TechComm Labs

The Tech Reports forums provide an interesting insight into what keeps the interest of technical types. Capacitor failure on motherboards is one such item and it becomes especially interesting in some of the more dramatic modes of failure:

Turned out one of the cap locations near a PCI slot had a reverse-polarity silkscreen. Made for an interesting test-boot after the repair … How the heck did you figure that out? Needle, your haystack is ready. … I’m sure the symptom was not subtle. As in, BANG! … Ah, yes, the classical definition of “interesting.” … A breadboard, a small selection of aluminum electrolytic capacitors, and a 9V battery are your next ticket to a wasted afternoon.

But one of the more popular threads is about which way to roll the toilet paper over. There is a poll and a citation to “Click here for the Wikipedia article. Way in depth. Like reading a book.” That one has gone to three pages and is still active.

Then you can get into that That old piece of harware you keep dragging along which gets kinda’ depressing because these guys think stuff from 2003 or so is old stuff – most of my computer gear around here goes a lot farther back than that.

But toilet paper is definitely the king of issues this week. That is one of those amazing technologies that gets taken for granted — except, it seems, by geeks.

And that topic came up in an RV meeting a while back, the difference between a nerd and a geek. WikiHow has a detailed (geeky) item on How to Tell the Difference Between Nerds and Geeks or follow the links on geek studies. There is also FINALLY: The Difference between Nerd, Dork, and Geek Explained by a Venn Diagram for the visually oriented. That one adds dork as a necessary compliment to the intelligence, social aptitude, and obsession dimensions.

And, if you are into academic studies of the gifted and talented, you’ll see that those guys have their own nomenclature for the same set of proclivities and capabilities. Self identity and identity apart from others goes deep it seems.