up-on-your-sleep theory subject Information Management came up. How did I do? I winged it! (Made up the answers.) Like “tembaking”, just for subjective questions. The test was relatively easy.

They asked how. I related to them that I learnt a bit of it from work. How would you get cheap labour in high quantities? Internships! College leavers who have to go for industrial training! 🙂

At that point I asked if industrial training was covered in Information Management to the remaining breakfast buddy. (The others don’t have my laid-back 5-minute-late attitude.) He went, “huh?” “You know, Information Management? The subject we’re having afterwards? (Or rather, just started…) The boring theory subject? CS219?”

At last he got it. CS219. This was besides the indeniable language barrier between a banana (Chinese who can’t speak Chinese) and a, well, Chinese-educated Chinese. Geez. Everybody refers to subject by their codes! (Which I can’t remember…) I remember last year when referring to our “database” subject. Seems I had to say the magic word, “SQL“. Uhuh.

Another subject we were taking this semester was Java. I had bragged enough of my workplace ASTRO with Xfresh that they duly asked, “Do you use Java at work?” “No.” Well at least I didn’t. It seemed like a cool concept but it was doing enough technical support replying to Xfreshers having trouble accessing the chatroom with their Bill Gates-owned (never mind that they might not have paid anything to Microsoft) Windows XP machines. (I’m not a Linux groupie and I like Windows when it’s nice.)

In my first year I learnt Macromedia Authorware 5. Such a tedious program indeed, that was to be phased out anyway. I’d have preferred they teach Visual Basic 6. At least we didn’t have to learn COBOL like some other assignment-a-week busy college… At that rate I’d say I’m taking my assignment-a-four-month-semester relaxed college for granted. Even at its relaxed pace the lab sounds like a factory with students on dot matrix printers churning trees of slides.

These students have been taught to memorize. It’s a pity. It’s still the same in a private college teaching Information Technology. I’m not even talking about those studious teacher-leech kids. These are people retaking one or two subjects from last year.

It’s sad too that despite their efforts to memorize they get the same B/C/D grades I get!

Mine, at least, takes less effort, just common sense, and when that fails, winging-it skills. God knows how important winging it is. Will you get high in a corporation by winging it or memorizing facts? (Don’t worry, I don’t wing it at work!) I don’t know what Mass. Communication students do but you can bet that winging it does wonders everywhere.

“Why don’t you just study, then?”

I’m lazy. When I do have time to study, books are too tiring. I don’t get the same comfortable posture in front of the interactive idiot box you’re staring at now! 😛

The idea of having to write something and quote somebody from some book [Albert Ng, Glaring Notebook, “Winging It”, 21st March 2003] scares me. Doing anything research-like scares me. Documentation scares me. I lose marks for my short and snappy documentation. (Even with my winging-it skills!)

Heck, talking about studies irritates me too. I’m not one for discussing the technical merits of accolade-ful universities and twinning programs. I know I’m good enough that paper is just something I can fall back on. 😛

Collegemates (actually one) who bug me like I GNU General Public Licensed my Java and C language irritate me like heck. To the point of inspiration – to the point of writing the Parasite Sonnet.

Even in class, I don’t take notes or pay attention to study tips on progress tests. This is even though question spotting is much more accurate in college! My handwriting has gotten worse since work is not 5-fingers-and-a-pen but 104-key goodness. There’s only one thing keeping my writing legible to myself – my poems and sonnets. They were written to keep awake in class!

I’ll end my smart aleck school story here. I’m reaching the end of my third A4-sized paper. Besides, class was just dismissed… 😛

P.S. I’ve fixed a long time bug with the anti-spam-bot mail links. Never noticed till today! :O I’ve also updated my About Me! page with a link to former officemate/frag buddy TheUseless.com.

>:)
I’ve been lacking sleep again. It’s the time again where I rush assignments. This one was about security and some other networking stuff that I couldn’t remember. All I remember was one way in – “Hacking by stupidity”.

Ironic, then, that I should find that it applied to today. Not that I got hacked or anything, but I realized people make themselves to easy to be hacked. Information is free and easy to get. I’m not a skilled stalker; the stalkees are easy targets. No, I’m not a stalker, either. I’m just an overcurious person who was challenged.

Heck, I’m easy to stalk myself. I know it, but I’m not afraid, least not very. Of course, ask me ASL and I’ll torment you and act blur at the same time. 🙂

Friends can betray you oh so easily. And not even intentionally. Not even knowing it.

I’d find it hard to disappear in real life. Some of me wouldn’t want to, so I’d live with it. Don’t worry – I won’t disappear! I’m not exactly independant. 🙁

Maybe a part of me wants to hold on. Maybe a part of me dares to. Maybe a part of me doesn’t know how to. Maybe a part of me doesn’t want to.

Sometimes I feel I’m wearing a signboard
It protects me from the sun that is so hot
It may be glaring and revealing everything
I hide in the clouds high at the top
But the agitation causes rain to drop
I fall in the dusk and wake in the morning

I’m sleepy, tired, cold and waiting.

I’ve broke off my addiction to Spider Solitaire, I think. While waiting for the connection, I’m resorting to ZSNES, an emulator that lets you play Super Nintendo (or Super Famicom as it is known around here) games on your PC. I’ve gone through all 95 levels of Super Mario World. 🙂

Where’s everybody? I mean, the blogging people. Nobody bothers to reply to my comments anymore. It seems like the moment I slag off and bask in offlineness that everybody stops visiting me. I’m still alive (though ICQ, and then ICQ Lite, seems to hang a lot lately.)

I’m scared. Feeling threatened. Something’s coming over the horizon, the orange skies, about to engulf my place. Everybody else will like it. Heck I like it too, but it’s disturbing because it’s taking over what I had. Even then, what I had was because they had no other choice. Now something better comes along. Can I roof them and cloud them from the great orange, or do I provide something better?

Next week, I’m going to do my research on it. What does it have that I don’t? Lots. What can I do? Lots as well. Not so soon, though. My exams are next week and I’m even less prepared than before.

In the meantime, I’ve watched James Bond’s latest adventure, Die Another Day. Wow. Seems the writers have given him a chance to whoop xXx‘s derriere, with snowcapades, fast cars and women. There were a lot of elements you wouldn’t have expected to see if not for xXx. Heh. Vengeance! Sure it doesn’t beat the Americans at being ‘X’-treme but Bond’s gotta be Bond still.

I’ve also gotten myself an A4Tech wireless (radio frequency) optical mouse. I’ve been splurging on computer hardware lately. Sadly, it lags in the sense that sometimes it doesn’t accelerate as it should. My only consolation is that it comes with a USB charger, and the mouse can be charged with a Nokia charger as well! That would also mean that my Nokia can be charged using the USB charger! Ah the convenience. 🙂 Now I don’t need my wall-socketed AC/DC adaptor. Now I can predict calls while charging, with the aid of two monitors to fuzz out when calls come in!

That reminds me. I gotta install Windows 98 on my old PC. That would be a problem considering it doesn’t have a floppy nor CD-ROM drive. I’ve been procrastinating shifting both drives from my PC to that one just to install. Heck I’ve been procrastinating burning CDs. Lazybum I am.