Casa Grande, AZ: Nerds & Talking Frogs

I was a nerd while growing up. I enjoyed math, science, architecture, engineering and computer classes. If you read many of my blog posts you quickly realize English class was not a particular favorite however I know enough to get by. And of course I enjoyed playing any type of sport. My wife say I'm competitive however I disagree so I challenged her to an arm wrestling contest, best two out of three is the winner, and gets to decide if I'm competitive...

And thank goodness for the spell checker on my computer; spelling was never a strong suit, at least not while I was in school. I loved spelling bee's because I always wanted to be the winner. You can imagine how much conflict this caused because in my early years I was convinced you couldn't spell the word "cat" without  the letter "k". 

Even when I entered the business world in 1978 I was a nerd; as a Systems Engineer I helped customers debug their computer programs and fix the operating systems on their company mainframes. I really enjoyed the work; especially since computers were not nearly as judgemental as people. Computers just do what you tell them without any filters or checks to see if what you told them to do made sense. 

Here's what you will learn in Engineering:

• You can study hard & still fail
• You can not study & still pass
• Multiple choice does not mean easy
• There are no trains here
• Six exams can be written in 4 days, but it hurts
• You can skip all the classes, study for 15 minutes before the final & still do better than an arts student in any art class
• Pi to six decimal places
• Judging by fellow students, engineers are either drunks or geeks
• Everyone is someone else's wierdo
• Front row people are wierd
• Those who can, do; those who can't, teach
• A 95.75% can be an A
• An 80.1% can be an A+
• You can kill your neighbors with a 9 volt battery
• You NEED an HP calculator

So, for most of my life I've been a nerd, enjoying technology, especially computers, far more than anyone should enjoy an inanimate device. I thought they were cool. And despite what you see in the movies and what you've read, women don't really like nerds.....

Whenever I think about my early years around technology I am reminded of the story about a nerd who found a frog in the street. The frog says to him "If you kiss me I'll turn back into a beautiful princess, I'll stay with you for a week, and I'll do anything you desire".

At which point the nerd picks the frog up and puts the frog in his pocket. The frog says "didn't you hear what I said?" and the nerd replies "I'm and engineer; I'm too busy for a girlfriend, but a talking frog; now that is cool".

See Ya!