Geek Chic

I spent yesterday at MacWorld SF. Partly wandering the floor of the Moscone Center and partly working the demo booth for the employer. On the floor, there was probably less to see than previous years and being the final day of the convention it was not as busy as I've seen it. The economy is not where it was by any means, as illustrated by the lack of decent swag. But I managed to get a cheap t-shirt and a nice discount on some photo printer paper for the Epson 2200. The rest of the day was spent demoing software and answering tech support questions. I only got verbally attacked once by a lady who wanted to know why we had dropped support for her favorite (and totally non-profitable) application. Pretty good day actually.

One thing I always notice when attending these sorts of things is that you can pretty much categorize the geeks into distinct groups. (Must be the day to put people in categories, as Aaron Haspel is classifying bloggers into National Lampoon 1964 Yearbook characters. Go Aaron!) I didn't manage to get pictures of the different types, so you'll have to take my word for it.

The Cyberpunk Geek -- Long hair, wears an ankle length black trenchcoat, scraggly goatee.
The Matrix Geek -- Easily confused with the Cyberpunk Geek, but clean-shaven and wearing wraparound sunglasses, trenchcoat is leather.
The Stapler Guy Geek -- Looks like Stephen Root in Office Space. Bad skin, overweight, questionable hygiene, mumbles to self.
The Old Hippie Geek -- Leftover from the Sixties who worships at the alter of Mac. Gray hair and ponytail. Has own, one-man design shop.
Gurl Geek -- Think Lisa Loeb on steroids.
The AlphaGeek -- Handsome, athletic, but still kind of brainy looking type. Has Japanese girlfriend. All of the other geeks are jealous of the AlphaGeek.

And finally, here is the Unknown Geek...