Ultimate Geek

[Baddad]

Many of the astro interested members of this forum are geeks and often proud of it.:)
What intrigues me is just how deeply involved some may be.

My daughter must be a geek. Jenny has named her pet guinea pig, "Sheldon". She has just taken up a position at the Charles Sturt University as research assistant. She was also recently awarded Apple's Educator of the Year Award. That gave her a week in Bali, compliments of Apple.

Here is a chance for some of you to confess how much of a geek you are. Come blow your trumpet.:D

I know jjj has a list. Gary P, from NZ has some.:)
Tell me and the rest of us of your proud achievements.

Cheers:)

[ZeroID]

How about a 3Kva Online Double Conversion UPS to run the Entertainment system, TV, Sound, PS3 and Media 'puter. Plus 2 more smaller models for other puters and the phone sytem in a wired and wireless networked house.

I don't get NO POWER HUM or weird clicks on my 12" woofer ... :D


( The 3Kva is slightly under utilised [17%] but if we ever have a power cut I'll be able to boil a jug or two :lol: )

[Steffen]

<commence trumpet blowing>

I made my first telescope when I was 13 or 14, from the famous Zeiss Jena 50/540 kit, a tube I rolled from paper and a plywood alt-az mount. That got me hooked on astronomy.

At 15 I (re-)made a Tesla coil from an old turn-of-the-century wooden base I found in the dumpster at the local uni, a 6.3kV lighting transformer, radar PA capacitors and lots of patience with the secondary coil. The thing worked beautifully and scared the living daylights out of a visitor who walked past my room and saw me drawing 15cm sparks with my finger :lol:

In 8th grade I got a popular chemistry set withdrawn from retail after I demonstrated to my chemistry teacher that the included (harmless) potassium hexacyanoferrate could be trivially transformed into potassium cyanide. I also "ran" the chemistry prep room for my teacher and set up most of her class experiments. I've blown up enough things using home made nitrated explosives to land me in Gitmo if I did it these days :P

Well, those were the days… :D Today I'm not doing anything spectacular or particularly geeky anymore. I'm a bit of an audio nut, though, and of course love everything to do with optics.

Cheers
Steffen.

[pmrid]

When I was about 12, I stared building rockets out of metal bicycle pumps - filling them with a mixture I'd better not discuss and using the school machine shop to make nose-cones and fins etc. The launching ramps were made of timber and the ignition system was a firecracker fuse and 'run-like-hell". I had one actually go backwards once and bury itself in the back yard - the nose-cone blew off and all the exhaust products fired out the top instead of the bottom.

Somewhere in there I had a chemistry lab under the house until I spilt some boiling concentrated sulphuric acid down my leg one day in an excess of enthusiasm. Parents took a dim view of that one.

There were some army surplus telescopes in there somewhere too.

From there into high school, I started making spectroscopes to take photos of spectra from emission tubes 'borrowed' from the school physics lab. The camera was an original Kodak box brownie-style camera. These worked surprisingly well I am pleased top say and I managed not to blow myself up - which my parents thought a major achievement all on its own.

Not satisfied with that, in my year 10 - I guess I was about 14 then, I came across a circuit diagram for an NMR spectrometer in a Scientific American magazine. I didn't know how little I knew at the time, otherwise I would have been discouraged. In fact I only had the vaguest idea of what the hell and NMR spectroscope did - but it looked so cool I couldn't resist. I managed to scrounge a huge fixed magnet and wound some coils around it to increase the field strength and then set about making the electrics which - well, I had no idea about circuit boards so I just figured I'd just solder stuff together the way the circuity diagram went and before I knew what I was doing I ended up with this huge thing that looked like a ball of string with wires going everywhere. It was then that I realised how hopeless the project was.

There is a piece of chinese calligraphy I keep over my desk these days. It says in loose translation "The more I learn, the more I realise how little I know." I should have had that when I was a teenager. Would have saved me a lot of burns, bruises and bumps - not to mention having my backside whacked by the old man when I went too far in pursuit of the unattainable.

Around that time, testosterone kicked in, I discover girls and cars and I was off on a another mission altogether for many years.

The sad story of another would-be-geek who went and became a lawyer instead. Go figure!!

Peter

[Steffen]

So, you were that guy in "October Sky"?? Nah, you couldn't be that old… :lol:

Cheers
Steffen.

[A23649]

I managed to convince the physics teacher to let us work on a super-sonic experiment. This truly frightening contraption shoots Ping-Pong balls out of a tube at Mach 1.2 with enough force to blow a hole clean through a Ping-Pong paddle. It has however been put to rest and dismantled after the teacher realised the what it was capable of.

[KenGee]

Sorry all I win was a super geek at school and I'm now an IT manger for a mining company. Our email address are based on our last name and first letter of our first name. So my business card says

Ken Gee IT Manager email geek@nnnn.com

[Baddad]

Wow, Geeky stuff alright.:)

Perhaps leading to the proverbial mad scientist if you people were not psychologically stable.:lol:

I made a few nitrate bombs and rockets. Also a small cannon. The ball bearing went through two one inch planks, three fences and an old garage door coming to rest leaving a very light mark on the car inside the garage.
Close one.:P:D

Good ones, Brent, Steffan, Peter.:) I also wanted to make a Tesla coil. I settled for a miniature which gave me some 2 cm sparks from a 3 volt supply. I was 13/14 at the time.

Where's jjj? I'm sure jjj may have some stories. I assume that jjj started later.

Don't confine this thread to the kid stuff we did. Its the later achievements that are all interesting as well. Like what photo remains the most rewarding personally. That kind of stuff. Or, perhaps you may have been hoping for a Nobel Prize nomination. LOL:lol:

I did not have much time to read these this morning but here I still am. Have to go in a rush now. Its riveting. The stories that is.

Cheers:)

[telemarker]

The younger years had the usual explosives, smoke bombs, stink bombs and rocketry (see explosives). Electrical engineering was limited to booby trapping metal furniture with induction coils, electronics sets and building slot cars. The first telescope was a small Tasco refractor. Late teens, became a linesman but wanted more so went back to uni. Discovered biology at uni and ended up with honours in genetics and a PhD in zoology.

[jjjnettie]

LOL
I was more a "jockette" when I was younger. Into sports and horses.
School was wasted on me I'm afraid. A combination of my lack of interest and personality clashes with a couple of teachers. I was the "bad" girl.
But l loved to read, not only science fiction, but anything to do with animals. My nose was always in books. ha ha, Mum would send me to the shop for milk and bread and I would read the whole way there and back. Only looking up to cross the road. So I guess I was a book nerd. :)


Astronomy came into my life when I was 41 and I've been making up for lost time ever since. :)

[Steffen]

Oh wow, you must have tuned it nicely. With Tesla coils it's all about resonance.

Cheers
Steffen.

[ZeroID]

Mmmm, forgot about my rocketry and various explosive experiments. I got back into it just before Astronomy 'rescued' me and had a few unexpected catastrophes but my best was back in secondary school where I was a lab assistant. Access to the chem and physics labs which also had a small Myford lathe. Me and another guy built a sulphur\zinc powered rocket about 6 feet long along with some other smaller ones. Took the whole lot down to his dads farm and set up a launch rail mast. First couple of rockets went ok but the 6 footer went about halfway up the rail and then Krushniked'. A krushnik is when there is a cavity in the fuel load and the burn goes internal and explodes. Basically blew the mast and everything thing around it for about 20 meters flat, Fortunately we were dug in about 50 meters away but it left our ears ringing for days.
I ended up running New Zealand Fireworks Display Company with another couple of people. Sideline business to my real job. Used to do all the display choreography and electrical layouts. I could explode $20,000 in 6 minutes. hard work but fun !!
Sounds a bit like to be a 'geek' you really need to have dabbled in explosives .. :D
I've got lots more stories on explosives gone a bit wrong but really need to sit down with a beer or two for a proper belly laugh. Suffice to say I still have all my fingers and eyebrows which is considered unusual in that 'profession'.
Built a Van de Graaf generator, and a bazooka ..:question:

And a serious crossbow using an automotive leaf spring ..

[Baddad]

Hi Brent,

Yes I agree, geeks have that enquiring mind. Seeking what they can when they do,"What If I...."

What are you people doing now? What was or is your employment?
I was an electronics tech in the Army until '91. I joined Peter The Possum Man. Evicting possums and birds from peoples' roof cavities. Now I am in solar power sales.

Cheers

[ZeroID]

Hi Marty, I'm in IT support, mainly desktop and laptop now although I was a bit more involved with network and servers etc previous. (Job, contractual change limits). Previously Feild Engineer technical support and Special technical Projects Manager for Fuji Xerox NZ.

Now I'm just waiting for the last two years of the contract I'm on to end (2014) which will put me on the far side of retirement age and I'll figure out what comes after that. I suspect there'll be other options as I still have skills they need for a while yet.

Think I'll stick to non-exploding scopes for the foreseeable future. :lol:

Big advantage is I have an unending supply of older PC bits and laptops to use and enough PC and printer resources at work to process while I 'work'. My wall at work is plastered with astro pix and they keep being upgraded as I improve my imaging and processing capabilities. :thumbsup:

[TrevorW]

I was making explosives at 14, when you could walk in to a chemical store and buy any ingredient, putting together rockets before you could even buy a kit, writing to NASA sending plans of spaceships and offering my body for any deep space suspended animation program. keeping newspaper clippings of all the Apollo missions. watching everything and anything sci-fi on TV and the movies. This was in the 60's and early 70's but it all fell in a hole when I found out about girls.

[DavidU]

Yep, explosives at 14, still geeky with 43 music industry designs, 2 trademarks (my last name) and 1 patent.
Astronomy, watch collecting........total geek LOL

[Stardrifter_WA]

Although I didn't make explosives, I did did get to play around with explosives and actually got to blow stuff up, legally. That was fun, even if a little dangerous. I got my explosives licence when I was 18, and held it for many years until I let it lapse in 2010. I only got out of this job because I nearly got blown up :eyepop: Actually, that isn't the only reason, but it sounds cool. It was a close call though, and one of many in my life. :sadeyes:

I left to do an apprenticeship and became a 1st Class Machinist instead. This was a great job too, I even built an equatorial mount, among other things, e.g. a tangential assembly for a guidescope. I didn't even have to buy any materials, apart from some 3/16" thick roller thrust washers that I used on both axis, it was so smooth, in fact, too smooth and made balancing difficult. I was allowed to use any scrap pieces and all machinery, as long as it was in my own time. I also made a number of tools that I still use today.

I even built a fine focus control for my R&P focuser. Actually, I used a mechanism out of an old high end microscope and it worked a treat, although it was a little bit too fine. A few years later I modified a small plaetary set to do the same thing. And that was in 70's, so nothing is really new. :) I just wish I had access to that type of equipment now. :D

I left that trade to take on a diverse range of roles, over the years, along with further studies. I mostly worked in technical and management roles. I am now involved in an education support role, which I love doing. And better yet, it is only part time. Bugger workin' full time :D

Cheers Peter

[Inmykombi]

I guess this qualifies me as a "GEEK".
I once went to a toy ROBOT exhibition at the Power House Museum in Sydney.
After looking through the display, I realised I had more models of Robots than the Exhibition.:eyepop:
They had some bigger ones that I didnt have, but I had more smaller ones.
I still buy the occasional Robot ;) ( shhhhhhhhhhh ), much to the amazement of my dear Wife.

Geoffro.

[TrevorW]

I reckon statistically there are more geeks the sexy cool guys but then there are the few unique ones like me that are both;):P:cool:

[GeoffW1]

Hi,

This often happens if you have the wrong teachers or the wrong school altogether when young.

But what is this list of geeks you have Nettie ? :lol:

That's what I want to know about :rofl:

Cheers

[ZeroID]

I guess if we weren't 'outed' before we are now and we're on the list. :P

A very exclusive list of course !! :D