I do believe in recycling, at least somewhat, so I do not throw away any glass or plastic bottles or aluminum cans. In theory, when the pile gets big enough I take it to the recycle bin in the basement. But the recycle bin is often near full and so I need go down and check if there is room before I actually bring anything down there. And I'm lazy so I don't like taking 2 trips and so the pile grows, and the bigger it grows the lazier I become. I don't usually bother with the 5¢ deposit on a lot of the bottles, but recently I let the pile (of mostly beer bottles) get so big that it seemed like it might be worth getting some money out of it. Seemed like it would be worth it but it was a very bad idea.

( Because this happened )

Last week I was in Orlando for a trade show. On Thursday night two coworkers and I got on a bus and headed out to get some drinks. On the bus I got a call on my cell phone from a "Restricted number". I answered it and it was just a person singing the Star Spangled Banner. When they were done they hung up. I thought, "That was weird." Then I got another call, this time from a Boston (617) number that I didn't recognize. I thought, "here comes the explaination" but instead I got White Christmas. Who was this? A friend whose number I don't have or a friend of a friend's phone? Now that we had a number we decided to call back and sing a song of our own. We used Yrinee's phone and Schuyler sang Sitting on the Dock of the Bay. The next call was from a different number that told the story. I got a call from my number... except with 2 digits transposed. Aha! Even though they must have realized that they failed to prank their friend when they called me instead, now they must be together. The song battle went back and forth for about half an hour. We never had a conversation and never learned any more about our mystery drunken friends other than the name Naomi on one of their voicemails a time they didn't answer.

This is a story about something that happened back in May, a interesting string of coincidences. At the time I was on a business trip in LA, doing a playtest for an upcoming project with PlayMotion, when we received an email from a summer intern back in our Atlanta office with a link to an interesting YouTube video. It was of people playing a breakout-style videogame in a movie theater by leaning left and right to control the paddle. My portfolio will tell you that I'd done something like that as early as 2001, probably the basis for this project, although the person who sent me the email didn't know that, he just thought it was cool and similar to what we do.

( More coincidences abound, read on )

I haven't talked about what's been going on lately. Since my apartment was broken into and things have been getting stressful at work, I've been a bit of a mess. Something else I haven't talked much about is my girlfriend, Katie. I've been seeing her for about 4 months now. Things were good, athough this week was tough since the stress I've been under, and some of hers, has effected our relationship a bit. Yesterday, however, was a great day, enough to make me want to say something about it.

( If you read on, there's an explosion in this story )

This morning I received an email in really broken English from someone claiming to be a 27 year old Russian girl looking to meet an American man. I'm not sure how she would have gotten my email address because I don't remember signing up for any mail-order bride service or anything. It didn't have blatent misspelling, images, ads, offers, or any other tell-tale signs of spam. If it is spam it is the most well-crafted spam I've ever received.

( cut for length )

Well, more than seven days have gone by since watching The Ring and I'm still alive so I think I'm safe.

I got my projector back on Thursday. The projector is still broken. They didn't fix either problem. I'm sort of pissed that they didn't call me or anything even though they couldn't find the brightness issue. But I can't believe they weren't able to see the problem with the VGA cable. You'd think it is simple enough that they'd just replace it anyway for the purpose of customer care. Promixa, where the customer is always wrong. That's a sort of inside joke and a whole nother story. Anyways, now they are going to send me a new cable, no questions asked. They are also going to pay to bring the projector back in, and if the newly reworded problem description isn't good enough, they are going to call me so that I don't get a broken one back again. If they can't see the problem I'll demand a new one. I'm not getting this back unless they see the problem and are sure it is fixed. I'm just sort up upset at this whole deal. I'm missing my whole summer with it. If it gets back and works, though, it will be worth it. That's the way it was with my DVD player, when I finally got it working, I've not had a problem with it.

Also, I got the video game I ordered. It wasn't really as bad a game as I remembered it. I kind of liked it. I played almost nonstop for the past four days and beat it this morning. Problem is that I wasn't going to work. Now I have to go to work tonight and do all the things I was supposed to do this week.

( Read more... )

( Preamble )I took the bus to Squirrel Hill today. I waited about 20 mins. When the bus came I got on, but the guy told me that my ID wasn't valid because the bus sticker was expired. That is only the second time in four years a driver has cared, and I rarely remember to keep my sticker current. So I got off and told him I'd just wait for the next bus. I suppose it was a mean thing to do, to imply that his efforts to stop me from doing something I wasn't supposed to were useless. They are. The last time a driver wouldn't let me get on with an expired sticker I didn't have money, this time I did it on principle. He told me he'd make sure to let the other driver know I was waiting. Of course the next bus, the one right behind him, was probably what he meant, but it was not a bus I could take to where I was going so it didn't matter. Another 15 minutes wait was well worth the satisfaction of getting away with it. I wasn't really doing anything wrong. I paid for the current sticker, I just haven't gotten it yet because I'm lazy and it is rarely neccessary.
( Read more... )

( Preamble )
I took a walk today, sort of by accident. I was talking to Jim in the stairwell. I hadn't done much today up to that point, and I wasn't wearing shoes yet. A couple people were going to go for a walk and they were waiting for Jim. I wasn't sure if I wanted to go along, because I had some things here I wanted to do. I decided to walk a little ways to finish what I was saying and then turn back. I didn't think a block on the sidewalks without shoes would be a problem. Well, we got across campus, and I was going to turn back but we headed into the park, and a grassy hill is great to be barefoot. After that we started off on an unpaved dirt road through the part. I should have turned back but it was far and it looked like nice scenery for a walk. When we finally came out (and I was very happy to be back on paved road), we ended up in Squirrel Hill. We went a pizza place, I snuck to the table before anyone noticed my feet, and had dinner (someone else went up to get it). Then we went to Rita's Ices, since you don't have to go inside. The girl there noticed and aparently she thought it was pretty cool. "That's awesome" is what I think she said. When she asked if this was together or seperate, I replied, "together, he's paying. I didn't bring a wallet either." For that I got a high five. She wanted me to stick around for her amusement. I felt bad because I wanted to entertain her, or at least talk to her. That's exactly the type of situation I should take advantage of but I'm very shy about my lack of footwear, especially when someone makes a big deal of it. I even feel uncomfortable the first day I wear sandals to class in the spring. Maybe I'll have to go back with shoes and be more sociable. It was quite an experience. After that we walked home, because I didn't have my ID for the bus. Someone had remarked that prehistoric man had to be able to catch game for food while barefoot. My feet definately aren't that tough. Somewhere in the evolution of computer programmers we've seem to have lost that ability. Evolution, some progress, I'd say.
( Read more... )

Booth Addendum

There was so much in the last entry but so much happened and I left a few things out. The first story was when Ben came up to me and asked "What booth needs booth?" I didn't intend to give a nonsense answer (and that is probably what made it so funny) but the ridiculousness of the question caused me to answer, "That's good true." I don't want to put the next story in here but for those who know, lauan:wood::gold-plated:jewlery. The bush we had to be the burning bush in the booth was a real bush. I took it back and planted it in our yard. I think I did a good job. It looks good where it is, even though it isn't in a place that we've had a bush before. I hope it lives. I think it is nice that it blesses our house. Unlike people who did small things such as hieroglypic tiles or beanbag frogs, there wasn't anything for me to take away from the booth, but the fact that I was able to plant and leave something from the booth makes me feel good. It will hopefully be there for a few year and I'll be able to come back and say, "that's the burning bush." The last thing I forgot was a pointer to my carnival pics.

Passover

Booth really put me in the right mindset for passover. When we said, "Because of what God did for me when I was a slave in Egypt," I feel as if I really was. After all building a booth is hard labor and we were even building pyramids.

At one seder I went to, instead of cups of salt water, they had spray bottles of it. It seemed like a good idea until a little kid got hold of it and decided to give me a shower and no one thought they should stop him.

( Read more... )

( Preamble )
It only took most of the week but the structure for the booth is finally up. Got that done on wednesday. When I climbed up on the 10 ft roof I realized that was the highest anyone had been above our porch while I've been here. It is a nice view of campus and Oakland. The game is going really well. We've rigged up a neat little mechanical device to raise and lower the targets. I'm looking forward to carnival, but worried about all the things I have to do in the next two weeks. Now that spring break is ending people will be coming back. Nate is already back and I'm glad. When Noah gets back I'll feel a lot better. As much as I wanted to do it all by myself, I like having someone else to rely on to a point.

( Read more... )

Man, the weather was nice today. Today, of course, being Sunday the 16, I really have to teach my journal, just because I'm writing this at 6am it is still yesterday. Anyways, It was beautiful out. Very sunny and really warm. I'm not exactly sure the tempature, but I wore shorts and sunglasses for the first time this year, and I was still hot. Two main exciting things happened too.

First we got started on booth. I'm SOOOOOOO excited for booth, I love it. Today we went to the newly clean storage (I did that last week) and set up the platform that is the floor. It was a great day for being outside and doing that kind of work, and just hanging out outside with my brothers just made it very fun.

The other thing that happened was an anti-war protest. We were working on the porch, and being that we have the best location on campus we were in just the right place to see hundreds of people protesting war block traffic crossing Forbes in front of our house. It seems it started at CMU and I did know a few of the people. I'm pretty against that sort of thing. First and foremost I'm against protests. I don't see that they accomplish except to strengthen the resolve of those involved, but I don't think it gets them any more support or credibility. Media coverage of protests usually make the protestors look like quacks, or at least to me. Maybe I can't be convinced since I always come up with a strong position on an issue even if I don't actually care that much. In this case, I'm not going to say that I think we should

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