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250 posts, everybody! A personal blogging milestone! To commemorate, I've blatantly ripped off the Chicago Sun Times.

Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '06:

Play games.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, gaming would be it. The long-term benefits of gaming have been proven by geeks on internet forums, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than the latest re-imagining of the Original Trilogy. I will upload this advice now.

Enjoy the power and caffeine of The Dew. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and caffeine of The Dew until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 minutes, you'll log into Unreal 2003 and feel like your hair is on fire and every fiber of your being is alive. You are not as fast as you imagine.

Don't worry about the last three Star Wars movies. They will never be made. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum -- and I know that some people who read this blog are extremely good at algebra. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, like Keanu Reeves coming out in support of relief for refugees in Darfur -- instantly invalidating a concept that otherwise made a lot of sense.

Do one thing every day that scares people around you.

Blog.

Don't be reckless with other people's dice. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Hack.

Don't waste your time on n00bs. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. On the internet, the argument thread is long and, like a race in the Special Olympics, even the winner is retarded.

Remember The Empire Strikes Back. Forget Jar Jar. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old hardware. Throw away your old floppy disks.

L3@rn 1337.

Don't feel guilty if you never saw the final level of Yar's Revenge. The most hardcore gamers I know have seen it once, maybe. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know don't believe it exists.

Get plenty of XP. Be kind to your parents. You'll miss them when they make you move out.

Maybe you'll get the rail gun, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll get team killed, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll camp a spawn point, maybe you'll take a rocket grenade for a teammate you met two minutes before the match. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Berate that 12-year-old who thought he was so 1337 until you fragged his ass into next week.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Just close the blinds first. Some of us are trying to have a society here.

Dance, especially if you have one of those sweet, hard-sided Dance Dance Revolution controllers.

Read the directions, but go online for the walk-through.

Do not read computer magazines. The information is available for free on the magazine's web site.

Get to know your data. You never know when it'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. It isn't their fault they didn't get the geek gene.

Think hard about who you'd switch teams for, but think even harder about who you'd double back for.

Game on old hardware once, but log out before it makes you hard. Game on an OC3 once, but log out before it makes you soft. Trash talk in both situations.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Processor speeds will rise. Windows will crash. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, your 386 was faster, Starbuck was a man and children could solve their own printing problems.

Learn how to resolve printing problems.

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Especially if they have recently outsourced the support desk.

Don't wash your black t-shirts too often or by the time you're 40 they will look 85.

Be careful what internet sites you visit, but be patient while the pages load. Ebay is a form of nostalgia. Using it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth. Especially if the action figures have been played with until the arms fall off.

But trust me on the gaming.