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As Microsoft TechEd 2011 is fast approach­ing & Delic8genius has made a call-out to the Aus­tralian com­munity “What is your Geek Ori­gin Story”

So, it’s time for me to doc­u­ment My Geek Ori­gin Story

My first geek obses­sion star­ted with cats. Or, as we now call them, kit­tehs. Quiet com­pan­ions on the Aut­istic scale, kit­tehs added their warm furry friend­li­ness to my pur­suits – and were always more accom­mod­at­ing than humans. There­fore, I clas­sify kit­tehs as a key moment in my geek origins.

Along with kit­tehs in this photo are the col­lec­tion of Air­fix and Rev­ell mod­els. The his­tory of World War 2, and the mak­ing of model aero­planes was a rather unique pur­suit in the middle of rural Eyre Pen­in­sula. But I loved it. Oh, that and LEGO.

After being intro­duced to an Apple ][, on loan to our school from Angle Park Com­put­ing Centre, by a pres­ci­ent Maths & Sci­ence Teacher: Mr Peter Stew­art,  I was hooked. From this early access, I also played with a TI pro­gram­mable cal­cu­lator and CP/M based Osborne 1.

My Dad, sens­ing my inab­il­ity to become the 5^th gen­er­a­tion owner of the farm, pur­chased a TRS-80 Model I. Oh wow, the fun I had with that com­puter was amaz­ing.

I owe Mr Peter Stew­art and my Dad a great debt.

Note on Angle Park Com­puter Centre: many South Aus­tralian Geeks of my gen­er­a­tion began thanks to Angle Park Com­puter Centre. Stilgher­rian, Frank Falco, Simon Hack­ett and David Newell to name four. Being a coun­try kid, we relied on loaners.

More cats: this time Bindi; with our/my first Macin­tosh: a 128K Macin­tosh. One of the first in South Aus­tralia: so first, it only came with a 110V power board!

Thanks to Tim Kleemann from Ran­dom Access (later owner of Next Byte) – this Macin­tosh opened the door on a career & a love of Apple.

Taken some­time in 1984 or 1985, this is me at my Macin­tosh. A har­binger of the next 13 years in the IT industry.

Ran­dom Access, Adelaide. 1987. This is me at my desk, work­ing away at some Macin­tosh things. Thanks to Tim Kleemann, Tre­vor Starke & Adrian van den Bok – and many oth­ers – I worked here hap­pily doing Mac things.

The above is Liam’s new Garry’s Mod Server (THEGRID) in the pro­cess of being re-animated. New 350Gb PATA drive into the old Dell 5150. PATA is finicky: This master/slave mode plus cor­rect rib­bon cables makes the pro­cess harder than you would think. Win­dows XP SP2, Remote Desktop and we are away.

Also, Kudos to Microsoft Activ­a­tion sup­port. In the haste to move Liam to his new machine, we for­got to de-activate the new Microsoft Flight Sim­u­lator X Accel­er­a­tion Pack (and dur­ing the school hol­i­days, he’d installed it onto a friend’s PC whilst hav­ing a game fest. Yes, this is not cool!). Thank­fully, Microsoft sup­port fixed this in a phonecall on the week­end. Good to see our sup­port guys care!

After suc­cess build­ing my own PC, with a Quad-core Intel Q6600 pro­cessor: it was time to update Liam’s old PC (Dell 5150 with an old Pen­tium 4 HT processor)

Using the same case and power sup­ply, but a dif­fer­ent memory and mother­board con­fig­ur­a­tion (P35 Giga­byte) the build pro­cess was rel­at­ively quick. Fresh install of Win­dows XP, and a faster 500Gb hard drive: Liam won’t know him­self. Just tak­ing time to rein­stall his applic­a­tions. I did have a mahor fail when installing onto “drive d” rather than drive c. Thank­fully, Microsoft Know­ledge base helped.

In the same order, I also obtained a VIA ARTiGO. This is a pico-ITX baby PC. Delic8genius gave me some ideas for what to make this machine into… but other ideas are welcome!

My list of fam­ous people who are geeks, which you just didn’t expect:

• Stephen Fry (who lives just down the road from Paul Foster)
• Bruce Wil­lis (thanks jjprojects!)

What a geek week. Face to Face present­a­tions to 120 people, focus­ing on this new world of “online”. Some­where around 6,700+ views of http://thegeekstories.com/ videos.

Ran into some old Apple friends (hi Tom!) and shared the joys of Frank­arr mov­ing into the US.

Tim, an old friend whom I owe much, a key share­holder in Next­Byte sold out to FoneZone. Con­grat­u­la­tions, and enjoy the rest, Tim. I am jeal­ous! Tim, an occa­sional com­menter here will now have time to become a real geek.

Telstra’s Geor­gia Lee says To grow a small busi­ness, it helps to be a Geek. In fact, Geor­gia is look­ing for Geek Stor­ies. Been there, doing that Geor­gia. Call me. We’ll do lunch.

Politi­cians just don’t get Wiki­pe­dia, and the trace­ab­il­ity of edit­ing on the inter­net — where people no know if you are a dog. Of course the PM doesn’t need to ask our pub­lic ser­vants from edit­ing Wikipedia.

Cleaned up some slack paper­work­ing on my behalf; and have some more to get through (I owe some people prizes: wait­ing on them to come in so I can send them out!). Paper­work has never, and will never be, my strong point.

Ques­tions from the week I am going to let settle in my brain, and answer next week. Tomor­row: BarCampSydney2. No videos, no laptop. Just pop­ping in with Liam to soak up the geek world.

One day, Liam will cre­ate his own geek empire. And he’ll sell it. And I can then retire. And join Tim.

What is an Geek? Is Geek a pejor­at­ive term?

In the UK, being a train­spot­ter or anorak is def­in­itely pejor­at­ive for those out­side the craze.  Duncan Riley uses the mar­ket­ing term Prosumer (pro­fes­sional consumer).

If any­one comes up to me and calls me a Geek, I am proud. Hav­ing spent the last year break­ing off the shackles of “sales and mar­ket­ing droid”, being a geek is refresh­ing. And hav­ing suc­cess­fully passed on my geek genes to Liam — I am even prouder.

Self-proclaiming myself as a geek with the title Pro­fes­sional Geek still gets side­ways glances — even at Microsoft — which has spent the last many years suc­cess­fully becom­ing the enter­prise soft­ware com­pany. Thank­fully, Microsoft’s heart still beats with a geek tune.

So what is the size of the geek vir­tual nation? This is a nation not divided by 19thC lim­its of Empire; nor sep­ar­ated by age, gender, lan­guage. A geek has a under­stand­ing over the last 250 years, tech­no­logy has pro­pelled humans at a rapid rate. The inform­a­tion age we live in may be seen as a dif­fer­ent time to the indus­trial age — who can pre­dict future historian’s categorizations?

There are two recent meas­ure­ments of the size of the geek vir­tual nation as it exists today:

• Apple PR: Down­loads of Apple’s Safari 3 beta for Win­dows 2000, XP and Vista: 1,000,000
  Who else apart from geeks, inde­pend­ent of plat­form reli­gion, would down­load a beta of yet another browser?
• Piper Jaf­fray estim­ates 500,000 iPhones sold on the week­end.
  Most estim­ates put the US at 50% of the world’s IT eco­nomy. 2 x 500,000 = 1,000,000

Whilst both num­bers are Apple-centric, it is still an inter­est­ing num­ber to pon­der. How many bor­der­less, hyper-online geeks are there in the world?

I’ve had a long, long love with Lego. As a Geek, this love is not unique.

Thank­fully, most of my Lego sur­vived my child­hood and I passed the thou­sands of well-worn, well-loved bricks to Liam. Each brick had a second life with Liam as he build planes, trains and more planes.

In a rush of blood to my head, I pur­chased a Lego Mind­storms NXT from Australia’s Brick­Net. And added a 1360-piece 1:10 Fer­rari Enzo to the order for Avril. She’s always loved Ferraris.

Within two nights, the Fer­rari is complete:

First, the email:

progeek@microsoft.com

Second the T-shirt:

Lastly, the busi­ness card:

Now I feel at home!