I had to go into the actual office on Friday, which is located in the heart of Silicon Valley. I summoned my peeps for company and emotional support, and together we made the trek into the valley of geeks.

After making our token appearance in the office (where we are like rock stars), we made our pilgrimage to the Geek Mecca, also known as Fry's Electronics. Despite Fry's's's's's crappy website, they are the best retail store for electronics in all of Silicon Valley. It's a warehouse-sized store whose product line is a virtual weekly shopping list for nerds:

- Magazine porn
- Computer parts
- Robots
- Blow-up dolls
- Electronic gadgets
- Video games
- Electronic parts
- Candy & Soda
- DVD porn

(Only one item on that list is a joke. It is an exercise for the reader to determine which one.)

So, as we're walking into Fry's, a tour bus pulls up and a gaggle of geeks (pride of lions, school of fish, it's "gaggle of geeks", right?) emerges from the bus, blinking painfully as though they'd never before seen sunshine. They lurch and shuffle into the store, where most of them stop at the manager's desk to have their bags searched. Many of them are carrying cameras.

What is this?

Are there really tours for geeks? Where on earth, outside of Silicon Valley, can you gather enough nerds to fill a tour? Are they really going to take photos of themselves in front of aisles of disk drives? "Look, ma! That's where I peed on myself in front of a petabyte of storage! *snort*"

This parade of geeks reminded me of a snippet of a tremendously amusing show I saw on TV earlier this month, "Beauty and the Geek". This cheesy reality show takes a group of nerds and pairs them with a group of not-so-bright cuties. The geeks were great. They spanned the often-overlooked geek spectrum. I recognized the following distinct species of geek:

Classic geek - Socially awkward computer nerd
Shy geek - Very quiet. Blushes constantly around beautiful women
Medical geek - Both arrogant and insecure
Spastic geek - Outgoing in an arms-flailing, squeaky-voiced manner
Nose bleed geek - Seemingly normal, but gets nose bleeds at the slightest bit of excitement

(I'm the classic geek!)

This show was great. They had the ditzy women perform elementary-grade academics while the men had to dance. Brilliant! Dancing geeks! Let us never mock reality TV again.