You want to be awesome at something nerdy? Simply follow my Five-Step Program to Awesome™:

1. First step: Admit that you know nothing about that nerdy something, no matter how much you think you know. Yes, you are dumb.
2. Second step: Attend Google University diligently — possibly a real university if you have this rare thing called money — until you are feeling quite awesome.
3. Third step: Just when you think you might be awesome, try the nerdy something and fail unexpectedly.
4. Fourth step: Accept how utterly non-awesome you are. Yes, you suck.
5. Fifth step: Repeat first through fourth steps. A lot.

Take, for instance, building computers:

I built this very machine on which I type from a hodgepodge of parts, starting about two years ago.^{* (true nerds can click here)} Everything was “cool” until about October of last year, when a vexing problem presented itself:
At seemingly random times, the damn thing would freeze up, repeat a fraction of a second of audio that was playing for about a minute, and then carry on as if nothing had happened. And freeze up again a random increment of time later.

Right up until this past weekend, this was life at the Dave Mosher bachelor pad, and a crushing blow to my nerdish psyche. In my family, I am the unofficial technology guru. The super dork. The ultra geek within your bloodline that you call when you’re too broke (or thrifty) to even consider hiring a gun to fix that wickedly complex pile of doped silicon, whirring motors and glowing beeping delicate thingies. And here there I was, confounded by my own electron-infused baby.

Something awesome, however, saved the day… (your cue to keep reading) (more…)

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