Something I don’t understand is why nerds and geeks have to dress up like dorks, as if they were promoting the Salvation Army sale rack. While nerds are known to have above-average intelligence, they usually fail to do certain things that other people would consider obvious – like wearing clean, matching clothes. Maybe this is an opportunity for us to create a tutorial on that?
Anyway, I believe that just because someone is a nerd, that doesn’t mean that he or she must wear a beat-up shirt full of holes; wear only T-shirts that say “Yeah, I am a nerd,” such as freebies from computer companies during trade shows; or wear black socks with a pair of white sneakers when wearing shorts. (Fashion 101: This is a no-no. You should wear white socks in this situation.) Then nerd guys don’t understand why girls don’t talk to them…
I am the perfect example. While I am a nerd, I dress fashionably. In fact, most people when meeting me for the first time would not consider me a nerd, since I wear clothes from Calvin Klein, Guess?, GAP, Kenneth Cole, and many other name designers. (The fact that I only shop at T.J. Maxx and Premium Outlets and never pay retail price isn’t evident when meeting someone, is it?)
But then, if you are a true nerd, you may think that dressing “normally” will remove all your “nerdness.” Not so. What about dressing better, but, at the same time, wearing an accessory that would still keep you in touch with your nerd self? This could be anything from a keychain with the logo of the Decepticons to a really cool nerdy watch – which is my personal preference.
There are some options around. If you follow my “SkyMall’s Most Bizarre Products” series, you know about the watch where the hours are represented by square roots.
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ThinkGeek is probably the obvious destination for people looking for nerdy gadgets, and they have really cool watches: the E.R. Beat LED Digital Watch shows time as if it were an EKG machine, the Infinity Invaderz LED Digital Watch displays time in a 3D field, and the LED Binary Watch shows time in binary, which may not be practical.
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But the most fashionable of them is the one recently released by Cadence, the 4-Bit Binary Watch, with leather straps and stainless steel body, where the hours are written in binary, providing the perfect balance between fashion and “nerdness.” This company was kind enough to send me one as a gift, and is offering a 25% discount to our readers, using the code “HardwareSecrets” when buying it at the manufacturer’s website.
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