Wishing for a Geek Index

Today is Newsletter Day, which is the crap-crap-crappiest time of the month for me. I get to stitch together our organization's newsletter from about 50 submissions. It'd be dull, dreary work if everyone bothered to follow the formatting rules for submissions (ten point Default Sans font, single-spaced, blah blah blah). Unfortunately, this being the real world, nobody reads the directions and I have to spend hours (literally hours) formatting this junk for the people that send it. I could just throw up my hands and not worry about the formatting, but I'm the kind of guy who notices if there's slightly more space above one line than another, and cares about it on some fundamental level. This makes me both uniquely suited to doing my job, and uniquely suited to being driven crazy by my job. Kinda like how if you want the best, most crazily competitive alpha males flying fighter jets, you can't be too surprised when they buzz the tower.

Yes, I just compared editing my corporate newsletter to flying a $30 million aircraft. It's my blog, and if I want to strain a comparison that much, I can damn well do it.

Anyhow, there are two guarantees on Newsletter Day: one, that I will curse at my computer because, once again, people have failed to follow basic directions. And two, I will spend as much time as possible doing things besides creating the newsletter, only to stay up really late so I can get it done on time. Today's procrastination activities include blogging (hello!) and geeking out over BioShock. Yeah, that's right, I play video games. Not in my mother's basement, thank you very much. I have my own basement.

I wish there was some kind of scale so that I can grade myself on how big of a dork I am. For instance, I have the following geek habits:

• I spend between five and ten hours a week playing video games. I've never played World of Warcraft or any of those, and I've never played online with someone I haven't met in person.


• In that same vein, I read gaming websites and preorder an occasional game. I have never waited in line overnight to buy anything, though.


• I'm obsessive about spelling and grammar to the point where I proofread casual emails to friends.


• I play fantasy football. However, I'm the guy who downs several beers during the draft and makes fun of people who pay money for their fancy charts, as opposed to the guy who spends the whole draft icily silent, plotting his next moves.


• I read a wide range of books including nonfiction, historical fiction and sports memoirs, but I think I might have a nervous breakdown if George RR Martin doesn't finish "A Dance With Dragons" soon.


• I used to be a software engineer, and occasionally (very occasionally) miss writing C++ code.


• I have a blog.

In the interest of a fair and balanced story, the following are also true:

• I'm happily married. Though my wife does occasionally call me a geek.


• I play one sport at a fairly competitive level, and am in pretty good shape.

So, taking all that into account, how big of a dork am I on a scale of one (John Wayne) to ten (Trekkie who loves World of Warcraft)? I'm giving myself a solid seven, and leaving open the possibility that I'll create a full grading system next month on Newsletter Day.