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Nice.
The Northstar engine is not what I'd call 'problematic.' I've worked on scores of them and literally only encountered one that had the 'notorious' head gasket problem. And it had 180k on it. I've done head gasket jobs on many other engines with less miles.
Aside from running regular coolant and not shitty Dexcool (though Dexcool has a lot of cool properties, it also has a lot of problems), my advice is simply to make sure it NEVER overheats. Which... you should be doing anyway, with any car.
It is actually a very good engine. It's very high tech - especially for its time - and they tend not to have any major problems. Also has a lot of power. Too much for a little car. They are a little bit of a pain in the ass to work on, but no more than say an Audi or BMW. Also, there's nothing wrong with aluminum heads, in general. In fact, since the block is aluminum as well, it's even less of a problem. The thing about aluminum heads is that, yes, they tend to warp when overheated. But again, you shouldn't allow any car to overheat.
Cadillacs were initially notorious for head gasket problems with the HT4100. Which, despite it's name, was barely High Tech at all. It had an aluminum block with iron heads. And they didn't yet have the gasket technology to fix the 'scrubbing' problem - when the two different metals expand and contract at different rates and slowly grind away the head gasket between them.
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