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{ Monthly Archives }
“Hey, why don’t you guys have a Christmas tree up?”
“I dunno, why don’t you have a menorah up?”
“Uh, because I’m not Jewish?”
“Well, there you go, then.”
Lots of food and drink and presents good. Plenty of people and yammering. Then, me staying up all night and sleeping late, but not late enough to miss tasty breakfast, but also way too tired to go out for another dinner. In good. Pajamas good. Rum cider good.
I got a laminator!
I want something with the exact flavor and consistency of a root beer float, only hot instead of cold. We’ve also been batting around the idea of a “hot coke” drink, but haven’t had the temerity to actually try it yet. I just think it’d be cool to go places and order a hot coke, and then it would catch on, and we’d be internet famous for three days or something. It’s worth a shot, anyway.
I got two, count ‘em two, new laptops today. One is an OLPC thinger, and it’s cute and sweet. It’s green and white and plasticky and like two and a half pounds and has flip-up green ears for wifi antennas and a rugged little membrane keyboard and a swively screen and a cute version of linux (called Sugar, I think) with a cute interface and a little handle to carry it around with. As far as purely utilitarian toys go, it’s pretty nice. It comes with all sorts of keen free software to make movies and music and programs and everything with, and I’m sure Paidia will love it once she gets the whole motor control thing down. It won’t be too long before she’s cracking open the My First Python IDE that comes with it and starts taking over the world. I don’t see where the hand crank thing is for the battery, though. I was really excited about a crankable computer.
A bunch of improvisers showed up to support the weekly Wednesday night barprov show at Ego’s this evening – which is always a new and entertaining challenge, audience-wise, but still pretty darn fun – including Drew, who then followed me home so we could make the money-for-merchandise trade for laptop number two. I now have one of those tablet PCs that I’ve lusted after for so long. Without the keyboard, it’s about three pounds, four with, and has a badass pressure-sensitive glass screen to draw on. The handwriting recognition is actually pretty killer, but I think I might pick up a little bluetooth keyboard for it sooner or later. As it is, it’s exactly the thing I wanted for carrying around – much lighter than the eleven-pound beast I use for day-to-day work and play – and it’ll be great for my continued bumbling forays into the forbidden land of drawing less sucky. And it just looks cool, like a sci-fi computer or something. You just draw on it! Sweet! Looks like it’ll make a nice little movie machine, too – headphones and a fat SD card full of divx goodness, and I’m ready to roll.
Work was kind of a wash today – I had to get up early and go in for an eye exam, which means extreme dilation so they can make sure that my retinas haven’t started tearing themselves apart yet, which means that I’m all bug-eyed and blurry all day, which means that any kind of thing that requires me to concentrate on tiny characters on a glowing screen for any length of time is pain grande. So, it’s now 2am, and I’ve got some stuff to do to get caught up, but I’m really not feeling it. Maybe some shitty instant coffee will change my mind, and I can knock out what I need to do in the next couple of hours. Then more work work, meet meet, get stuff nailed down and get back on the bus. The house is in serious disarray on my end, organization-wise, and I need to get myself geared up for a few days of brutal cleaning and re-organizing that only I can do. This requires intense focus, a clear mind, and a spotless conscience. One cannot properly manage a closet full of misplaced but somehow essential junk with a stain on one’s soul. Plus, it’s been grey and cold lately, so, bleh.
I have three games that are on the cusp of being born, hopefully all in the first quarter of next year. Very exciting. Several more floating down in the pipes. Mental plunging is the only answer. Before me sits a stack of bills and three pounds of sparkly acrylic nuggets of various hues. These must all be dealt with.
Bernie and I were discussing the fact that Paidia’s birthday is in December, not super close to Christmas, but close enough to complain about. Well, neither of us were actually complaining about it, but, you know, the whole presents thing. I don’t know, it just came up. Anyway, while discussing various amusing solutions to this non-existent quandary, I think we decided that we’re going to try celebrating Hanukkah instead of Christmas from now on. I mean, it’s not like we’re christian or anything, so why not? Sure, there’s the whole crazy figuring out when it is every year, but we get that with Easter, anyway.
Wait, no, it was Crimbo. We’re celebrating Crimbo from here on out. That’s just weird food and scaling monsters. I can deal with that.
This is a game of Chase that I’m involved in right now. Blue threatened a 5 at 1f, red just transfered a5=3,a6=6, which throws an immediate attack back at the blue 3 at d4, and now it’s blue to move. The elaborate setup here on red’s part is a thing of beauty.
If blue takes d4xa5, as would seem totally reasonable, those three points get added to red’s lowest piece, which is the 1 at e6, turning it into a 4. Then red takes their turn, moving a7-e5, splitting their 4 in the chamber to 2s at e6 and d5. The 2 at e6 pushes over their 4 (currently a 1 on the board), which then forks the blue 6 at i9, and the just-moved 3 at a5, neither of which can respond, or be defended. Additionally, if the 6 at i9 were to make a break for it, to c3, the 3 at c2 can bounce off the top rank, and capture it. Beautiful.
A decent response would probably be to do a transfer at i2=1,i1=5, which not only immediately defends the blue 3 at d4, but should red get sparky and jump on that capture anyway, also would also add those 3 points to the new 1 at i2, turning it into a 4, and setting up a second attack on the freshly-undefended 2 at e4. Of course, that leaves blue open to a nasty fork from that very 2, as well. Blue could also move i7-i4, bumping the 5 to i3, which gets the nice home row clustering back in shape, and threatens the red 1 at e6 with a bump attack i7-f6,f6xe6, but that’s a bit more fragile if some heavy exchanges come into play. And at this stage in the game, it’s probably in red’s best interest to just split that 4 right off, putting blue in a pickle regardless.
I love this goddamn game.
Begin the countdown to Lake Earth, fuckers. Time to go.
I’m slowly phasing into an end-of-year cleaning phase, I think. Going through some old (and current) emails and feed and whatnot, and coming across all of this evidence of narrowly avoiding a career in video game development. I now have the perspective to see that it was an enormous bucket of good fortune that allowed that to not happen – my life would have been so different in so many ways had I chosen to pursue that path, almost every one of those ways leading to intense misery. So, whew.
Triple-decker day. The usual monday meeting at OnNetworks to go over the continuing work on the soon-to-be Backpack Picnic site, then back home through insane holiday traffic to meet up with Jerm to work on some promo stuff for our super seekrit project, and then busted over to Coldtowne for a freestyle class with Terp and the gang. Which was awesome. Now, gots more work to do, so it’ll probably be another late night. That’s cool.
Plenty more to say, no time for words.
Paidia turned one year old today! We had a party, lots of people came, and it was good. Pai got presents, everyone got food and cake (not a lie), and we got some four-player Rock Band action going on, which was awesome. Afterwards, I got to take a nap with the baby. Good nap.
All weekend was improv weekend. Really good shows on Friday and Saturday – IFE in the double barrel, we put on the second (and hopefully not last) Office Party show, and Asaf and I directed Maestro. Good stuff, all around.
The party forced some cleaning, and I’m sure that more cleaning will follow. After work, and rest, and more other stuff. After a workshop tomorrow, and some mid-week barprov shows, and maybe a Belmont gig or two, I think the performing is cooling down for me some until the new year comes around. Fortunately, I’ve got some gamey game stuff in the pipe to keep me busy between all the other busy. Busy busy.