Yes I know the title is far to nerdy. Still, I have not written in a while and much has happened. BTW, the title comes from something that happened much earlier this summer. I my house, in the dining area, there are four tables. The normal configuration is two sets of two tables end to end, side by side. In the summer we don't need as many tables and more open space is desirable. Instead we stack two tables on top of each other and push them out of the way, the remaining two are place at angles in the center of the room. One day I realied it hadn't been done yet this summer so I said that we needed to summerize the tables. This caused a bit of confusing and I had to point out the difference between summerized with an E and summarized with an A. Right now I'm summarizing the summer, so...

Toontown

This is the main thing that has consumed my time this summer, since my last entry. Disney's Toontown Online is Disney's MMORPG (massively-multiplayer online role playing game, Everquest being the most well known one). Jesse, one of the people I work for, was one of the original designers of the game, so after he had given us a talk about lessons learned from building it, I wanted to try it out. The three day trial is a very clever device. I thought it would be too kiddie, but it turned out to be a lot of fun. I was hooked. In the game you get to build your own toon, deciding what they should look like and so forth. Then you have to work with other toons to defend Toontown from the Cogs, an army of business robots that Scrooge McDuck had build, gone out of control. You can fight groups of up to four cogs with up to four toons on the streets of several colorfully themed neighborhoos. The cogs use business like attacks such as red tape or double talk. Luckily, the cogs have no sense of humor so you can defeat them using gags, such as cream pies or seltzer bottles. Cogs will sometimes take over a toon building and turn it into a cog factory, which you can enter and reclaim. As your progress you get stronger and become able to use new types of gags. You'd think that it would be mostly kids playing this, but I've found that there are a lot of adults, mainly parents, playing.

Projector Troubles

I mentioned in one of the past entries, the problems I was having with my projector. Not only did the saga continue, but it is still not resolved. Picking up where I left off, I send the projector in a second time with directions to call if the problem wasn't detected. I did receive a call, from the phone support person I had talked to before, not the tech working on the projector. He told me what they had seen, similar to what they had "seen" the first time, explained that he thought it sounded like the problem I had seen, that it was within spec, and they were going to send it back to me. I had to interrupt to explain that it didn't sound to me at all like what I had seen. He said he'd talk to the tech and get back to me. He did not get back to me and return the projector, unrepaired. I also had not received the cable they promised me. I called and asked for the cable again, and to talk to someone I could complain to about their support system. I was told to use their webpage to find an email address. There was no email address on the webpage, only a support request form. I decided to video a clip of my projector having the problem and use the support form to send that in along with a description of the problem in my own words. I also asked for an email where I could send a complaint about the service. I got a reply with an email address for the complaint and it said they would take a look and my video and let me know the next day. Of course I didn't here from them, so after a week I called back. I still hadn't gotten the cable and it had been a month. They said it was backordered. The person I talked to on the phone quickly found the person who had answered my email. They said that the behavior in the video was normal. By now they and lost all my trust, so I wasn't even sure if that was true. My complaint email bounced because the address they had given me was wrong. I decided to call the dealer I had bought from, to see if they would let me return the projector, even though it was beyond the period their website said I had. I got a human right away and he was very friendly. I was expecting him to say I was stuck and at least that way I'd know it was over. Instead he asked me about the problem, he told me that it didn't sound like it was within spec. He said that I should send it in to them for repair because they are an authorized service center. I showed him the video and he immediately told me it looked like a problem. They paid for overnight shipping. The next business day they called to say they had seen the problem and would fix it. I've had to wait because they needed parts, but at least something is getting done. Even if it doesn't get fixed, this last experience has been so positive that I will be happy.

Orientation

My second to last week in Pittsburgh I was in the Florida Keys with my family on a SCUBA diving vacation. It was fun and relaxing, though a little long. I was supposed to meet my family in the Miami airport. I was getting in 3 hours before them. Then their flight got cancelled and I had to wait 7 hours. I really knew that airport by the end. I did read an excellent book, Airframe by Michael Crichton.

My last week in Pittsburgh was Orienation. Being an alumnus meant that I could do what I want, such as move in and hanging out, without any responsibility. I thought this would be a great thing. I went fast, and living without a room wasn't much fun. This was my least fun move in. It might have just been because Mudgewood pulled people away from Donner, but never-the-less it was less than what was anticipated.

The Move

When all was said and done, we loaded up and SUV with all my stuff and drove 12 hours back to Massachusetts. Later we loaded that stuff plus some furniture, some stolen from home, some new, into a rented cargo van and our SUV, and moved it all to Cambridge where I now reside. TO BE CONTINUED.....