My (supposed) Geekdom

My laptop has been needing a new hard drive for some time now, and I finally got one yesterday. It was a momentous occasion. "And all the people rejoiced!" (2 Chron. 29:36)

For a couple weeks I struggled with the choice between getting an external hard drive or getting a new internal hard drive and enclosing my existing drive to make it into a small external drive to back the documents, music, and pictures currently on my existing drive. Anyone who has spent even a minute (the adjective, not the noun meaning 60 seconds) amount of time with me knows well that I have extreme issues with making decisions, but when I finally did, I decided to go with the second choice. Truthfully, external or internal hard drive is a much easier choice than, "hamburger, taco, or chicken." I'm not entirely proud of that fact, but it remains a fact despite my lack of pride in the matter.

So, after finally making my decision, getting the necessary supplies, and a lot of drag-and-dropping, I am living with over 250 more gigs of space. It feels pretty good. I don't have to delete songs off my hard drive immediately after loading them on to my iPod. I don't have to wait to open attachments on another computer for fear of my computer exploding with information. I can create a word document instead of using my (hopefully) unpublished blog posts as a place to write. I can browse and download new widgets. This is very exciting. 

What has been the most shocking thing about the whole experience, though, is the reaction from my peers. I thought that new hard drives were pretty standard things, but apparently by publicizing my excitement I have entered a new ring of geekdom. I had no idea that people would respond with such surprise. I am surprised at their surprise. I am not sure how to take this.

Either:

I give off a silly persona, and couldn't possibly be capable of hard drive thought.

I have been hiding the fact that I am (moderately) interested in computers. 

I don't talk about my interests enough to give people a clue that I am even interested in those things.

Or, what I fear the most in this situation:

I'm not as nerdy as they think; I'm just a hard drive poseur.  

In addition to general surprise in my newfound geekdom, I have found that people are increasingly eager to talk to me about nerdlette things. Today someone said to me, "SATA or IDE?" Excuse me? These are things I'd honestly never heard of until yesterday. My box said, "SATA", but do I really know that that means? Absolutely not. Still, I'm not sure how to react. I'm interested in learning so many things, and computers are something that I am particularly interested in, but I'm no expert. I don't want to give people the impression that I am, but this seems to be much more difficult than I thought. 

Well, mine or theirs, someone's reality is going to have to change.