Nerd Attire - Episode One: The Old School Nerd

Old School Nerd(The obvious first choice)

Shirt: To pull off the old school nerd look, you'll need to don a short sleeve collared dress shirt with one or two front pockets. A white shirt works best for this look, but other solids will work nicely, as will certain prints and plaids.
To accompany this look, try a pocket protector, a bow tie, or suspenders. Or, if you're feeling up to the challenge, go with all three!
Also, please note, that when opting for this style, it is imperative that the shirt be buttoned all the way to the top as well as tucked in to the pants.

Pants: Any nerd looking to pull off the old school nerd look should invest in several pairs of blue, black and khaki dickies. It is advised that these pants should be pulled as high as biologically possible and secured with a belt (or suspenders as aforementioned). The more ankle that the weared can make visible, the better.

Socks: There are only two alternatives for socks: Black crew cut or white crew cut. It is nonnegotiable.

Shoes: The most common old school nerd footwear is the black dress shoe. This style was made popular by the movie "Revenge of the Nerds" and has set the standard for nerd style. The more comfortable the shoe, the better. An all black pair of sneakers is not preferred, but is an allowable alternative.

Accessories: There are many viable accessories for the old school nerd. Previously mentioned, the suspenders, pocket protectors, bow ties and belts are good starting points. Other key items include: black, thick rimmed glasses with optional tape on the bridge, a cleanly side parted hair style, and a casio watch with full calculator capabilities.

Up next: The New Nerd

Nerd Attire - Episode Zero: The Terminology

This is the first in an n part series detailing various options for dressing oneself as a proper nerd, where n is the number of parts in the series (to be determined at a future date and time).

First, some naming conventions:

Shirt: Working from the top of the head, the clothing begins just below the neck and continues down, stopping approximately at one's waist. This clothing usually (in nerds) covers all of the area in this region, without interruption and spreads in width to slightly above the elbow region. However, in colder locales, it is common to find apparel that extends further to the wrist.

Pants: This clothing picks up where the shirt leaves off, in the waist region, and continues down approximately to one's ankles. A shorter version of this attire can end around the knees, and is referred to as "shorts".

Shoes: Made of a more durable compound that the first two clothing units described and used to cover and provide walking protection for the foot. Often, a cushioning layer of fabric, called "socks" are between the shoes and the foot, and play a significant role in the fashion of the nerd.

ny times on coffee myths

during my morning ritual of enjoying an eye opening cup of brew nerds deep and patroling the world wide web for interesting information, i happened upon this article in the ny times.

updates and excuses

regretfully, an inexcusable amount of time has passed since my last post. an array of reasons has contributed to my absence from the world wide web. below, you can find an enumerated list of the most important factors, which can be categorized as either a) an important update or b) a poor excuse for not blogging.

1. the new store opening
brew nerds 2.0 opened, offering phenomenally stunning coffee to patrons residing in the downtown winston-salem vicinity, as well as to those willing to travel to the new mecca of caffeinated beverages. there were some glitches and delays, but things are running along smoothly now and we are one step closer to global domination.

2. preparing for defcon
i have been busy honing my capture the flag and hacking skills (white hat, of course) in preparation for defcon 16 which will take place this weekend in las vegas.

3. viewing the dark night
several days ago, i made the decision to trek to the local theatre to view the latest installment of the batman movies. in an effort to fully engage in my movie experience, i spent many hours preparing for the event by taking in the previous batman movies, reading up on my collection of batman graphic novels (or comic books, to the lay person), and searching the internet for obscure batman facts. in homage to the batman, i spent some time dusting off my collectible action figures of him and his various foes. i even went so far as to assemble several lego batman play sets. once i achieved the proper mindset, i was off to the theatre and i was not disappointed. i urge and implore all of my loyal readers to see it.

4. mario kart for the wii
this can most certainly be filed away in the category of b) excuse. something has come over me, and in every single moment of free time that i have (which is negligible in the first place), i am consumed with the need, the obsession, to play mario kart for the wii. i have unlocked almost all of the characters, cars and races, and with each one, the hunger for the next is increased. mario kart is my drug.

brew nerds 2.0 rollout delay

the opening of the brew nerds new downtown coffee emporium has been delayed, due to our tireless effort to be in full compliance with local statutes and regulations.

this, of course, means that i will have to recalculate my mathematical growth model from this post, but that should only take a couple of minutes.

i'm sorry for any inconveniences this may have caused my devoted minions. stay tuned for further details...

wardriving

Recently I've taken to a new hobby: wardriving.

For the uninitiated, wardriving involves coupling your laptop with a
GPS device and driving around to catalog the various access points
that are viewable.

Some darker-than-white-hat hackers take wardriving to the next level
and piggyback onto open wireless networks that are available. My
interest lies solely in collecting information about the security of
the available networks. Of the 613 wireless networks I have found in
the past 3 days, 38% are using WEP encryption, 20% are using WPA/WPA2
encryption and 42% are using no encryption.

My setup of choice is the following:
-15" Intel Core2 Duo MacBook Pro
-Kismac Trunk r273
-Hawking Technology USB Wireless G Adapter (HWUG1A)
-Hawking outdoor 9dBi gain omnidirectional antenna (HAO9SIP)

Kismac will export a Google Earth KML file that will allow you to view
your previous wardriving adventures. It is quite interesting how many
people don't care about security these days.

Of course all of my blog readers have fully secured enterprise level
WPA2 talking to a RADIUS server with two-factor authentication.

Am I right or am I right?

fyi