...your office looks like a robot exploded in it...because a robot exploded in it.
you rent storage space when you move to a smaller place because there was just too many "things" you couldn't let go.
"things":
boxes of scavenged stepper motors
the keyboard from an old Ensoniq synth
200 LED's from a few found arcade game PCB's
boxes of really odd electronics stuff that "might come in handy one day"
.
.
.
Someone posts a forum message asking for help with some obscure IC and you think "wait, I have one of those, I'll see if I can reproduce it".
You are excited when a kitchen appliance dies because you can salvage parts from it.
You get up at 4am to go to a specific store to buy the newest gadget NOT because you want it right away but because you know Woz will be there and you want a signature and autograph.
...when you go work on a turkey farm and manage to find ways to put computers, Arduino and turkey farming together!
Save me from this picturesque, rural hellhole....
when you actually need to get a PST clock when you live in EST
(because that's where Silicon Valley is)
When anything you build has to envolve electronics in at least some small way...
when you get this in a fortune cookie and you save it because you think it is a sign from above.
eddiea6987:
when you get this in a fortune cookie and you save it because you think it is a sign from above.
One of my coworkers once got the same one.
You get your hot air rework station out and strip all the parts of those "scrapper boards" because you don't have any more room for any more boards.
when you place like 20 orders on eBay for various resistors, transistors, and IC's.
When you offer to fix the tech support's equipment
You're on first name basis with an account manager at Mouser
You know you are a tech geek when....
It bugs you that you aren't yet running the latest UNO bootloader in all your older 328p based boards.
Lefty
retrolefty:
You know you are a tech geek when....It bugs you that you aren't yet running the latest UNO bootloader in all your older 328p based boards.
Lefty
It bugs you when you don't own an UNO 
retrolefty:
You know you are a tech geek when....It bugs you that you aren't yet running the latest UNO bootloader in all your older 328p based boards.
Lefty
, then you would flash all your existing 328p chips to the lastest UNO bootloader written by westfw and then set up a breadboard flasher based on his optiloader so that you are prepared for any future purchase of blank 328p chips.
, then you would know that "penalize" is the anagram of which verb that is not recognized by dictionary.com.
then you would know that "penalize" is the anagram of which verb that is not recognized by dictionary.com.
What the heck does that even mean? It's as cryptic as some of the C++ coding goodies that get posted here from
time to time. 
Lefty
retrolefty:
then you would know that "penalize" is the anagram of which verb that is not recognized by dictionary.com.
What the heck does that even mean? It's as cryptic as some of the C++ coding goodies that get posted here from
time to time.Lefty
I,em, was writing a grant proposal and set myself into the long sentence mode when writing this reply. In simple words, for those newbies:
You know you are a tech geek when you know a word that looks like "penalize" but has the a and the first e swapped. Dictionary.com wouldn't recognize the word. Even worse, your non-tech-geek friends won't recognize it in scrabble!!! 
and here I was trying to figure out how you got that anagram from penissize or maybe penisize or penislies or.... 