10 (More) Geeky New Year's Resolutions

Image by Ernesto Lago; used under Creative Commons Attribution license.

Repeat after me: “I hereby resolve that in the new year I…”

1. Will faithfully read every new xkcd, Penny Arcade and of course Dork Tower strip as it appears. If the joke in a strip is too esoteric for me, I will of course promptly Google it and subsequently pretend that I understood it immediately.

2. Will play with and encourage my kids to play with LEGO, since it is after all the best toy in the world. If I don’t have kids, I will simply have to play with LEGO myself that much more.

3. Will introduce at least two new geeks to the music of Jonathan Coulton and/or Paul and Storm. If they for any reason don’t like them, I will try hard not to accuse them of not being true geeks.

4. Will try very, very hard not to be jealous of geeks who make it to San Diego Comic-Con or Penny Arcade Expo, if I’m unable to go to either.

5. Will try very hard to make sure my kids spend at least as much time reading as they do playing video games, even if that means occasionally buying or borrowing cringe-worthy novelizations of High School Musical or something similar, because even reading something lousy is better than not reading.

6. Will try very hard not to run out and buy an Apple iTablet, or iSlate, or whatever it ends up being called, as soon as it comes out. I will if necessary repeat this mantra to myself: “I don’t need it just because it’s new and cool.”

7. Will watch every new episode of Phineas and Ferb, with or without my kids, because it is the most awesomely geeky cartoon show currently on TV.

8. Will not try what I see on MythBusters at home, but will do everything possible to encourage my kids to (safely) examine their (and everyone else’s) assumptions with a skeptical and scientific eye.

9. Will not get into arguments with other geeks about the age-old PC vs. Mac or Windows vs. OS X vs. Linux questions, because nobody ever wins religious debates. [Reprinted from my resolutions from last year.]

10. Will, #9 notwithstanding, eagerly get into arguments with other geeks about the relatively new iPhone vs. Blackberry vs. Android vs. jailbroken iPhone question, because it hasn’t quite gotten to the point of being a religious debate… yet. And because such arguments often include trading phones for a few minutes, which is a lot of fun — especially if you can quickly figure out how to switch the other person’s phone’s display language to Russian.