While it’s no longer the month of hearts, I bring to you something that’s worthy of a romantic February 14^th evening in a swanky restaurant – with a little geeky twist.

                                             A "traditional" marriage proposal (maybe with pants and leather shoes instead?)

A Xanga user named Bernie virtually went down on one knee to propose to his girlfriend Tammy. It was not with the usual brilliant stone set in a ring and bunch of flowers routine either (not immediately anyway) – he did it with a Nintendo DS and some l33t programming skills. Say what? The nerdy programming guy doing a marriage proposal through the nerdiest way possible? If you want to replicate the whole proposal thing, read on to find out how he did it.

                                             There's a couple of diamonds in there...

The Nintendo DS was loaded with a homebrew program mimicking the popular Popcap game “Bejeweled” – Ms. Tammy’s most favorite game ever. So Bernie offers her the Nintendo DS and asks her to play his self-programmed game. Nothing spectacular about that. Only when Tammy reached a certain score (as Bernie was sure she would) the screen is cleared of everything, and down scrolled an engagement ring. At this point tradition took over, and Bernie got on one knee and proposed. Unsurprisingly, Tammy said yes.

                                             What's this? It's a diamond .. ring!

Some friends of mine who are into MMORPGs did something similar a few months back – the primary influence being RO (Ragnarok Online), the Guy got together some of the gang to cosplay as typical RO monsters like Orcs, Golems and whatnot. Said Guy dresses up as an armored Knight (an actual class in RO) and the whole group surges into the room where the Girl is staying. Suffice to say that she’s speechless when they barge in, but the silence turns into surprise and joy when Guy turns and slays every one of the “monsters”, and he bends down to pick up the “loot” or “monster drops” – one of which was an actual engagement ring. The Girl said yes.

                                             A fair representation of the "ragnarok marriage proposal".

So what are you waiting for? If you don’t have the programming skills or the chutzpah to dress as an Orc, fix her computer or something – it’s the thought that counts after all. Pop the question any which way, as long as you do it right. It’s still technically a proposal.

                                              Credit to Tim buckley and this site.