Photo by Steve Voght; used under CC license.
Next Thursday is, of course, Thanksgiving Day in the United States. While we celebrate the holiday with our families, along with turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie (or whatever traditions you may have), many of us like to think of all the good things in our lives for which we’re thankful.
No matter how rough things are for you, you almost surely have some things in your life that make you feel lucky. Whether or not you believe in a deity or deities to whom to give thanks for the good things in your life, it can be good to take a little time out to consider how much you have that makes you happy.
It’s all well and good to list things like your family, your friends, a steady job (if you’re fortunate enough to have one), having a roof over your head, etc. But there’s more.
So, in addition to those fine and wonderful things, here are 10 things (in no particular order) geeks might be thankful for, other than the obvious: GeekDad T-shirts! Thanks to all those who responded to my request for assistance on Twitter.
Image copyright © Timescience Bloodclub, LLC.
1. As I wrote last week (see #10 on that list), the geeks have officially won! If our triumph over the forces of jockdom doesn’t deserve at least a nice toast, I don’t know what does.
2. There will be a sequel to Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog
3. This is the golden age of webcomics. From xkcd to Penny Arcade to Dork Tower to SMBC to Sluggy Freelance to Toothpaste for Dinner, and many others, webcomics have truly come into their own in the past several years. Geeky humor for free, nothing to recycle and no chance of accidentally reading Cathy: What could be bad?
4. Google Wave. No, we’re not really sure what to use it for, either, but it’s from Google and it’s invitation-only, so it must be awesome. Right?
5. We live in an age where 1-terabyte hard drives are small, inexpensive and easy to come by. For those of us who remember having a PC at home that had no hard drive whatsoever, and who remember when a 40-megabyte hard drive was the size of a cube fridge, we really are living in the future.
6. Widely available broadband Internet connectivity. The next time you go to a Flash-heavy website like YouTube or Hulu, or a photo-sharing website like Flickr, consider how long you’d be waiting for pages to reload if you were on a 2,400-baud modem. Or even a 14,400-baud modem, which I remember being so glad to get because it seemed so fast to me, then. These days we can get bandwidth in our homes or our local coffee shop that laughs in the face of a 14,400 modem … or would, if bandwidth could laugh. And if modems had faces.
Stargate Universe cast photo copyright © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.
7. There will not be a new Star Wars trilogy or 3-D versions of the existing movies. It may seem odd to be thankful for something that’s not happening, but the rumors about these gave us nightmares, so we think it makes sense.
8. There is genuinely good science fiction to be found on television. Stargate Universe, while not uniformly great, is only eight episodes old and yet has already had more legitimately good sci-fi stories than Star Trek: Enterprise had in its entire 98-episode run. And then there’s the new version of V, and the upcoming Caprica — yes, even once Dollhouse‘s run ends, there will still be better sci-fi on TV than there usually is.
9. A two-part movie adaptation of The Hobbit is being made by Guillermo del Toro and Peter Jackson. We are a bit less than thankful that we have to wait two years to see the first film and three to see the second, but we’d rather have them done right than done quickly. The team that’s making them gives us great confidence that the adaptation will be well worth watching.
10. Children who love to read. There are truly few things that are more gratifying to a geek parent than having kids who will choose to read a book over watching TV. It’s one of those “I really am a good daddy/mommy!” moments.
So, what geeky things are you thankful for this year? Please let us know in a comment. And, Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
