Geekiest Marriage Proposals Ever

carusoj writes "Just in time for Valentine's Day, here's a collection of marriage proposals done in true geek fashion — from hacked video games, to an iPhone app, to CmdrTaco's own 2002 proposal here on Slashdot."

Comments

Sadly, we know what happened.

[grub]

"Taco,

Will you be my life-partner? I will be in our secret WoW cave awaiting your reply.

~CowboyNeil"

Re:Sadly, we know what happened.

[larry bagina]

Hemos proposed as a dupe the next day.

Re:Sadly, we know what happened.

[Meski]

Did anyone else think the Google valentines logo the tackiest ever?

Putting the pressure on

[suso]

Some people use the threat of embarrassment in order to pressure the girl into accepting. I used the threat of certain death by proposing on the roof of an 8-story building. Nah, that wasn't my plan, I just thought she would like the view since it overlooked the city. She's the greatest geek wife ever though because for my 30th birthday party she surprised me with a cake that had the numbers 11110 on it. ;-)

Re:Putting the pressure on

[Abstrackt]

Some people use the threat of embarrassment in order to pressure the girl into accepting. I used the threat of certain death by proposing on the roof of an 8-story building.

Ah yes, the threatmantic approach. Works every time.

Re:Putting the pressure on

[Inda]

Nice touch but is that really in the spirit of nerdish geekyness?

We discussed getting married in our living room. The conversation ended with me saying: "So, shall we get married or not?"

We married 3 months later.

15 years on, still together with a lovely daughter.

I can't imagine popping-the-question, not really knowing the answer. Why would someone do that?

Romance died by strangulation..

Re:Putting the pressure on

[DudeTheMath]

My wife recently turned 42 (she's a Douglas Adams fan, too). I put eight candles on her cake, and lit three of them: 00101010. She got it right away. Not bad for an English professor. I lost her, though, when I said she was my shining *.

Re:Putting the pressure on

[tlhIngan]

Some people use the threat of embarrassment in order to pressure the girl into accepting.

it does backfire though. I think there was one guy who tried to propose during a basketball game... and his girlfriend said no right there in the middle of the court.

In fact, I think it can easily be more embarassing to the proposer than the proposee.

Re:Putting the pressure on

[Belial6]

The problem I always see in those math formulas is that they leave out the stop lights as well as the odds of getting behind someone driving 30 miles per hour. The best, the slower drive can accomplish is keeping up if they are lucky. The faster driver on the other hand, has a chance at every light they hit to gain a couple of minutes over the slower driver. 8 miles is also very short difference. If you are only going 8 miles, it looks just as bad comparing 65 to 35. To get it right, one must also factor it over thousands of cars. Why? Because traffic doesn't scale linearly. The move from 55 to 65 for freeway speed limits has saved a lot more time than what DudeTheMath's signature would imply.

Re:Putting the pressure on

[BrokenHalo]

Romance died by strangulation..

Same here. Our mutual proposal (such as it was) went along the lines of "yeah, it might be a way to spend an afternoon. Are we going to invite the parents?".

Whatever works - we've been together for 25 years, and married for 21.

Re:Putting the pressure on

[Wyatt Earp]

Ours was similar.

Discussion of what we wanted out of a relationship if it started. A month later a ring was bought, roughly two years later we got married.

My only stipulation was "No diamonds."

She has a sapphire and I have a cobalt ring.

Re:Putting the pressure on

[hedwards]

I can't blame you on that. Diamonds weren't popular for engagement rings until DeBeers started one of the most successful ad campaigns in history to convince women that if their man didn't fork over a wad for a diamond that he wasn't really serious.

Personally, I prefer sapphires, rubies and emeralds, because at least they're pleasing to the eye. If I had the money I'd totally get a Mario ring with the appropriate stones.

Re:Putting the pressure on

[Wyatt Earp]

DeBeers and their advertising agencies could have gotten Hitler a Nobel Peace Prize for the Holocaust.

I don't care for diamonds because they are so damned common geologically. Rubies, Emeralds, Sapphires, and Zoisites at least have some rarity.

Super common, ubiquitous and coupled with DeBeers meant it was a no go for me.

I dated a chick for a while who liked to go into jewelry stores and ask for a diamond that was a real blood diamond. She pulled that at DeBeers in Las Vegas.

Re:Putting the pressure on

[Anonymous Coward]

Not bad for an English professor. I lost her, though, when I said she was my shining *.

English professor. She was looking for the footnote.

(As was I - I was curious why you thought comparing her to Jack Nicholson with an axe was romantic ... Heeeereee's Johnny!)

Re:Putting the pressure on

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was a kid they showed up numbers trying to say how speeding didn't really save any time. After looking at your spreedsheet I can see the math;

  I actually gain an additional 40 minutes a day, (factoring both ways,) with my kids by doing 80 instead of 55. I have then every other weekend, plus two nights a week, so that is 2.5 days a week, 50 weeks a year, (take two weeks off for vacation, ) that is 125 days a year. 125 days times 40 minutes a day, that is 5000 minutes, or over 83 hours.

On a normal work day I only have about 4 hours with them before bed, so by doing 80 instead of 55 I essentally gain 21 additonal days with them a year.

Re:Putting the pressure on

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever considered moving closer to where you work, instead of exposing everyone around you to a guy driving substantially faster than everyone around him is expecting, and thus substantially increases the injuries should an accident occur?

Re:Putting the pressure on

[Scarletdown]

My wife recently turned 42 (she's a Douglas Adams fan, too). I put eight candles on her cake, and lit three of them: 00101010. She got it right away. Not bad for an English professor. I lost her, though, when I said she was my shining *.

Aw. You should have done a 6 x 9 array of candles.

Re:Putting the pressure on

[similar_name]

The best, the slower drive can accomplish is keeping up if they are lucky. The faster driver on the other hand, has a chance at every light they hit to gain a couple of minutes over the slower driver. 8 miles is also very short difference

The slow driver often doesn't waste time accelerating and decelerating at lights. Generally if I'm going the speed limit I catch every light and only have to stop if the guy in front of me had to stop because he was in a hurry to get there first. I'm not much of a speeder but I often arrive at destinations before my friends that do speed do. It's amazing how much time you loose accelerating/decelerating in an attempt to go faster. Not to mention what hitting your brakes constantly does to the flow of traffic behind you.

Re:Putting the pressure on

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I prefer sapphires, rubies and emeralds, because at least they're pleasing to the eye.

Diamonds can be pleasing to the eye too...there are many colors of diamonds.

Plus, with DeBeers contributing to human suffering in the diamond-producing parts of the world, there's the somewhat-geeky alternative of lab-grown diamonds.

Re:Putting the pressure on

[drspliff]

This is valentines day, I'm more thinking about "Let's !"

Re:Putting the pressure on

[gknoy]

It's possible that most of the other people on the freeway are also driving fast, and are neither surprised nor offended by him driving 80. (My local freeway speed limit is 70; most people seem to drive 75.) As long as they aren't being jackasses or weaving through traffic, it doesn't seem that disruptive when a fast-mover passes me.

Re:Putting the pressure on

[cfalcon]

Accelerating does not waste time.

You are referring to an edge case where there is a traffic light, without a car in front of you, that will turn green if you time it perfectly instead of stopping. In that event, you will make better time by stopping a ways back from the light, and starting just before the light turns green, timed to go through at full speed just as the light turns green.

Sound dangerous? It is, to an extent, because someone trying to make the light going perpedicular can T-Bone you. Sure, they are wronng, but sheesh! The end result is just the same as people who time and sail through at max speed- safe in some places, very dangerous in others.

Speeding is better at getting where you are going for the reasons stated: you have a higher chance of making any and every light, you have a higher chance of not being locked into slower traffic, and of course, you go faster. Failing to time a light so that you are at 0 mph when it turns green is something you can easily work around, and is rare in any event- in most cases, there will be another car in front of you, at that light, at 0 mph, accelerating slowly.

Re:Putting the pressure on

[Burning1]

In response to your signature...

I average about 20,000 miles of driving per year, which results in approximately 270 hours a year on the road at 75mph, or 310 hours a year on the road at 65. That's about a 40 hour difference each year, or an entire work week, for a relatively conservative difference in speed.

In practice, my average speed is closer to 45MPH (based on my trip computer.) By maintaining an average speed 10 miles per hour above someone who averages 35 miles per hour, I save 127 hours per year. Given 8 hours of sleep, we have about 5840 waking hours per year. That means, by increasing my average speed by 10 miles per hour, I save approximately 1 full year of waking time, over a 50 year lifetime of driving.

Of course, there's a better argument for speed... I enjoy driving. By driving at the speed I find to be enjoyable, the 2.5 years of my life spent in a car will be something I look back upon as being relatively pleasurable, whereas someone who drives at a conservative pace is more likely to view the 3.2 years they spend in their car as a waste.

Personally, I tend to drive somewhere in the range of 15 to 70MPH above the speed limit, depending on the situation. So the time savings are somewhat more radical.

Re:Putting the pressure on

[Viperpete]

lol, same here. My progression:

shining (footnote? multiply?)
Shining movie?
shining ast (good luck with that, buddy)
ohh, shining star (who, but a child/non-literati calls an asterisk a star? no insult intended to parent.)

Re:Putting the pressure on

[LordLimecat]

He indicated that the speed limit is 55. AFAIK going 80 in that situation would fall under "reckless driving" by a number of definitions, and the potential fine would be very high.

Is it at all possible that youre not unique in your driving ability, and the speed laws apply to us all equally regardless of how fast you feel safe going? People saying "yea, but _I_ can handle it" is how we end up with fatalities from DUIs.

Re:Putting the pressure on

[LordLimecat]

Cars are not, however, a toy, so the argument that "its more fun to use it this way" doesnt really hold much water.

Re:Putting the pressure on

[fractoid]

She can be his shining anything-she wants. It's a wildcard. ;)

(I've never met anyone who says "asterisk dot asterisk" instead of "star dot star" when talking about a wildcard file search.)

Re:Putting the pressure on

[fractoid]

Interesting! For long journeys I typically do a small-changes analysis. Say I'm going 200km (as I do fairly frequently for family events). The speed limit is around 100km/h average (some 90, some 110), so it takes about two hours. If I raise my speed by 10km/h, then I've gone 20km further in two hours. At 100km/h, that's about 12 minutes saved.

Obviously it's not spot on but it's close enough that the error falls below noise from traffic lights, slow drivers etc. and it's easy to do in my head. :)

Re:Putting the pressure on

[Burning1]

That begs the question, if someone drives 10 miles per hour above the limit, does that they do not take driving seriously (treating the car as a toy?) If someone enjoys driving, does that mean that they do not take it seriously?

Also... Your job isn't a toy, but I suspect you, like most of us here, try to make it fun.

Re:Putting the pressure on

[Dabido]

You didn't mind the three missing leading zeros? (Or you didn't mind less than a byte of B'day cake) :-)

Re:Putting the pressure on

[Quirkz]

My dad was trying some "be safe" talk on me once when I was driving from Ohio to Florida, a trek of over 1000 miles. I'd already done some analysis at different speeds, to guess how long the trip would take. All he got out was, "Be safe. Remember, five miles an hour is .." before I interrupted with "a two-hour difference!"

He gave me a funny look and I reassured him that I'd drive safely despite the time savings.

Re:Putting the pressure on

[RussellSHarris]

All he got out was, "Be safe. Remember, five miles an hour is .." before I interrupted with "a two-hour difference!"

Well... that actually depends on which 5 miles per hour it is.

On a 1,000 mile trip, the 5 miles per hour between 55 mph and 60 mph equals a 1 1/2 hr time savings.

However, on the same trip, the 5 miles per hour between 75 and 80 mph equals only 50 minutes.

Re:Putting the pressure on

[Quirkz]

Of course it does. But my example was based on actual calculations of the distances and speeds involved that were appropriate for the time. In this case, an average trip speed of 55 mph (which assumes speeding to make up for the stops) or an average trip speed of 50 mph (assuming no speeding and relatively infrequent stops). Speed limits were 55 at the time, so 5 mph was very nearly a 2-hour time difference.

Re:Putting the pressure on

[justthinkit]

Wait a second..."Let's bang"? I don't get it.

Re:Putting the pressure on

[justthinkit]

Personally, I tend to drive somewhere in the range of 15 to 70MPH above the speed limit, depending on the situation.

I have a question.

How do you get away with this and not get a speeding ticket?

How do you justify doing 80mph in a 10mph zone? Or 120mph in a 50 zone? Or whatever the zone is where you are exceeding it by 70mph.

Do you have a mixture of blood stains on the front of your car?

Wait, are you the Deer Hunter?

Re:Putting the pressure on

[drspliff]

You think valentines day is all about heart shaped cards? How many children are conceived every valentines day...

Re:Putting the pressure on

[Burning1]

Now that I think about it, I've done 150+ indicated a 55 zone, so technically 95 over the limit, and nearly triple the posted maximum speed. Justification is pretty simple: speed in and of it's self isn't as dangerous as people make it out to be so long as it's done responsibly. I don't have blood stains on the front of my vehicle because I don't do that kind of stuff in places where there are pedestrians or other drivers.

Speed is safe or dangerous depending on the conditions, and there are a number of situations where I will drive under the speed limit. Hitting a wall at 40MPH with no impact protection is almost guaranteed to be fatal, whereas 150+ MPH on a closed course is actually relatively common and safe.

Avoiding tickets is a combination of dumb luck, situational awareness, and observation of police behaviour. I do occasionally get cited, typically in situations where I was travelling at what I would consider to be a relatively mellow pace.

I do race motorcycles. I say that not as a justification for my speed, but to make a point... On the race track, we commonly see speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour, and I have on many occasions passed people with my head, physically a foot or two from their wheels. We accomplish this in relative safety, with no signals, no brake lights, and no inter-rider communication.

Predictability is far more important to safety than speed control -- It's just a lot more difficult to post on a sign.

Re:Putting the pressure on

[Burning1]

FWIW, speeds like those mentioned are *very* atypical for me. In free flowing traffic, I typically go about 15 miles per hour above the limit, and at most 10% faster than the prevailing speed of traffic. As traffic density increases, I also reduce my speed differential, increase my flowing distance and attempt to increase my range of vision.

Re:Putting the pressure on

[MokuMokuRyoushi]

Those questions beg questions as well. Does fun equate to unsafe? Should it? Perhaps only to you?
Lets try something else. Do you understand that the average driver takes an additional 70 feet to stop his car when going 60 instead of 50? An additional 80 feet when 70 in place of 60? That's factoring in reaction time, so obviously there are better drivers and more efficient brakes out there. Regardless, that's pretty substantial.

Chart here.
You can enjoy something at the same time as taking it seriously. Don't be a jackass. By posing that question, you're doing nothing more than presenting a[n untenable] defense to your own bad habits.
And yes, I do make my job as enjoyable as possible. But I take is nice and easy when I'm using the forklift.

Re:Putting the pressure on

[Burning1]

I race motorcycles. So yes, I understand that increased speed equates to exponentially greater stopping distances.

Previous poster implied that by driving a vehicle in a way that is enjoyable, you are treating that vehicle as a toy. First, it makes the assumption that vehicles are not toys (invalid, even your insurance provider understands the difference between owning a recreational vehicle and a commuter vehicle,) and goes on to make the assumption that by driving a vehicle in a way that is fun, the driver is not treating the vehicle with respect ('guns are not toys!')

You're making the assumption that speed is a bad habit. The state of California makes the opposite assumption, that the majority of drivers travel at a speed which is reasonable and prudent. When the 80th speed of traffic exceeds a prima face speed limit (that is, a speed set by CVC 22350 rather than 22349,) the speed limit is considered to be in error, rather than the people (of course, proving that the speed limit is in error can be difficult.)

If you want to speak about safety: misuse of signals, unsafe merging, and improper lane discipline is a far bigger issue than travelling with the flow of traffic above the posted limit. The vast majority of unsafe situations I've encountered are attributed to those common errors.

Hans Reiser's proposal

[Anonymous Coward]

I'M GONNA KILL YOU!

Re:Hans Reiser's proposal

[Syncerus]

In poor taste? Absolutely.
Nevertheless amusing? Absolutely.

Re:Hans Reiser's proposal

[samjam]

I had a guy threaten to kill me multiple times while I was interviewing him for a job opening.

I don't think he meant it, but it's hard to ignore it when he keeps saying it.

(He wasn't expecting a practical coding test).

Re:Hans Reiser's proposal

[grub]

LOL, oh too funny!

Dive marriages, are they geek?

[G3ckoG33k]

Dive marriages, are they geek? Or perhaps nerdy? Perhaps not really, but I have read about quite a few dive marriages.

Strangely, I just about attended a dive funeral, where a former diver's cremated ashes were solemnly released at 15 fathoms.

Re:Dive marriages, are they geek?

[Beardo the Bearded]

Definitely geek.

Any proposal that entails more than $1000 worth of technical gear including computers and charts is a geek proposal. ;)

Re:Dive marriages, are they geek?

[BrokenHalo]

Of course, on an even sadder note, there's also that rather ugly case of the dive honeymoon that happened off Australia not so long ago.

Poor Geeks

[Archangel Michael]

end up like this guy ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtPkxzHKLpk

Re:Poor Geeks

[drb226]

I have a lot of respect for that woman.

Re:Poor Geeks

[Anonymous Coward]

end up like this guy ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtPkxzHKLpk

BTW, that was a hoax.

Re:Poor Geeks

[nighty5]

Or be a legend like this bloke:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkx1mDcvk6E

Missing the hacked Ms. Pac-Man proposal

[Gulthek]

The guy that did this was actually a co-worker of mine at the time. Pretty awesome.

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2009/06/hacked-ms-pac-man-rom-wins-hand-in-marriage/

Earthbound hack proposal

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/12/02/guy-hacks-marriage-proposal-into-earthbound/

Gamer Geek Proposal

[Aaron_Pike]

Runner's Companion for Shadowrun, 4th Edition, page 88. The first letters of each sentence in the first three paragraphs of the section that starts there spell out the proposal.

Missing Richard Garfield's Magic Proposal

[GodricL]

http://www.portalemagic.it/public/immagini/curiosita/proposal.jpg “It is true. I asked my fiancee (at the time) what her favorite artist was, and she told me Quinton Hoover, and so I contacted him and asked him to make a piece of Magic art for me called ‘Proposal’. A friend of mine out at the company marked up cards using the art – using the layout program, he made these cards that looked exactly like real cards, using land cards with film attached to them, and he gave me nine of them because I wanted to stack my deck. Even though I did not – I played fair. I played with one, which I viewed as fair. I don’t know if it was really fair. And I played with her for hours before I was able to cast the spell. She was just cleaning my clock, but eventually I managed to get it in play, and it said ‘Allows Richard to Propose marriage to Lily. If she accepts, both players win and we mix our decks as a shared deck’. And so I got a Royal Assassin out of it also.” http://www.collectorsquest.com/blog/2008/08/10/magic-the-gathering-part-three-an-interview-with-richard-garfield-phd/

But You Forgot

[kitsunewarlock]

You guys forgot Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic: The Gathering. He proposed to his wife with a custom card.
http://howell.seattle.wa.us/games/MtG/Proposal.html
Its currently one of the most expensive cards in the game (there are other copies of it handed out as wedding invitation gifts or something similar).

Re:Marriage?

[Beardo the Bearded]

I just wanted to let you know that I got the reference and I laughed.

(And the sig reference too...)

And for geeky weddings...

[Mike Van Pelt]

A friend's daughter got married last month, wearing these "Think Geek" T-shirts.

Instead of the "unity candle" part of the ceremony, they had two iPads set up on a music stand, and after being pronounced husband and wife, they went to the iPads and changed their Facebook statuses to "Married."

Here's a pretty good one:

[tirerim]

http://operationengage.blogspot.com/

Just read the whole thing (and watch the video); it's worth it. This happened less than a month ago, between a couple of friends of mine.

How about /.'s own, with a dose of 'leaked eMails'

[D4C5CE]

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/02/14/143254

...thrown in for good measure, erm, or was it "for the lulz": ;) http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=27966&cid=3008761

Penny Arcade

[Gryll]

"Gabe" from Penny Arcade proposed to his wife via a web comic.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1999/02/17/

Re:Nobody cares

[Moraelin]

I don't have a valentine, you insensitive clod!

If it makes it any better, sounds like some of the guys in TFA didn't either.

E.g., at #15 some guy created a web-site to do the proposal for him to "KC" in 2006, but "KC" first stumbled upon that site in 2009. Apparently she didn't even know the site existed for 3 years. As half-arsed efforts go, I'll say that deserves at least a honourable mention.

Geocaching

[blaster151]

I proposed to my wife on a geocaching expedition. I'd set up a fictitious geocache location (with a box full of mementos and photos and special stuff pertaining to us) in a secluded forest clearing. I modified the latitude and longitude in the HTML on the geocaching site screen scrape in order to fool her into thinking it was a legitimate geocaching site like any other. We "found" the cache together; she opened it up and saw all of our stuff in there, including the ring box, and was floored. I got down on one knee and proposed.

I thought it was somewhat geeky! But she liked it and it went well from there.

Our proposal

[rubypossum]

was really geeky. I wrote a Greasemonkey script that replaced the definition on the top 20 dictionary results on Google for a specific word. Then I sent my wife (girlfriend at the time) a letter telling her poetically just how great she was. I used all kind of flowery language and some obscure words. Anyway, I put the trigger word as the last one.

She looked it up on Google, then the content on the dictionary site was replaced by a photograph of me holding her engagement ring. The definition of the word was "Will you marry me?". I was nearby with the real ring and an explanation. It was pretty cool. She always has me install the greasemonkey script every time she switches computers so she can go look up the word when she gets lonely.

Re:Our proposal

[daisybelle]

nice!!! Wow, reading this page has totally made my day, and your post here is awesome - the world DOES have love in it :D

There are more!

[antdude]

See Fail Blog's compilation: http://failblog.org/epic-fail-photos-the-many-stages-of-valentines-day-fails/ ... :O

How about a LARP?

[MoriT]

http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/firstperson/gated?mode=print This was a custom-written Shakespearian comedy larp, designed and run just so this guy could propose to his girlfriend.

Geeky proposals to non geeks

[emm-tee]

The weird part is that some of these geeky proposals seem to have been sprung on total non-geeks. For example, having to sort out an accidentally-minimised window, or having to drive them to a PC... Doesn't this seem a bit self-indulgent of the person doing the preposing?

I wonder how red the recipients of these proposals went when their friends asked how the question was popped?

Re:I put the ring in a scrabble game..

[Quirkz]

Along the games theme, I wrote mine on the back of a puzzle. Yes, this meant I had to put the puzzle together at work on my own, after hours, to write the message, and then scramble it and help my then-girlfriend put it together a second time. The writing on the back was driving her crazy with curiosity the entire time.

Taco

[wideBlueSkies]

Didn't Taco propose to his wife on /. ?