Measure Your Geek Quotient

Part 1. On the Job

1. How many e-mail addresses do you have?
One at work
One at work, one at home
Too many to count

2. Your company issues you a photo ID to get around the building. You:
Wear it on a chain around your neck; wouldn’t leave home without it
Clip it to the bottom of your sweater; best to be prepared
Throw it in your bag; no one’s seeing that photo

3. In the office kitchen, your hot topic of discussion for the morning is:
Last night’s episode of Sex in the City
How long it took you to rebuild your hard drive
How someone took the last hot chocolate packet

4. Your e-mail signature line consists of:
A self-portrait or a graphic drawn in ASCII characters
An inspiring quote
Just my contact information

5. Your desktop wallpaper is:
Personal snapshots
Microsoft’s flying window
Something I stole off the Web

Yes/No

6. Do you read Dilbert religiously?
 yes
 no

7. Do you check your e-mail from a Unix prompt?
 yes
 no

8. Do you draw circuit diagrams as doodles when you are on the phone?
 yes
 no

9. Do you wear shirts that sport your company logo?
 yes
 no

10. Do you swap company freebies?
 yes
 no

Part 2. At Home

11. What was the last movie you saw in the theater?
“The Matrix”—for the special effects
Star Trek’s “Insurrection”—of course
“The Patriot”

12. Where did you go on your last vacation?
A Caribbean cruise with my family
Anaheim for a trade show, but I avoided Disneyland
I get a vacation from this job?

13. Your refrigerator contains:
Prepackaged goods, including my favorite, Lunchables
Some moldy lunchmeat, ketchup, and Budweiser
A healthy mix of everything

14. Your home modem is:
In the closet where it belongs; I surf the net enough at work, anyway
Pretty good
Modem? I have high-speed Internet access through my cable line

15. What is the first day of the 21st century and beginning of the new millennium?
January 1, 2000
January 1, 2001
I keep time in Star dates

Yes/No

16. Are your pants too short?
yes
no

17. On a rainy day, do you reread old college textbooks?
yes
no

18. Do you use a computer program to balance your checking account?
yes
no

19. Have you ever taken your computer on vacation with you?
yes
no

20. Have you ever purchased something for the sole purpose of taking it apart to see how it works?
yes
no

Part 3. Trivia and History

21. Who received the first Nobel prize in physics?
Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen
Albert Einstein
Michael Faraday

22. An octave covers a frequency or wavelength span of:
2X
4X
8X

23. When the meter was introduced (during the French Revolution) as a measure of length, it was defined as:
One tenth of the height of a guillotine
One ten millionth the distance from the North Pole to the Equator, through Paris
The standard distance between the wheels on a French carriage

24. That stick-free substance, Teflon, was first made in:
1954, as a byproduct of a college chemistry project
1950, by Monsanto as a no-stick surface for surgical instruments
1938, by a scientist at Du Pont while testing refrigerants

25. Prior to the general use of electronic calculators, engineers used slide rules to perform calculations. All of the common scales but one are nonlinear: logarithmic, trigonometric, and so on. What is the one mathematical scale on a slide rule that has linear divisions?
Logarithmic
Trigonometric
Hyperbolic

26. You have 10 units of weight (grams, ounces, pounds, and so on). You need to produce a conversion chart so you can convert from one unit to any other. How many conversion factors do you need?
10
55 (10 + 9+... ...+2 + 1)
100 (10 x 10)

27. The first engineering school established in the US was:
West Point Military Academy
Harvard University Civil Engineering Department
Pennsylvania State University

28. What powers the amplifiers in Trans-Atlantic cables?
Small nuclear reactors
Sea-water batteries
Long current loops

29. The name for the 66 satellite Iridium system comes from:
The Roman goddess Iridia
Chemical element number 77
Neither, it’s a made-up name

30. The abbreviation VHDL stands for:
Very High Speed Integrated Circuit  Hardware Description Language
Versatile Hardware Design Language
Very Hard Design Language