Sean Reichle

Gizmodo readers like you tend to think they know more about technology any other people—including (or especially) Giz editors. You’re the person your friends and family come to with computer problems, what those in the know call ageek. But there are varying levels of geekdom. In order for you to prove where you stand, I’ve compiled a handy list of 50 key geek skills. Many of them are straightforward, some are tough as hell. Only the most dedicated shut-in basement dwellers will score a perfect 50. How do you stack up? Hit the jump to find out, and be sure to keep a tally as you read—there’s a poll at the end to see how you measure up to your fellow Giz readers.

1. Install a hard drive in a laptop
2. Perform a clean OS install on a machine with two OSes
3. Swap out the battery on your iPod/iPhone
4. Jailbreak an iPhone
5. Wire your house for Ethernet and Coax cable
6. Use BitTorrent and RSS to automatically download new shows from trackers
7. Use an A/V receiver to its fullest capability (every port is taken)
8. Calibrate an HDTV without the manual
9. Use a DSLR in full manual mode
10. Hack the encryption and mooch your neighbor’s Wi-Fi
11. Solder cleanly enough to get around a circuit board
12. Use your 3G phone as a Wi-Fi access point
13. Shove the guts of a modern game console into a retro game console
14. Design a webpage in HTML by hand that features a picture of your cat
15. Use Photoshop to imperceptibly doctor a photo
16. Abstain from buying extended warranties
17. Know where to buy cheap cables and accessories
18. Fix your parents’ computer over the phone without looking at a computer
19. Enter the Konami code
20. Comment on Gizmodo from your phone
21. Type quickly using T9 texting
22. Program a universal remote
23. Contribute code to the Linux kernel
24. Hide porn from your significant other
25. Avoid DRM on everything
26. Know how to back up your data to networked storage—and actually do it
27. Watch TV shows on the internet for free
28. Edit together digital video ripped from YouTube
29. Play any SNES game on your computer through an emulator
30. Reset expired trial software by messing with the registry
31. Hackintosh your PC
32. Download pre-release movies from Usenet
33. Hack the Wii to play homebrew games
34. Get around web content filters on public computers
35. Get into a Windows computer if you forgot your password
36. Securely erase your data so it can’t be recovered
37. Share a printer between a Mac and a PC on a network
38. Build a fighting robot
39. Write your own Firefox plugins
40. Navigate and reorganize the files on your computer in DOS
41. Get something on the front page of Digg
42. Get through to executive customer service
43. Rip a CD to V0 quality MP3s
44. Rip a DVD to DivX
45. Build your own computer from parts
46. Swap out the hard drive in your DVR for a bigger one
47. Get an NES cartridge working again by blowing in it
48. Calibrate a 7.1 surround-sound system
49. Play downloaded games on a Nintendo DS
50. Talk about things that aren’t tech related

Almost there….

Thank you Gizmodo.

The blessing of science is that it makes everything in the physical universe make sense.  The curse of science is that we can’t accept anything scientifically until we can mentally model it in the physical world of understanding.

-Sean Reichle

I generally think that you can tell how intelligent a person is simply by knowing his/her religion and how dependent on it they are.   People are willing to believe in things that allow them to connect the dots in their mind as to form complete pictures.  You see, humans cannot think about something whilst not understanding it.   So the greater your need for religion, the less real understanding you have about how things work.

I say understanding because you don’t need faith when you have understanding.  Conversely you can say understanding exactly how something works requires no faith since understanding has to be based on scientifically proven facts which have confidence of accuracy.

If we don’t have facts to prove or deny something, we first devise a theory then we simply build some machine or scientific instrument that can tell us what we don’t know until we have a full understanding based in scientific fact.   Now it’s true we don’t know everything and I don’t think anyone in science claims to know everything.  We do however know enough now that we know there is no Sun God.   There are no Angles that watch over humans in their trials of life any more then rats have angles protecting them from rat traps.

I dare say god has been written into our guide book by our ancestors who had lived for thousands of years on this planet before us and wanted to try and give us a moral compass.   Even our ancestors knew that man does not listen to just any man when it comes to rules.   The only way of passing this knowledge and applying a morality would work is if we called them rules from a supreme being.

When that failed, humans tried to use man as a medium for passing the message down from god.   Even then we as humans refused to listen and killed the man who tried to send the message.   Religion has been fighting barbarism for humans.    Dare I say it was genius.   I say that because it seems the approach worked beautify. Just as in the story of Santa Clause or the Tooth Ferry there is a time when you must accept reality and shed yourself of crutches to carry you across bridges of understanding and build foundations in science for a true understanding of how things work.

We are on the brink of world change yet again.  We have broken matter down into the smallest particles in trying to understand how things really work and why everything does what it does.  Soon enough we will have all those answers just as we have answered the questions laid before us on countless other matters in history.   We will find the answers.   The real answers will again be in shake the foundations based on religion and many, many people refusing to be considered totally lost will fight for their belief we will fight yet again.

Perhaps we can prey that those grounded in religion prey less and study to learn and think to understand everything through explanation.   I have no personal objection to religion.  It has had a valid purpose in history and is still necessary for many people to exist and live out their daily lives.   It’s a simple yet crude alternative to having a complete picture of the universe at atomic levels and not all people can be happy with having such questions unanswered.   I just want to encourage those grounded in religion to keep an open mind.   After all, cellphones, flat screen, airplanes and spaceships are not magical things.

-Sean Reichle

Genius is not instantaneous.
-Sean Reichle

Successful people are the greatest failures.  The rest are just quitters.
-Sean Reichle

Really, Honestly.  I’m way to old to be this stupid.
-Sean Reichle

I would love to give you great powers so that you can all be hereos.   My only hesitation is that you haven’t yet learned how to use the powers I’ve already given you.
-Your Creator

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them, will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”… Thomas Jefferson

I think nearly everyone I know has multiple personality disorder.  They just don’t talk to themselves out loud.

Which is why it is vital each of you know what your asking for.  

Now can you live with getting it?

Choice complete.

One day you too will be hearing something, remebering that you’ve heard this before, and now accepting you already knew it you ask yourself why you didn’t listen before.

-Sean Reichle

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it! 
 
Rule 2: The world won’t care about your self-esteem.  
 The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself. 
 
Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school.  
 You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both. 
 
Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. 
 
Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity.  
 Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity. 
 
Rule 6: If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault,  
 so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them. 
 
Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now.!  
 They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were.  
 So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room. 
 
Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT.  
 In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as  
 MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer.  
 This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life. 
 
Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters.  
 You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF.  
 Do that on your own time. 
 
Rule 10: Television is NOT real life.  
 In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs. 
 
Rule 11: Be nice to nerds.  
 Chances are you’ll end up working for one. 

John McCain is the modern day Babe Ruth nearing the end of his carear.  Manipulated and controlled by powerful people played like a pupet for powerfull individuals known today as “Republicans”.

I’m just waiting for the day when the true pupet master is unvailed and declares himself  emporer of the “New” republic as so many have before in the history of the world.  The only thing we’re missing to make this story a truly forseen reality are a few Jedi Knights of whome were also blinded by the dark master pulling the strings of even our current president.

The government was not originally rich people, they were socialists or democrats.   The government is poor people wanting to try and make things more fair.  It’s simply a strategy to take money away from rich people to help the poor and working.  However, once the government beuacats become rich in power they become rich in money through bribes and extortion.  They no loger have the same goal of equality and are instead corrupted by power, and are no longer socialists. They have made the transition from democrat to republican if they become rich motivated and are now capitalists.

If you are poor.  Vote democrat.   If you are rich, vote either way, as republicans will be on your side of capitalism or will be democrats which will eventually be bought.

Todays political game for democrats is a strategy of trying to get someone with just enough experience into office before they become corrupt.   The republican strategy has become a puppet show to keep people happy enough to not mob.

The divide is ever expanding between the rich and the poor.  Some people eventually discover that things are only as fair as knowledge and understanding are obtained.   Things will never be fair between the rich nor the poor as experience and knowledge will never be the same between the young and the old.    Like it or not, you’ll just have to wait until you understand what it is you don’t understand.