March 2005 Archives

My boss walked in yesterday and asked me, "You like Sir Mix-a-Lot, right?". But of course. "He's coming to meet (our admin) for lunch this week, she thought you might want to join, would you be intersted in that?" OH HELL YEAH!

Now this hasn't happened yet and I personally give it only about a 30% chance of ever happening, but that's pretty damn good odds for a random lunch with mix :) The odds are so low since this is the same boss who asked me if I had a passport since they needed to fly me to england then came back 4 hours later and said "nevermind" (still bitter about that).

But besides random lunches with rap legands and working to rebuild myself at the gym I've got myself a nice all consuming project. Tell me what you think:

There was an article on Slashdot about the "utlimate D&D table" in which a guy had built a table with an overhead mounted projector to display whatever map or scenery he had concoted onto the table for his players to move around in. Pretty cool, but people immediately pointed out that it would be better to have the projector in the table and shoot up onto some kind of screen. That's improvement number 1. I told this to Matt and said that I thought another good improvement would be to have not only the ability to project dungeoun maps, but maybe have the board for every board game I own in there as well. Want to play monopoly? *dink*, up it pops. Same for scrabble, candyland, whatever. That's improvement number two. HE - brilliant industrial engineer that he is - suggested that you could really bring the thing to life by having some kind of script or macro or whatever for all of those games that require tedious setup. Want to play a game of Settlers of Catan? just click "random map" and it would display everything as you need it. That would be improvement number three. All of those things are possible and probably about the level I could pull off. Of course I kept expanding on it. Making the system an entire touchscreen so you could drag virtual pieces around. That probably won't happen since it would be insanely difficulat and/or insanely expensive to pull off properly. But still, a game table that contains every board game you ever want to play. Not bad. Could even build in some generic pieces and money to handle almost every typical game.

Hmm, now where to start aquiring parts...

I did the whole KEXP pledge drive thing and as such got invited to a Kings of Convenience concert - that was today. I actually didn't know who the band was; even after I found out I kept mixing them up with Kings of Leon (similar sound, very dissimilar music). It had a "lunch" before hand that consisted of some pretty good local chinese food served buffet style that was unfortunately beset with timing issues and took nearly a half hour to get through the 5 dish line.

But anyway, the show was a lot of fun. Held at the triple door which is apparently a much smaller venue than I envisioned. Bonus though, for whatever reason no one took the table right in front of the stage dead center! The artists were right there, you could hear them tuning their guitars between songs (mics off) and whispering to eachother in norwegian. It was a short set - only about an hour and a half - but they recorded it and then broadcast it "live" on KEXP at around 4:00. Sort of a mellow sound, kind of like simon and garfunkle, so generally enjoyable. Though it was a little strange; one of the two norse guys seemed to either be suffering from a flu or was emotionally crippled. The other guy had to keep leading him around and sort of treating him like a sullen child :) He'd drink a little from his many bottles of water then screw on the cap and just sort of let it fall from his hands.

Negative bonus; I also saw an old co-worker at the show. Soon to be a re-employed old co-worker. Someone that had a... difficult relationship with my team at work. Basically it means I get to ruin everyone's day on monday by letting them know he's back. I'm not sure if that's wickedly fun or just plain cruel. I'll find out when I do it :)

It's been a draining couple of weeks, hence the lack of anything to say. Sum it up as I am newly single again. My doing but not my decision, ahh well - such is life.

So now I get to focus on wanting to travel again - which doesn't really sit well with the boss what with the recent expeditions and death rot and all :) But Vegas will have to do in the short term (go J) and I think I'm looking at Egypt or perhaps Isreal in the long term. Long term being October/November or so.

All I know is I generally have more to write about when I'm travelling and not quite so mentally distracted. I do hear and see some of the same strange stuff here - even at work - I just never remember to post it. Like the guy in the lunch room I overheard say "...so if I ever decide to leave *mumble* they'll arrest me at the airport". Man I wish I'd heard what he mumbled.