This post is the (very long overdue) followup to How To Love Your Non-Geek, a guide which was great fun to write.

This one was a little tricker, because it meant that I needed to know some things about myself (in all my glorious geekiness) in order to write a guide which is at least entertaining, and hopefully chock full of usefulness.

First Rule of Geekyness: have limited or unusual social skills.

Something you probably noticed right away about your fantastically awesome Geek is that he or she has, shall we say, unusual social skills.

Example: You and your Geek Hottie are out on the town. You spot some friends of yours and run right over to say hello, dragging your Geek with you. To your surprise and maybe embarassment, your Geek may do one of the following:

1) Ignore the existence of your friends
2) Take over the conversation and mastermind it into a discussion of Firefox vs Chrome vs Internet Explorer 8
3) Say something that is one part mumbling, two parts offensive
4) Abruptly tell you they’re going home now because they forgot to brush the fish’s hair (and you know they have no pets)

Why does this happen, and who taught this otherwise awesome person to behave this way?!

Your Geek is a gentle, sensitive soul, deep down inside. The fact that you know this and you’re shocked and upset by radically different behavior means that your Geek trusts you and can be honest with you in a way that’s probably difficult, if not impossible, with other Non-Geeks.

Even though your Geek is comfortable to the point of obnoxiously loud laughter with his or her closest friends, you can’t expect your Geek to be able to open up like that with newly met friends, no matter how awesome they are.

The best thing to do is talk to your Geek about their social boundaries, and be prepared for their comfort zones to be a lot different from yours. But just remember, that’s part of their unique, lovely charm.

Second Rule of Geekyness: have passionate feelings toward a collection of electronic devices.

You might own an iPhone, a computer, and maybe a sweet big screen television, but you probably don’t come anywhere close to the level of electronics ownership that your Geek Lover possesses.

Not only does your Geek probably have at least two or three (or six or twelve) of the latest iMovieXPadDroidScreen(s), but he or she also owns several older models, all in various states of disrepair.

NOTE: Disrepair does not mean that the devices in question do not work, it only means that they are kept alive to swap parts with each other like a horde of nervous electrical Frankensteins.

What do they need all that crap for anyway, and why are you not allowed to touch most of it?!

For a Geek who loves technology, owning that technology is sort of like being allowed to live nextdoor to heaven (or, depending on what technology it is, INSIDE heaven). The whirring, humming, soft clicking noises, and necessity of owning microfiber towelettes and a six-pack of canned air at all times – these things make your Geek’s heart beat that much faster.

As long as you can be alright with their love of their iStuff, and you can have a conversation with them about the different ways you might see that stuff, you’ll probably be just fine.

Just, you know. Don’t touch it if it’s shiny and makes a humming noise, just to be on the safe side.

Third Rule of Geekyness: have difficulty remembering personal hygiene during significantly exciting events.

Your sexy Geek will occasionally sport bad breath, unwashed hair, and be wearing the same clothes as yesterday – but this is not necessarily due to a total failure of hygiene.

More than likely, your Geek was engaged in one of the following scenarios, all of which were so intensely awesome that showering totally slipped his or her mind:

1) A campaign in any Civilization game ever made
2) Coding a new website
3) Playing the brand new video game that just came out yesterday morning and for which they may have stood in line for upwards of five hours

That’s just plain disgusting!!

When you discover your disheveled, grimy Geek, the best thing to do is NOT to freak out: offer to get them a snack, a drink of water, and gently encourage them to shower – but only after they’ve eaten something.

(There’s nothing worse than trying to make sense of the world when your blood sugar’s on the floor and you can’t remember the last thing you ate that wasn’t a bag of stale chips.)

Be prepared for them to need to tell you about what they’ve been doing the whole time they forgot to put on clean clothes or eat actual food, and be prepared to listen for a while. Your Geek will love you forever and ever if you’re able to listen to them when they’re monologuing about stuff that might not make much sense to you.

Bonus Tips! Ways to connect with your Geek.

Tip number one: go out and do your Geek’s favorite thing for your next date, instead of what you usually do. Chances are, since they love making you happy, they haven’t really thought about bringing you further into their world.

Tip number two: ask your Geek to teach you how to do one of the things they love to do. Maybe it’s playing a video game, maybe it’s writing some CSS, maybe it’s an introduction to Linux. Learning new things is awesome, and they might light up like a Christmas tree when they realize you’re not joking, you really DO want them to teach you something.

Tip number three: respect their comfort zone, even when it comes down to staying in rather than going out. Your Geek is worth your love and your ability to compromise when it’s necessary.

And now, your turn.

What advice do you have for Geek + Non-Geek relationships?

It’s been quite a while since I wrote any Geek Advice, but all that is about to change.

Right now, I am working on a short ebook (what are those called? Reports? Guides? Handy PDF thingies?) called Geek Advice: How to Transfer Your Precious Website to A New Webhost Without Losing Anything (Including Your Mind).

Before I’m done writing it, is there anything you, my awesome readers, owners of many precious websites, would dearly like to have explained? Don’t be afraid – ask the Geek! Leave me a comment about it – or email me, if you are embarrassed about your question, although really you shouldn’t be. After all, I geek so you don’t HAVE to.

I was actually going to publish a guide on ‘How To Love Your Geek’ before I published this one, but honestly – I have trouble knowing how to explain to people just exactly how to get to the very bottom of my geeky little heart. It requires far more research that I’ve given it so far, apparently.

However! I am gaining a large amount of experience loving a NON-geek. My fantastic fiance, Troy, is most definitely not a geek. He has a computer, but he actually SHUTS IT OFF when he’s not using it. That alone is enough to throw me for a complete loop. Heh.

Here are some of the things I’ve learned from loving a non-geek:

The Geek’s Guide to Loving Your Non-Geek

Forgive them for not being a geek.

They are not going to treat their computers, their mp3 players, or their pile of programming and HTML manuals like you would. Well, actually, they probably won’t even have a pile of programming and HTML manuals in their possession.  That’s your domain. (Ha! Haha! You probably have one of those too – or five or six.)

But that’s okay! Just because they aren’t a geek too doesn’t make them worth any less, or make them less interesting, or cause them to be less of a hottie. In fact, if you love them, chances are they’re just right for you.

Stop trying to make them into a geek.

Look, just because YOU want to go to Penguicon every year doesn’t mean that THEY want to go to Penguicon every year. They will go with you anyway, because they love you and you’re more important to them than all the geeky stuff you’re having nerd attacks over.

Your non-geek can enjoy geeky things in moderation, but if you overdo it, you’ll ruin it. Take them to con, buy them a shiny mp3 player, install Linux on a spare hard drive for them with a login name of ‘loverpants’ and a password of ‘iloveyou’. But don’t be upset if they don’t orgasm over it like you do.

Let them pick something to do (that’s NOT geeky).

I realize that all of us geeks have ridiculous ADD going on, and if it were up to us, life would be a nonstop barrage of software and code and RSS feeds and blogging and staying up late by the glowing light of our monitors. Also, we would forget to go outside, like, EVER. And we would start to smell funny, and eat all the Doritos in the house and then not go to the store and get more because we are ever so slightly antisocial.

Being non-geek for even part of a day is REALLY good for you! And an added perk is that the love of your life, your non-geek better half, will know just how much you love them for who THEY are, not for who you sometimes might like them to be. Different is good, variety is the spice of life, and so on. For the love of God, just go for a walk already!

Remember that one of the things they love about you is YOUR geekiness.

They’re perfectly fine with you having all the geeky cred. In fact, this is one of the most awesome things about being with a non-geek – no competition on geek-related matters! You are automatically the computer whiz, the software guru, and the deity of code. Enjoy this, and keep being the geek they fell in love with.

Just don’t forget to take a shower once in a while.

Read Geek Advice: How to protect your computer like a geek, part one if you haven’t yet!
——————————–

Step Four: Update Security Applications

Here is where my favorite trio of security apps comes into play. They are BitDefender, SpywareBlaster, and Spybot Search & Destroy. They are all FREE, although Spybot comes with a very inexpensive paid automatic update service, if you like. (I have linked the download pages for each of these from the FileHippo website. They keep an amazingly up-to-date listing of all the apps you’ll want to try or use, and I have never had a problem downloading from them.)

You will need to open each of these applications and check for updates. Then, obviously, apply them. If this is your first time using them, make sure you take the time to configure them correctly, otherwise they won’t work for you like they’re meant to. Spybot will also want you to allow a program called TeaTimer to run when Windows starts up, and I HIGHLY recommend that you do this. It tells you every single time an application attempts to change the registry in any way (usually the startup registry), so that you can decide for yourself whether or not you want that to happen.

After you’ve gotten your updates out of the way, run Spybot’s ‘Check For Problems’, to make sure there aren’t any nasty worms or Trojans living on your hard drive. If there are issues, fix them (usually the program will do this for you, but sometimes you have to delete the file(s) in question yourself).

[I'm going to stop here and explain that I use BitDefender for my antivirus needs because I have used Mcafee, Norton/Symantec, Panda, and AVG Free, and this is HANDS DOWN the best of them. It doesn't hog system resources, which is my biggest pet peeve with most virus apps, and its scans are effective and efficient. It is definitely worth your while to try if it you're looking for a better virus scan, and it's free.]

Next up, run several of BitDefender’s scans. When you install this program, make sure you set up a time for a daily scan – sometime when you’re not going to need to use your computer, like maybe two in the morning. Aside from this daily quick scan, you don’t know if there may be problems lurking deeper in your system. I recommend these scans to be done weekly: Deep System Scan, Scan Memory, and Scan for Rootkits.

This may take a while, but stay way from the computer while it’s being scanned. You might be antsy, but leave it alone!

When it’s done, go on to the next step.

Step Five: Clean the Slate

Using CCleaner, first ‘Analyze’ your system. Look over the checked boxes first, because there may be things you don’t want cleaned; I don’t like my Recycle Bin emptied, for instance. I like to do that myself. I also don’t want my Firefox cookies or history messed with. Decide what you want and then analyze the system. Once it’s done, you can either choose to run the cleaner, deleting the files it found that you don’t need, or you can change your configuration and analyze again.

When that’s finished, go to Registry, and click ‘Scan For Issues’. You want to Fix Selected Issues, but it will ask you to back up changes to the registry first before you fix them. DO THIS.

Now, go to Tools, then ‘Startup’. You just installed some new programs (most likely), and it’s good to take a look at your startup list at least once a week anyway. Check that you’re only loading on startup the things that you DO want loaded; if you’re not sure what an entry is, Google it.

Hooray, you’re done with this step!

Step Six: Put It Back Together

Figuratively speaking, you’ve made a mess of your computer’s virtual file system. It’s like you took drawers and shelves full of your data and pulled them apart, looking for things, rearranging them, and making copies to put other places. They never get put back the way they were before, and some of them might have gotten misfiled or kicked under the desk, so at the end of all your updating you need to run a defragmentation app to put things away neatly.

You can either use the Windows native defragger, called Disk Defragmenter, or you can use Defraggler. The only reason I mention a different program than what you already have is that Defraggler offers you a choice of WHAT you are defraggling (haha, I can’t help but call it that now). For those of us that are more anally-retentive than others, even having a choice of what gets defraggled is EXCITING.

For the rest of you, roll your eyes and use the Windows program you already have. It doesn’t really matter. :)

You’re done!

Congratulations! You’ve just protected your computer like a geek. If you’re lucky, it didn’t take you all day – but the good news is that next week it won’t take you nearly as long because now you know what you’re going to do from here on out. I encourage you to make an appointment with yourself every week to get this done – my ‘Computer Maintenance and Backup Day’ is Saturday (yes, I know, incredibly imaginative name!). Your future self will thank you.

Feedback?

This is the part where you get to tell me what you do instead of what I am telling you do. Because, of course, this post is all about the RIGHT way to do it and you’re all doing it the WRONG way. (That was a joke, in case you have a morbidly serious personality and are now completely offended. I apologize.)

You have a system, all of you, even if it’s OH CRAP!! when your computer dies and you have nothing but two dusty old disks shoved in a drawer somewhere to show for it. Tell us about it in the comments!