After taking care of the three essential T's (taxes, tithing, and new widescreen TV) it was a lot less than the three-million-plus you saw on Jeopardy!, but it was still more money than I ever thought I'd have in my entire life. Most of that is invested in your usual boring places: stocks, bonds, real estate, etc. I don't want to be one of these lottery winners you see bankrupt on TV a few years later, having already lost it all. Some has already gone to charity, and I plan to do a lot more of that. I don't really have a pet cause, but I can see quite a bit going to educational causes—scholarships and the like. This is not an invitation to e-mail me about paying off your student loans.

I kept my programming job right through the end of my Jeopardy! streak, but when I got the book deal to write Brainiac, I had to take some "semi-permanent leave" from my employer so I'd have time to work on the book. Working from home and being my own boss has been pretty great, so I don't know if I'll ever go back to the tech industry full-time. That's really the only major purchase I've earmarked from the Jeopardy! millions: more time with my family. This FAQ answer has been a message from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: the Mormons!

Somewhere deep down, I think I'm still as Jeopardy!-addicted as when I was ten years old, watching the show every day without fail right after school. Because if I'm in an airport or restaurant or somewhere and Jeopardy! comes on the TV, I can't look away. That said, I find that I have a hard time sitting on my couch and lazily shouting out answers at Trebek, like I used to. Everything about the show—the music, the graphics, the sound effects—causes some fight-or-flight adrenaline spike in my blood and I become hyper-aware of every detail of the show. Maybe I have post-traumatic stress disorder. Actually, I'm probably more like the Civil War buff who can't bear to watch Civil War movies recreationally anymore because he notices every behind-the-scenes nuance and goof. "No, that's not how a Union lieutenant would have worn his saber!"

Who Wants To Be a Millionaire producer Michael Davies and I had a deal with Comedy Central to develop a quiz show for them. They were looking for a half-hour show to pair with The Daily Show, as I understand it, and even though they really liked the game show we came up with, Stephen Colbert's show was doing so well in its post-Daily Show spot that they decided they weren't in the market for a quiz show anymore. Sadly, there are no current plans to rescue the modestly titled Ken Jennings vs. the Rest of the World from limbo, but you never know. Watch ken-jennings.com for any updates.

It's a sad fact of life that, sometimes, even bastions of fine journalism like The New York Post and People magazine let us down. What really happened was this: in July 2006, I posted a list of silly suggestions for "improving" Jeopardy! on my blog. The ideas included killer bees, ventriloquism, and cannibalism. In other words, they weren't remotely serious. In fact, the idea was to poke fun at misguided "retoolings" of classic entertainment properties. Unfortunately, a week later, a few media outlets cherry-picked quotes from the posting (either maliciously or just gullibly, I'm still not sure) to make it look as if I were seriously pissed at the show. This was frustrating to me only for its irony—Jeopardy! has been my favorite TV show ever since I was, like, ten years old. Even before it paid for my new house, I'd be about the last person in America to be dissing Jeopardy!

Get a job, hippie!