22,000 Reasons To Be Excited About 2010

Wow.

That’s what I have to say. From January 1st to January 1st, The Practical Nerd had over 12,000 visitors for exactly 22,000 hits! How cool is that?!? And it gets better: these numbers start in April. There’s no place to go but up!

This is why I keep doing this, people. It ain’t about finding a way to make money or garner fame. It’s about entertaining and helping all you “Cooler People” out there any way I can. I’m very blessed and thankful for each and every one of you, and I can’t wait to start pulling out all the stops in 2010. We’re going to start giving back – to you and to others.

In the meantime, I’d like to reflect on 2009, the year the Practical Nerd was born, with some of my favorite posts. These aren’t necessarily all the most popular posts, but they were ones that I really enjoyed writing and thought were useful to anybody:

• What’s YOUR $500 La-Z-Boy? A look at one of my favorite all-time dumb purchases.
• "Wait, so we should be engaged by now?" In April I shot down all the talk about getting engaged… then I got engaged in October.
• Use Goal Setting And An Attitude Adjustment To Overcome Adversity The post that made it onto Zen Habits.
• 7 Steps To A Complete Money Management System – For Free! Ditch all that expensive software and outdated checkbooks.
• 6 Ways The Average Person Can Use Twitter Without Feeling Like a Loser I still feel that Twitter is one of the most underappreciated and underused services on the market today.
• The Most Important Article on Hype You Will Ever Read (It Will Change Your Life FOREVER!!!) One of my favorite article titles of the year.
• 10 Things Major League Baseball Teaches Us About Life The metaphors are endless.
• Even Dr. House Can Be Happy Sometimes This picture still makes me laugh.
• Are You Choosing Unhappiness Over Uncertainty? How the status quo is killing us.
• 8 Ways To Ditch Bloated (and Expensive) Software For Free Seriously, why are we still paying for software? (These are all legal solutions, by the way!)
• Why You Need An Online Backup Solution, and How To Make It Dead Simple Learn from the horrors of my failed hard drives.
• You Don’t Get Rich By Spending a Million Dollars Seems rational, doesn’t it?
• 3 Icons Dead this Week: Let’s Remember Them For The Joys They Brought Us When Ed, Farrah, and Michael died, lots of people just wanted to talk scandal. I wanted to talk about the good times.
• How I Hurt My Back, and The Difference Between Taking Chances and Being Stupid In other news, apparently a 24-year old in decent shape can still throw out his back.
• Cable/Satellite TV is an Outdated, Broken System: How a TV Addict Can Liberate Themselves If there was one tip I want to share with the world, it’s this one.
• Google Sync: Is There Anything Google Can’t Do? Easily my favorite Google tool, and such a simple one at that! Set it on your cell phone, and forget it.
• Are You Living Up To Other People’s Expectations? Other people are annoying. It’s a scientific fact.
• 9 Life Lessons My Two Cats Can Teach You One of my more popular posts of the year – Chandler and Rusty take us to the School of Life.
• If You Want the Freedom To Be Lonely and Grumpy at Society, Don’t Read This Post Seriously. It will just make you less lonely and less grumpy. Who wants that?
• One Of The Simple Joys of Life Bill Cosby tap dancing.
• The FREE Tool Everyone Can Use to Rock Their Lives and 7 Ways To Use It Right Or as I like to call it, “The day I discovered the library.”
• You Suck at Life, And How to Change That Right Now My entry into Chris Guillebeau’s writing contest.
• A Look At My Firefox Setup: It’s Productive, It’s Quick, and It Rocks I keep trying to switch to Chrome, but I just can’t do it.
• How I Use Netflix and an XBox 360 To Save $676.12 Every Year I live in my parents’ basement now, and I have free cable. I don’t even have the cable hooked up because I love this system so much.
• iPod Fans Show We All Need To Learn How To Debate Respectfully Hey, want to know how to piss off the entire Internet? Tell people you don’t want an iPod. They’ll crucify you right then and there.
• How The Internet Went From "Waste Of Time" to "Essential Tool For Your Life" My history of the Internet.
• Pointless Headlines and Ungodly Interfaces: Why Mainstream News Websites Are Obsolete The time I railed on the media. You know, that one time…
• What Your Vacations Are Trying To Tell You, Featuring Calvin and Hobbes I love the fact that I wrote this headline and then couldn’t find the right Calvin and Hobbes strip, so I just put a different one in, anyway.
• The Brewers, The 0-Hour Workweek, and The Value of Having Fun I can’t believe I have to defend fun.
• I had a new post all ready in my head, but instead… The night I got engaged to my fiance!
• The Jeff Foxworthy Guide To Happiness If you’re not going to read it for the advice, read it for the jokes.
• In Life and In Football, Don’t Be a Tom Brady He’s a turd.
• Are You Forcing Happiness In Your Life? Are you actually happy, or just pretending?
• Let’s Be Positive Today I open up my heart and list a bunch of things I’m happy about in life.
• The Wasted Potential of your iPod, Zune, or Whatever Your media player does a lot more than music.
• A Smart Christian’s Attack on "Organized Religion" I’m so disgusted with the whole concept of “organized religion”. I had to say something.
• The Practical Nerd Rule #1: Do Not Accept The Status Quo. My preview of our newsletter, “The Practical Nerd Rules For Life”!
• 21 Things That Should Be Kicked To The Curb My rant against stuff that sucks.
• John Mayer Sums Up How Stupid The 2000s Were John Mayer is another reason you should be on Twitter.
• Use Facebook Without Wasting Your Life Facebook is awesome – in doses.

Whew! That’s a lot of great stuff! Thank you again to everyone who has supported this site, and I look forward to making The Practical Nerd bigger and better in 2010! Stay tuned!