moodboom

PAX 2009 flew by like a sonic jet. Dan and I met out in Seattle again this year (we did it once before in 2007) for the Penny Arcade Gaming Expo. In my quest to find work, I picked up a pretty nice Macbook Pro so I can do iPhone development. It turns out that it has a nice dedicated GPU, can boot into Windows, and with the latest Bootcamp set of Windows drivers that came with the latest OS X (10.6 aka Snow Leopard), it fully supports Windows 7 RC, to the point where I was ripping it up with all the latest games. What a deal! Dan kept the party rolling with a new laptop purchase in the 11th hour, so that by the time the games began on Friday morning, we had covered half of Seattle on foot but managed to be fully geared up.

On Friday we spent a lot of time in BYOC setting up the shiny new rigs. Saturday was a full day of joyous fun, from 10am ’til 2am (that’s 5am EST, for those keeping score). We played Legions on a local instantaction.com server (I was happy to place in the middle of the pack in the deathmatch tourney), a 100+-player Trackmania Nations Forever contest, Call of Juarez, Fallout 3, Eve Online, Marble Madness, board games including Puerto Rico, and most of the PAX 10, including Tag, Osmos, Puzzlebloom, etc. And we caught a minute here and there of the excellent panels, incliding watching Gabe and Tycho put together the strip for that day. Sunday we kept plugging away while managing to collect over a dozen t-shirts – LOTS of Tribes loot! On Monday we gamed the most, with our homebrew LAN-out-of-a-suitcase setup in the hotel, shooting each other endlessly in Juarez, and still managed to get to the mall to buy the wives something. And there was so much good food… Red Fin tempura, Cheesecake Factory, cyber-dogs… the Teriyaki rage of 2007 has been replaced by Pho on every corner (HOT hot salty yummy soup). When you get it to go, you get a vat of hot water and all the ingredients to build it yourself. And of course, literally, Starbucks on every corner. In central Seattle I had a triple-shot latte that made my day. Too much fun. Thanks Danno!!

I feel irresponsible for not pumping this a long time ago. It’s on season 2 now, and worth finding all the old S1 episodes (and old albums and the original BBC radio show and youtube goodies and…) if you have any appetite for beautifully droll humor or oldskool casio keyboard voices. Mine is insatiable.

The world’s greatest practical joke site was created recently. It’s called NiceCritic, and I got victimized today at work. When I sat down at my computers this morning, my inbox had this to say:

It seems like your thong is showing. – an anonymous “nice critic”

Now I received the message at work, so it had to be from a coworker. But seriously, there are very few practical jokers left at my work after years of attrition. And when you receive your first “nice criticism” out of the blue, it’s a whole new experience in paranoia. I was wracking my head ALL DAY LONG trying to figure out if someone saw me biking to work in my bike shorts and mistook them for a failed attempt at putting my (sexy) clothes on in the right order.

Well, after getting crank-emailed on my college buddies’ email chain (they are pros at this kind of thing – before I noticed, they had planned a full-blown reunion in my attic – people were buying airplane tickets thinking I was begging them to come see my “renovations” – but I digress…), I figured there’s no time like the present for a little revenge. So – fair warning if you read this my pals – you’ve been nicecritic’ed today…

Hurry up and use the site, I’m sure it won’t be long before some disgruntled hacker DDOS‘es the thing into oblivion because he was told his feet smell one. too. many. times.

UPDATE: Wow, that was scary fun. I might need therapy…

• Doug needs to stop patting people on the bottom
• As everyone knows, Mark’s pants are a bit too tight lately
• Ken needs a breath mint
• Erik has worn heels on his shoes
• Sounds like it’s time for Keith to visit the barber
• I hope Mike soon realizes that “yelling doesn’t help morale”
• Kevin needs to look people in the eye when he shakes hands
• Unfortunately, Paul doesn’t release his hug in a timely manner

I guess they’re teaching sarcasm classes earlier these days… kids these days… when *I* was a youngster, we quietly stood in the corner, and ate paint chips! AND WE LIKED IT!!

Andrea and I were joking with the girls that when they were born, Mommy pulled something out of her nose, and it was Reiley, who’s really a booger. And Wrenny was throwup. Then we said, “No, you guys know where you really came from”.

To which Reiley replied “Gross, I need a bath.”

The neighborhood got together for a “How To Host A Murder” party on New Year’s Eve, aka Larry’s birthday. It was a hit! Larry stormed around as the captain, yelling “don’t call it a boat, it’s not a boat, it’s a ship!” and “I don’t remember what I was doing, I was drunk at the time…”. Scott was decked out in a racing jacket and gloves, and Greg played out the accusatory investment banker perfectly. All the ladies were “dressed to kill”, which played out perfectly, as they all ended up running brothels or being romantically linked to the deceased.

To cap it all off, the role of the murdered host was played by none other than… Michael Jackson. Perfect casting!

Everybody had a blast, and we hope to do it again some time soon.

Found on the web…

Don’t you just love it when teachers’ good intentions go a muck?

An elementary school class started a class project to make a planter
to take home to their parents. They wanted to have a plant in it;
that was easy to take care of, so they decided to use cactus plants. The students were given greenware pottery planters in the shape of a clown, which they painted with glaze. The clown planters were professionally fired at a class outing so they could see the process. It was great fun.

They planted cactus seeds in the finished planters and they grew
nicely… but unfortunately the children were not allowed to take them home…

Mr. Smith goes to the doctor’s office to collect his wife’s test results.

Receptionist: “I’m sorry, sir, but there has been a bit of a mix-up and we have a problem. When we sent the samples from your wife to the lab, the samples from another Mrs. Smith were sent as well and we are now uncertain which one is your wife’s. Frankly, that’s either bad or terrible.”

Mr. Smith: “What do you mean?”

Receptionist: “Well, one Mrs. Smith has tested positive for Alzheimer disease and the other for AIDS. We can’t tell which is your wife.”

Mr. Smith: “That’s terrible! Can we do the test over?”

Receptionist: “Normally, yes. But you have an HMO, and they won’t pay for these expensive tests more than once.”

Mr. Smith: “Well, what am I supposed to do now?”

Receptionist: “The doctor recommends that you drop your wife off in the middle of town. If she finds her way home, don’t sleep with her.”

Knock Knock…

The new pastor was visiting in the homes of his parishioners. At one house it seemed obvious that someone was at home, but no answer came to his repeated knocks at the door. He took out a card, wrote “Revelation 3:20″ on the back and stuck it in the door.

When the offering was processed the following Sunday, he found that his card had been returned. Added to it was this cryptic message, “Genesis 3:10.”

Reaching for his Bible to check out the citation, he broke up in gales of laughter. Revelation 3:20 begins “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” Genesis 3:10 reads, “I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid for I was naked.”

Via email…

A colleague’s niece is from the south. She routinely took her cat in for a line cut, which means the groomer cuts off fur below the tummy where it can get matted and dirty. She moved to Chicago and took the cat to the groomer and asked for a line cut, but with her accent, the groomer heard, “lion cut.” This is how the cat came back. I think the look on its face just says it all (look at both pics).