Geeks and Nerds

My daughter called me a geek last night. This is strange coming from her, since she has a degree in electrical engineering, and plans to build her next computer herself. To me, hardware is really geeky.

This all came up because I told her I had started a blog, and she said she would never do that, she hates to write. I'm not sure I love to write, but I suddenly feel I have a lot to say. In fact, people at work think I talk too much -- but that's another post.

I don't feel much like a geek. On the other hand, I was called a nerd recently too. I don't feel much like a nerd. That name calling came when I admitted that in my early teens I kept a journal where I wrote the "juicy bits" in dwarf runes as in LOTR. That I could both write and read them, made me a nerd. (Note: I can't anymore, which makes the journals somewhat unreadable, not to mention that this teenager didn't have too many "juicy bits" to write about.)

So am I a geek or a nerd? I remember a cartoon my mother sent me when I finally went back to grad school, the man sitting behind the desk was telling someone on the phone, "Sure I'm a computer nerd, but I'm going back to grad school to become a computer geek." Truthfully, most of the time I feel like neither, but then something will happen, like telling someone with no technical background how a piece of software works, and I suddenly feel like a geek.

Question: What makes a perfectly ordinary person into a geek?