Quick update on the recent events so that I can get to the story I really want to tell about today.

Last weekend, 1/27-1/29, Quasi, the animatronic robotic character created by a group of ETC students, and a Jam-o-Drum were at PirateFest, a convention for Pittsburgh Pirates' fans. It was cool. We dressed Quasi up a pirate complete with hat, hook, eye patch, and an animatronic parrot named Crackers. At one point a servo died causing a board to fry and his head to smoke. We stopped it and used the eye patch to cover. Also an elbow cable snapped. Other than that things went well.

I'm not sure what I'm allowed to say or who knows, but I'm also working a project for Thinkwell Design to create interactions for people with a fountain they're building for a mall in Atlantic City. We had an all day meeting with them on Thursday to brainstorm ideas. We came up with some really cool stuff that can actually get done. I think everyone was impressed.

Afterwards I got a chance to interview with one of their partners as I drove him to the airport. I'm hoping to be able to get work with them and begin a career consulting on themed entertainment projects. There's already talk of hiring me to stay on and work with the fountain after I graduate, for a while.

As a preview to the World's Fair for Kids, the WFK team will be showing stuff at the Florida State Fair, 2/9-2/22. We ended up having to be part of that with Quasi and 2 Jam-o-Drums. It is kind of insane because we're so busy and we don't really have time to do this and to actually do the two projects. Also, we're supposed to be in some kind of shed outside where everything will get dirty and where the Jam-o-Drums won't even be visible. They actually asked if we could run them without the projectors, even though that's all they are! We joked that I could hang from the top and draw in realtime with a whiteboard marker.

We're splitting up the event so that Lenny, Camilla, and I are down for the first half and Andy, Seema, and Chris for the second half. Lenny and I were to drive down this Sunday/Monday. This past week has been very hectic getting ready.

Another Quasi board lost configuration causing Quasi to have stroke, flip out, and blow half of his fuses. This is actually good that we've been having problems because it enabled us to figure out how to fix them before they happen in a critical situation and so we can have supplies ready. I improved his performer's mute switch and Sabrina made the Flash LCD screen content we've been wanting to do for a while.

On the Jam-o-Drum front, it was down to the wire to get the tables built. Things went really slowly. The team was more involved than we wanted to be but it didn't help much. There were some issues with the new spinner and pad designs. Lenny and I both had to pull all-nighters on Friday night. We finally finished getting them built, tested, and packed onto the truck at 3am Saturday night. They've only been slightly tested so we're worried about that. Lenny and I had to leave Sunday morning so we had to get a little sleep.

But if you think all that is bad, just wait until you hear how our trip down went...