Are You a Tech Geek?
You’d rightly bristle at being called a nerd, but these days it’s practically chic to be labeled a geek. Take this quick quiz to see whether you can count yourself among the few, the proud who know their NVRAM from their H.264.
1) The first thing you do when you get up in the morning is:
a) Pull on your bathrobe and head outside to grab the newspaper.
b) Yank your smartphone from under your pillow and check your messages.
c) Wake up your iPad and surf to Engadget to see what you missed since your last visit, which was at 2:30 a.m.
d) Unclasp your sleep bracelet and launch an app to review how your slumber numbers stack up against the ones from the night before.
2) It’s the first weekend in months that you don’t have to go in to the office. You’re going to reward yourself with:
a) A romantic getaway weekend -- just you and your girlfriend at a B&B so remote it doesn’t get cell service.
b) A strenuous mountain hike that will let you put your new Magellan MobileMapper CX through its paces.
c) Back-to-back watching of “Battlestar Galactica” seasons three and four, streamed straight to the TV from your 4 TB hard drive.
d) Deep delving into the product links you grabbed by scanning QR codes up and down the aisles of this year’s C.E.S.
3) An abbreviation you use on a daily basis is:
a) AOL
b) ROFL
c) COD MW3
d) TRA (If you don’t know this one, you obviously don’t work for the U.S. DoD.)
4) The way you’re most likely to use the word “game” in a sentence:
a) “I can’t believe there’s no game meat on this menu.”
b) “Anyone game for a ride on my new jet ski?”
c) “I finally figured out an untraceable way to game the cable company!”
d) “Dude, Portal 2 is not just a game to me -- it’s my life.”
5) When it comes to cameras, your philosophy can best be described as:
a) “Let’s keep Kodak in business! Digital is for sissies.”
b) “Why should I buy a camera when I’ve already got one on my phone?”
c) “I don’t care what the experts say. I love me megaloads of megapixels.”
d) “My life before buying a light field camera is just one big blur.”
6) The TV personality with whom you most identify is:
a) The washboard-ab’d Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino of “Jersey Shore.”
b) Walden Schmidt, the Internet billionaire played by Ashton Kutcher on “Two and a Half Men.”
c) Stan Smith, the “American Dad” bodacious CIA operative.
d) Adam Savage, the bespectacled special-effects designer who co-hosts “MythBusters” as well as the new science- and engineering-themed game show “Unchained Reaction.”
7) If you could meet any historical figure, it would be:
a) Ned Ludd, the rebellious 18th century English youth whose name was adopted by that era’s Luddite movement.
b) Benjamin Franklin, founding father, author, diplomat and inventor.
c) Alan Turing, World War II–era scientist and creator of the Turing machine.
d) Watson, the annoyingly smart computer that won “Jeopardy!” last year.
8) You’re all ready for the Olympics this summer, thanks to:
a) Friends who’ve offered you their place just off Leicester Square -- and front-row tickets to the opening ceremonies, diving competition and decathlon.
b) The new flat-screen they’ve just put in at your fave neighborhood haunt, the Regal Beagle.
c) A satellite dish on your roof, which pulls in 880 high-definition sports channels -- providing there’s no reception interference from a heavy rainstorm.
d) Your 55-inch 3-D television and a box of active-shutter glasses. Soon, you and your two best buds -- whom you met while working at the Apple store’s Genius Bar -- will be watching the London games in three friggin’ dimensions.
9) You deal with COVID by:
a) Checking your temperature 5 times per day with the Thermomedics Infrared Thermometer
b) Text you friends and urge them to get their vaccines
c) Go to the store and stock up on facemasks
d) Make sure you have plenty of antiviral wipes
SCORING
Calculate your answers according to the values assigned to each:
a = 1 point
b = 2 points
c = 3 points
d = 4 points
If you scored a total of …
8 to 12:
Are you serious? Not even a pocket protector and a ham radio kit could turn you geek.
13 to 19:
You’ve got some tech tendencies, but you need to make some changes before you can geek out with the best of them.
20 to 26:
Way to go! You’re an up-and-coming geek. Very few people make it this far.
27 to 32:
Congratulations! You may not get all the ladies, but you are a true Jedi Master in the world of tech geeks.
