Everyone loves Halloween. Children are allowed to dress as they please, convenience stores' profits soar, and parents don't have to cook dinner because their children have gorged themselves on candy. It's a wonderful holiday for everyone, except computer nerds!

Where are the Pentiums, HDDs, Athlons, and 512 megabyte 168-pin rambus DDR DIMMs? It may be true that techies are, as a group, one of the largest consumers of caffeine-injected products on earth, but we need more candy. It's also true that since Halloween is mostly a nocturnal holiday, it fits perfectly into a techie's schedule, but it simply isn't enough! It's time to reformat Halloween, with a few easy to follow guidlines to keep the techie community happy, or cheaply detained, whatever.

1. Memory is cooler than M&M's. 500 billion bits of memory are so much better than 30 bits of chocolate.

2. Hard candy, like jaw breakers, can hurt your teeth, but people don't bite hard drives. Change, if not for techies, then for the children's dentists.

3. Athlons are better chips than a miniture bag of Doritos. We'll take Pentiums as well, but we won't promise not to egg your house, ping flood you, or otherwise ruin your Halloween.

4. If you see a child without a bucket, or some other form of candy collection device, give him a server tower. Not only do they sport higher wattage power supplies, as well as give increased ventilation, but they can hold candy like nobody's business.

5. Above all else, if you aren't technologically inclined enough to understand a techie's costume, do not provoke or taunt them. These individuals wield massive amounts of behind-the-scene power, and will not be denied their right to free candy.

These five simple rules are the bare minimum for enjoying, as well as surviving, Halloween. If you feel like giving techies motherboards or other peripherals, feel free to substitute. Remember, Halloween is about being different, and candy, and computer hardware, but mostly it's about candy!