On Saturday I got to sleep in as my first volunteer shift was to start at 12:30. I actually slept through the keynote at 10am, which was probably a mistake. I got to the con at around 11am, just as the keynote was ending. The next panel was “Making it Big.” It included Michael and Matthew Chapman of Homestar Runner, Burnie Burns of Red vs. Blue. I have seen both of these and instantly recognize that they have certainly made it big. There were also two groups I’d never heard of Brad Neely (othercriteria’s photo) of Super Deluxe, and three of four guys from Cyanide & Happiness. This was surprisingly the best (of the two) panels I was able to attend. It was all about how and how long it took each of them to reach the monetary break even point. And then how much longer for them to quit their jobs, if they have been able to do that. There were a wide variety of interesting answers, that I can’t detail.
There were some interesting details about the memes themselves that were revealed:
Homestar Runner does not suffer from down syndrome.
They actually still make new Homestar Runner episodes.
A Homestar Runner game for the Wii is in the making.
Red vs. Blue’s sound was based on the quality of the overseas telephone signal one of the voice actors had to use in the early days.
Burnie Burns is a staunch defender of Homestar Runner.
Brad Nealy doesn’t know anything about the internet or the other memes.
The firefox asked all the panelists about their use of open standards, which received a lackluster response. One of the Homestar Runner guys espoused the joys of firefox use, but did not address the fact that their medium, Flash, is not an open standard. The other panelists, some of whom, produce videos using closed standards as well did not comment. This disappointed the firefox.
I eventually worked out a plan with my room mates to go out for drinks in Davis Square. Something we all rarely do. Sriram and a friend of his were on their way back from downtown on the T, and I managed to leave at the perfect time to catch the same train as them, in the same car, without waiting. I am quite impressed with that, maybe too much. But it took a lot of timing and coordination that I actually didn’t even know that I knew.
When we got to Davis they were hungry so we went to crepe place there. I am not a fan of crepes, although the place did smell good. I ran into one of my coworkers there and had to yet again explain what ROFLCon is. That is rather hard, because people don’t seem to be familiar with the term “Internet Meme” and its hard to tell what, if any memes an individual has heard of. We were soon joined by a friend of Srirams friend, who, is doing a PHD on television and video game culture, but hadn’t heard of ROFLCon in time to register. I took some time to steal some free internet from the Boston IFF that was going on in the theater next door to upload some more pictures to flickr. We also checked out a flash game called Magic Pen.
After crepes and Andreas and Claudia joining us we went to Sagra for drinks. This place was great. It was quiet and fancy. Which is may more my thing than a loud noisy bar where we’ll struggle to hear each other and have to stand all night. I was already pretty tired and as countless discussions upon which I could provide no comment went on I longed to go home.
On the way home I finally ran into Randall Munroe on the street! He lives like within a few blocks of me, but I’ve never seen him in the grocery store or walking to the T, or on his electric skateboard. But tonight, with ROFLCon in town I saw him, and a large posse, including Ryan North on my walk home. Literally crossing my street. I clearly recognized them, and asked were they were heading. To which they replied, “This way.” Which, given the obviousness of the answer, I took as “You’re a creep don’t follow us.” I wasn’t really together enough to follow them anyways having already had a 17 hour day. So I didn’t. But it was clear that he didn’t recognize me — damn it. My ROFLCon staff shirt was by now covered by a coat, so that clue wasn’t visible to tip me off as not just some sketchy dude. But it’s not like I haven’t met Randal like for or five times by now, and even shared a dinner plate. But oh well. In retrospect I felt somewhat bad about how the whole exchange went down.
That was pretty much the day day. I went to bed around 1am.
I left work around 4pm and headed home and then to ROFLCon itself. Everything at that time was happening in Building 34. After hanging out a bit and realizing that I was going to be much help I went outside, sat down, and opened that flicker account and uploaded my first photos (mostly from Wednesday’s shwag packing event).
Eventually we packed everything into van signaling the end of the con for the day. I joined the rest of the staff, the firefox, and the Leeroy Jenkins guy for dinner in Central Square. While we were walking to Picante, a burrito place I worked up the nerve to as the Leeroy Jenkis guy (that is not his real name I eventually learned) for what he is famous. He proceeded to give me a first hand account of the World of Warcraft video that made him famous. I think his play by play was even funnier than the video. Dinner was good, this burrito place certainly can compete with Chipotle, and is way more authentic. Also it was slightly cheaper.
After dinner we walked over to the Middle East, the site of the nights festivities. I ended up not going to the show at the upstairs. It was pretty packed, and having never heard of the bands playing I figured I would let someone else, who cares more, take my spot. Having nothing better to do, however, I stood outside to direct people as to which door to use. The Middle East has a bunch of entrances for different parts, it can be confusing. I saw the G4 crew — from attack of the show I think — film some of their coverage, a staged entrance to the party. I also had a good chat with a member of Anonymous and the webmaster for Group X.
I’ve decided to redo this post as sort of a play by play of the weekend, with pictures and links when I have them.
On Friday morning I work up late a 7:15am, apparently having set my alarm for 6pm not am. I was to have arrived at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, which served as home base for the ROFLCon team, to help drive shwag to MIT. Luckily they didn’t really need me, having secured a large van that was able to take everything in two trips.
I’m yet to find a single picture with me in it. So I could just be lying about all of this. But, I’ve got some pictures purportedly taken by myself on my flicker account, so maybe that will convince you. I am sort of ok with that. I think I’m more comfortable reporting the news than being the news. Not that a single picture would make me news, but I think you know what I mean. I’m just trying to document my weekend, for myself. Please don’t take these posts as trying to be cool by association cause I can name drop. My primary goal at the con was to befriend some of the staff, because they, mostly, live in Boston, and that is where I need to find some new cool friends. Anyways, After loading up the van for it’s second trip I went to work; where we manged to fix the bug we were working on by 2:30pm. Usually that is a 6:00pm on Friday kind of thing.
EC stayed an extra day, taking up the spots on the couch vacated by Rob and Josh as they drove back home on Sunday. It has been a very long time since EC and I talked. She is one of my girls from the team. Pretty much anyone I directly mentored falls into that category, but the more I was able to teach them more I consider them in that group. She was the first, and I probably taught her the most. She was so easy to teach, and so eager to learn. A teacher’s (or mentor’s) dream student. Its just amazing how far she has come. For the uninitiated EC has come to be a pillar of the team. From two years as a student to two years as a mentor and now, already, one year of leading the team. She has come a long way from when I met her, and the team has come with her. This was made clear by her winning of the Woodie Flowers’ Award, which goes to in simple terms, the best mentor at the regional. It has been fun to watch, and I’m very proud of her.
On Sunday after dropping of another my girls, Katie, who had some special return trip circumstances EC and I made our way to a meeting with a CSG and team 677 alum, Mikell who was part of the team running the regional and also won an award. EC was really looking for some direction on how to take the team to the next level and win the highest awards, that have, in the past, felt out of reach. At least from my perspective. Mikell had some excellent advice that I won’t bother you with. Sitting in on the meeting made me want to get back in to volunteering with FIRST, although maybe not on a team. I think I picked up a bit of EC’s wanting-to-be-Mikell virus.
Afterwards EC and I attempted to get a beer and a burger at Harvard Square’s Bartleys’ burgers, but apparently they are closed on Sundays. What kind of hippies run that place I’m not so sure about anymore. So we stumbled upon John Harvard’s Brew House, which had beer, but no burgers. Their microbrews were interesting. Not being a beer person I didn’t like all of them, but the Pale Ale was alright. EC was fond of that and something that was essentially a hybrid between an Irish Red and a Guinness. We talked there engaged for hours, oh how I wish that was a more common occurrence.
It was so great, that I didn’t notice that my dinner group, who came up many times in conversation, was actually coincidentally sitting at the table behind me. Granted, if I had been facing them I would have seen them, but I was not. Carney came over while EC was in the restroom to say hi, I was so surprised. Apparently they had been there for quite a while. They were trying to discern my relationship with the girl across the table, was it a date, was it not, who was this girl. They arrived at the conclusion that she was most likely my sister. Score, that made my week, go WND Group! That is exactly the kind of relationship I strived for with the girls I was mentoring. Although, it did make me a little self conscious that I was talking a little too loud, as have a penchant to do.
Ok so things are a bit out of order. The Ski trip occurred before the robotics team arrived. I don’t have detailed daily posts, but here are some fun pictures from the event. Pictures appear in chronological order.
On Wednesday of last week I got a surprising IM, EC and my former FIRST Robotics team were in town. I expected them Thursday, but they decided to come a day earlier for logistical reasons, and so began a long, hectic, fun week. I left from work to Coolidge Corner (where their hotel was) directly. Coincidentally WND was also in Coolidge that day, which made for easy planning. I went and said hi to EC and Mike who were already at the nearest Radio Shack (of course), but they had eaten, so I went and had dinner with my dinner group at a run of the mill Indian restaurant called Rani. I didn’t think it was as good as India Quality from a few months back.
After dinner I went up and lent a mentoring hand to Tessa with the robot code. Tessa, on her first year programing was doing impressively well, and she had at least one well organized component design team member helping her out. The programing mentor for this year didn’t make the trip, so Tessa has some questions, which I tried to clear up. I wasn’t much help. She fixed it the next day, and it wasn’t anything I said it might be. I was also happy to see echo’s of the methods and design I tough two years ago had been passed down by the girls, and were evident in this years code. I had tired really hard to find an easy, straight froward design to weave together the code the girls were writing. This was for the very purpose that, with a good design (the hard part) laid out the girls could take more ownership of the code, and not have things bog down as they easily could with a bad design. That this is exactly what has happened makes me very happy. More to follow as I have time to write it.
From March 19th through March 24th I was skiing in Utah with my friend from back home, Paul, his dad, his roommate, his roommate’s girlfriend, and his roommate’s girlfriend’s roommate. It was a blast. The second two days were the very best skiing I’ve had in my life, which skiing wise is still rather short mind you; anyways, it was great. But I’ve gotten ahead of myself. I’m going to tell this story in short form with pictures, be sure to click on them to read the captions.
We spent the first two days at Snow Basin, host to the 2002 Oylmpics Downhill course, and probably others. We however stayed mostly on the green slopes here teaching the girls to ski. I did make it up the gondola at least once the first day, and skiing down from there was really tiring. Much more tiring than anything I did the previous week during my warm-up in New Hampshire. (The warm up post is not forthcoming, its just lost with all the busyness. ) The second day at Snow Basin I got a little more advanced skiing in, and it was not as tiring.
On the third day we switched to Powder Mountain, which is nearby and known (apparently not very widely) for not having crowds ever, even on weekends. I’m pretty sure this view looks into the salt lake basin to the northwest, which is away from the city.
Despite that it snowed only very little, if at all, while we were there Powder Mountain still had untracked powder if you looked in the right place. Of course, learning to ski in Ohio I’ve never skied on such stuff before. It was difficult but I got the hang of it.
On the second day at Powder Mountain (the last day overall) Paul, his dad and I again went in search of some untracked powder. It was harder to find that day and we ended up having to walk up this ridge a bit. In the end we found it too dangerous and skiied down the back side, where it was less steep and had fewer trees. But as we went down we looped around and had some fun darting through the trees.
By the end of the trip my confidence in my skiing abilities was way up. Too bad I didn’t start skiing until the end of the season.
This post is primarily a response to Chris’ comment on my previous post. Last week was the fourth time I’ve been to Las Vegas. Three of those have been in the last year (one before I started the blog, one this summer, and this one) for work. The other one was when I was 13, with my family.
So, what exactly did I do there. Well the work part occurs out in the middle of the desert and involves testing software with the actual hardware its designed for, its super exciting </sarcasm>. We stay in the podunk little town except for the two nights actually in Las Vegas that bookend the trip. There is one restaurant in this town, which sucks, oh and this part isn’t interesting.
When I’m in Vegas I usually hit up the strip, but I tend not to gamble. Gambling is one of the few activities that you can go out and do alone, but like most things it’s not as good as with a friend — to commiserate over your losses with. I can really only let myself play blackjack, given that I understand the odds involved with all the common games, and its so hard to find a $5 table, I have looked for them on occasion. The one time I did gamble (trip 2) I put up $60 for $5 blackjack, played for an hour and half and got up after I’d made it back to $65 and then lost the hand, breaking even. On trip 3 I saw a show instead of gambling.
This time I got in before dinner, so I grabbed a Chipotle burrito, part of my quest to use up those gift cards, and took it to the Bellagio, and ate it watching the fountains. This is a video of them from where I ate. It sounded like it might be the song from the end of Oceans’ 11 so I turned on the camera. I’m yet actually compare it, maybe you all can do that for me.
After I finished my burrito, which cost a whole lot less than they do here in Massachusetts (at least $0.25 less in Nevada), I walked around to the other side of the fountains and watched for a while. Taking this video:
They really are the best free show in town. These aren’t even the best two songs I saw. It’s of course hard to tell before the music starts playing what song it will be, and if that song is any good is even harder. They should announce the song name before it starts playing, to get people’s attention and provide the information. There is one song I’ve seen 3 times (2 of them on the same night on trip 3), Luck be a Lady, and wow that song is sub par. The fountain work is unimpressive, its long, and the lyrics get old fast. I know its the The Chairman of the Board and all, but its not so good. I do hope to one day see the show for Fly Me to the Moon, I think that is the one I would request of the songs they do, if I could.
After that, I just perused the strip and did some people watching, which is fun. It was cloudy and the moon was dimmer (through the clouds) than the light from the Luxor was shining on the clouds. This makes sense if you think about it, but it was neat. I park at the Bellagio because my hotel is about a block off the strip up by the Hilton. The Bellagio’s parking is great because unlike other hotels its not in the very back, its more off to the side, so its quicker to get in and out. On my way back to my car I checked out their conservatory display, which was themed for Chinese new year.
After that I went back to the hotel watched some of The Office. I wasn’t feeling very well on the ending bookend in Vegas, so I pretty much just slept. I think I’ll be going back again this spring if I can get the next version of the software up in time and work out some of the hardware issues I had this trip. So what else should I be doing while I’m there, Chris?
