This is the first post as part of my 30 days of geek challenge.

Anyone who knows me would easily be able to confirm that my level of geekiness is high enough for me to go on for hours listing the reasons, however sadly it’s 23:25 and I still have a mountain of tasks to complete before going to work tomorrow. :-(

I think it’s my obsession with computers which makes me a geek – I think my friend Chris Neugebauer summed it up well in his post – being a geek means going above and beyond a normal level of interest in something.

I’ve been using computers heavily for almost half my life and my interest has never diminished, although it has certainly changed over time and moved into different areas – the thing is technology is so exciting and I love the problem solving aspect of it and the new exciting challenges that arise almost daily.

So other than obsession, why am I such a geek? I’d go with a number of reasons:

• There is no space on my desk that isn’t covered by computers – I have an obscene amount of computers and systems, probably enough to rival a small telco. ;-)
• The sticker on my laptop which says “my other computer is a data center” isn’t a lie. I really do have a small datacenter. (2x 42U racks)
• The internet is the most important thing in my life, I would argue perhaps the most important development for humanity to date.
• I will spend hours, days if I have to, to track down and resolve a problem – to get something like Linux working on a tricky bit of hardware I’ll dig through mailing lists for kernel patches, dig into the code and lose my sanity all in the goal of obtaining a solution.
• Real life is that thing I have to endure to get between computers.
• My most important and cherished asset is the data on my hard drive. Everything else is just stuff that clutters up my life. (yes, it is backed up BTW!)

(As a side note, why “geek” rather than “nerd”? I consider geek a badge of honour and can be someone quite cool, nerd implies it in a negative sense, eg maybe someone more socially inept.)