Posts Tagged ‘Tips for Geeks’

Geek Social Tip: When in doubt, introduce people to each other…

Monday, August 4th, 2008
  • You’re standing in a group of 3 or more people.
  • You know at least 2 of the other people.
  • The 2 people you know may not know each other.

Introduce them to each other!

You’re not 100% sure of the names of 1 or more of the other people?  Introduce them anyway!

You’re 99% sure they know each other?  Introduce them anyway!

You really dislike at least 1 of the other people?  So what?  Introduce them anyway!

You’re afraid that someone will roll their eyes or make a snide remark when it turns out that everyone already knows each other?  Yes, it happens.  Introduce them anyway!

You’ll get better at it with practice.  Trust me.

I will always remember with deep gratitude the times that people have introduced me to other people.  I’m a firm believer in paying things forward.

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Going Incognito: How To Fake Sports Knowledge

Thursday, July 3rd, 2008

Lightning has struck.  You’ve got a girlfriend, and things are going great.  You’re already holding hands — who knows what tomorrow will bring?

But then you find yourself at her folks’ place, sitting on a couch in the TV room next to her old man, who has his doubts about you, but who is willing to give you a chance.  He asks you if you like to watch sports…

Don’t panic!  Some tips to help you out:

  1. Avoid saying something unbelievably stupid. 
  2. See No. 1.
  3. See Nos. 1 and 2.
  4. Towards that end, do your homework!  For starters, you should know which team plays which sport.  Questions like: ”That’s basketball, right?” will buy you a ticket on the express bus to Lonely Loserville. 
  5. You should have some idea what season goes with what sport.  Just think back to junior high school and put together which team you got picked last for with what chapter you were on in math class.
  6. You don’t need to know a lot, but what you know you should be able to express in colorful detail.  “Man, I can’t believe the Giants recovered that onside kick!” sounds way more convincing than: “I’m very happy the Giants won.”
  7. Avoid talking about statistics.  Really.  No one cares.  Really.
  8. Avoid talking about betting spreads, especially if you’ve got five large riding against the home team.
  9. Every professional sports team has (1) a player that everyone loves and (2) a player that is paid way too much money.  *Never* say anything bad about the player that everyone loves: “Jeter, you suck!” will just get you a raised eyebrow, if not a fat lip.  On the other hand, feel free to dump on the player that is paid way too much money.  Try yelling: “What the f*ck are they paying you for, A-Rod?”
  10. Watching sports with another guy is like anonymous sex — after it’s over, go your separate ways without saying a word.  It would be a *huge* mistake to say:  “Wow, that was fun watching sports with you.  Let’s do it again sometime.  How about next weekend?”

I can already hear the wedding bells!  [sniff!]

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The Truth About Blackjack

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008

With the recent release of the Hollywood feature “21,” Geeky Asian Guys everywhere are locking themselves in the bathroom for hours at a time.  No, it’s not what you think.  (Or maybe it is what you think…)

They’re all practicing the art of card-counting — you know, that thing where you keep track of the cards at blackjack so that you can Beat the House, thereby (1) proving you’re not a loser, (2) pissing off your parents, and (3) becoming sexually irresistible, all at the same time.  (Well, two out of three isn’t so bad…)

Here are my own thoughts about blackjack and card-counting:

  1. If you play too much blackjack, you may turn into a white person.  At least that’s what happened to the guy in ”21″ — he started out life as Chinese American Jeff Ma, and then he morphed into British-born Jim Sturgess.  Rumor has it that Ma wasn’t unduly perturbed by the part going to a Caucasian actor — in his view, it would have been way worse to have been portrayed by some Korean guy.
  2. The best way to avoid getting barred at a casino is to lose a lot of money.  Casinos love bad card counters.  Heck, if you’re a bad card counter, they’ll let you sit at the table with a Cray supercomputer.
  3. The correlative to No. 2 is that you don’t have to count cards at all to get barred.  Just split some tens, vary your bets between $5 and $500, and win a couple of thousand dollars — you’ll be on your way out the door in no time.
  4. The difference between being a good card counter and a bad card counter is surprisingly small — one or two mistakes per hundred hands will totally wipe out any edge you may have over the house.  But at least they’ll comp your room after you blow all your gas money.
  5. Let’s say you have a 1 percent edge over the house.  That means that, if your average bet is $25 per hand (that’s the green chips), you expect to win, on the average, 25 cents per hand.  At that rate, you might as well (gaak) apply yourself at college and become a CPA.
  6. The standard deviation is disturbingly high.  Come on — we all know some idiot playing a no-bust strategy who leaves winners at the end of the night, despite giving a 5+ percent edge to the house.
  7. In fact, the standard deviation is so high that, without unbelievable discipline, you will have no idea on any given night how much of your success (or failure) is due to luck or to your card-counting skills (or lack thereof).
  8. Don’t use your fingers or your chips to help you keep count.  Oh, and avoid talking to yourself.
  9. Further to No. 8 — if you flame out, don’t explain to everyone else at the table how come you should have won and they should have lost.
  10. Finally, if you manage to win a million dollars, give a couple of bucks to the guy next to you for gas money — it may be me.

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Tips for Geeks: Party No-Nos

Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

Some things *not* to do the next time you go to a party attended by a significant number of non-Geeks (i.e., one or more):

  1. Don’t arrive early.  And by early, I mean, don’t arrive within the first hour or two.  If the party is announced to start at 8pm, fight the urge to arrive at 8:01.  Aim for 10pm, or even 10:30.  (On the other hand, if it’s a Geek party, you should arrive no later than 7:45 to make sure that you get dibs on the good game controller.)
  2. Don’t latch onto one victim — I mean, partygoer — for the entire evening.  Circulation is everything.  Remember, that’s the primary reason for food at a party:  to give you an excuse to stop talking to people.  “It was nice talking to you, but I’ve got to get some guacamole before it turns completely brown…”  The correlative is that if someone you’re talking to goes for the food, you should immediately start talking to someone else — *anyone* else.
  3. Don’t monologue.  (That’s a verb, isn’t it?)  It’s usually a bad sign if you’ve been the only person talking for the past ten minutes.  Especially if the last person got up from the couch nine minutes ago.
  4. Try to avoid pointing out flaws in other people’s knowledge of Star Trek collectibles or obscure operating systems.
  5. If someone asks you a question that can be answered either with a single sentence or with a whole bunch of sentences, well, you know…  (See Rule 3.)
  6. If an attractive person seems to be making eye contact with you, take a quick look around to make sure that they’re not making eye contact with the television.
  7. If you’re stuck for something to talk about, remember that the universally accepted opening question is:  “So, how do you know [the host's name]?”  The correlative to this rule is that you should know the name of your host, beyond the name of their Everquest avatar.
  8. If you consume alcohol, be sure to throw up completely into the toilet.  Oh, and make sure it’s a toilet and not the sant’gria.
  9. Stay a reasonable amount of time.  It’s generally considered bad form to dash into a party, pick all the pepperoni off of the pizza, yawn loudly, and tell everyone on your way out the door that you’re camping out for the new iPhone.
  10. Once you’ve stayed a reasonable amount of time, leave.  If you’re the only one left, but the host insists that you don’t have to go, they’re totally lying.  Trust me.

Finally, try to look like you’re having a good time!  Remember, parties are supposed to be fun.  That’s what I hear, anyway.

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Geek Tip: Don’t Get Scammed!

Wednesday, June 25th, 2008

You’re standing on a street corner. A man walks up to you, points to a wallet on the sidewalk, and asks you if it’s yours. It turns out that the wallet is crammed full of foreign currency, but no ID…

Thus begins the classic scam known as the Pigeon Drop. It may sound hard to believe, but some very intelligent Geeks have been taken in. There are countless variations involving jewelry, lottery tickets, casino chips, etc., but they all have one thing in common: at some point you will be offered a share in the booty — a share that has to be secured by your own funds.

Before you know it, you’re standing in line at your bank, heart pounding, hoping that you’ll be able to withdraw thousands of dollars from your account before closing time…

The so-called Nigerian scams operate on the same principle — asking a sucker to put up some money (sometimes a *lot* of money) to cash in on what looks like a sure thing.

It is only the next morning at the foreign currency exchange, when you see the odd expression on the teller’s face, that it occurs to you that perhaps — just perhaps — that pile of bills in front of you might be counterfeit…

Don’t get scammed!

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The Geek Life: DDR

Friday, June 20th, 2008

For you non-Geeks, DDR stands for Dance Dance Revolution, that sweaty, stompy Konami arcade game with the flashing lights.

DDR is the all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet of arcade games, with a customer base made up almost entirely of Asians, kids, and overweight white people.

Some words to the wise:

  1. Unless you’re a 90-pound teenager, no matter how cool you *feel* doing DDR, you *look* like a complete idiot.
  2. Smiling makes it worse.
  3. Sweating like a pig is not a good look for most people.
  4. Don’t clap your hands to keep the beat, unless you’re trying to do a bad Jerry Lewis impersonation.
  5. Playing double mode (one dancer using both pads) does not make you look twice as cool.  Trust me.
  6. If you do DDR on a date and you win, don’t shout: “In your face, loser!”
  7. You won’t lose nearly as much weight as you think you will.  Just think of all those weight-loss commercials: results not typical.
  8. DDR does not translate well to a real-world dance floor.  (However, doing a lot of DDR does tend to decrease the amount of alcohol you have to consume prior to dancing at a wedding.)
  9. DDR is *way* harder than it looks.  But like anything else in life, with hours and hours of relentless, dedicated practice, it’s possible to choke the life out of it and turn something that’s supposed to be fun into joyless drudgery.
  10. No matter how good you get, there’s some kid who will dance circles around you.  If you’re doing Heavy, they’re doing Challenge.  If you’re getting AA’s, they’re getting AAA’s.  And if you finally get an AAA, they’re juggling flaming torches:

(And no, that’s not David Archuleta — it’s the amazing Billy Matsumoto. Maybe they shop together.)

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How to Eat Like a Geek

Wednesday, June 18th, 2008
  1. No utensils?  No problem!
  2. Napkin:  What is napkin?
  3. Reheating Leftovers:  A waste of precious time and microwave oven space.
  4. Vegetables:  You mean spaghetti sauce isn’t a vegetable?
  5. Speed first, calories second, flavor third.  Ideal food:  cold French fries.
  6. Martha Stewart:  Evil loser.
  7. McDonald’s:  Have they figured out that intravenous thing yet?
  8. Burger King:  Slow down, dude, I think you just ate a game piece.
  9. Pizza:  Fancy!  Sometimes they even pour the Coca Cola into a real glass!
  10. Chinese/Japanese/Korean:  Whatever.

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Tips for Geeky Asian Guys: Gifts for that Special Someone

Tuesday, June 17th, 2008
  1. Cash:  Don’t give cash, unless you’re dating a prostitute.
  2. Gift Cards:  See Cash.
  3. Jewelry:  Dangerous.  No matter what you get her, she’s going to imbue it with a significance that is going to scare the crap out of you.
  4. Tech:  Don’t give her anything requiring electricity.
  5. Tech Exception:  It would be okay to replace that MP3 player that you borrowed from her and forgot was in your pocket that time you jumped fully clothed into that fountain in that lame-ass attempt to show how spontaneous and un-Geeky you are.
  6. Software:  You’re kidding, right?
  7. Books:  Wow.  Maybe you should stick with software.
  8. Flowers:  Only if (a) they are unbelievably expensive and (b) they *look* unbelievably expensive.
  9. Perfume:  Forget it — assuming you can find a fragrance that she likes, you’re going to look like a cheap bastard when she sees the tiny bottle that you can get for fifty bucks.
  10. Lingerie:  Either you don’t need my advice, or you’re beyond help.

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Tips for Asian American Men: Hair

Friday, June 13th, 2008
  1. For the love of God, do *not* get a perm.
  2. Shaving one’s head is a double-edged sword.  It can make a good-looking guy even better looking, but more often than not it’s the final stop on the subway ride to Uglytown.
  3. If you put something in your hair to hold it down, make sure it isn’t greasy, smelly, or rock hard.
  4. Every Asian man I have ever known with really long hair spends way, way, way too much time with hair products.
  5. As lame as a comb-over looks on a white guy, it looks downright sad on an Asian guy.  You might want to consider shaving your head.

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Tips for Asian American Men: Clothes

Wednesday, June 11th, 2008
  1. When in doubt, dress preppy.  You’ll never be the height of fashion, but at least you decrease the chances of looking like a fool.
  2. Avoid humorous T-shirts if you perpetually have a puzzled, anxious, or distracted expression on your face.
  3. If you insist on wearing all black, have the good sense to be thin, preferably emaciated.  Smoking helps.
  4. Don’t wear martial arts clothing unless you enjoy getting beat up.
  5. Don’t dress hip hop unless you can dance well enough to silence all of the people who will mock you.
  6. If you find yourself wearing something that no one else is wearing, stop wearing it.

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