Category Archives: Life

uh… Bill’s missing?

I got a phone message today from a detective at missing persons, but there were no details in the message… When I got to my cubicle in Miller, I found that the detective who had called was talking to other students about whether they’ve seen one of our professors, Bill Winn. I saw him yesterday at 10 or 10:30. Apparently, he left campus in his car (without his PDA) and had planned to be back for a noon meeting… but no one has seen him since.

During all this stress of writing papers and finishing up the quarter, this situation dropped down to remind me that there are more important things in life than writing papers…

I hope he is okay and is found soon.

Coffee and Comics

Found a great cafe that has a nice comics reading library which are for sale right near campus. Went there with Amit to study… after walking around FOREVER trying to find a place that had an outlet we could use since my laptop battery died. I think I’ll try to go there lots… but a huge problem is there is no restroom! 🙁

Decided to skip…

The logistics of getting to campus and then walking to the off-campus location of my next meeting WITH food seemed like too much a pain. Also, of course, I just woke up and by the time I got there, I’d have to leave in 30 min.

I feel dirty…

I just shotgunned friend requests on myspace to a bunch of people in COE… Some of them prob have no idea who the request is from.

miasma

yep… miasma

I’ve been staring at the same Word document for 4 days now with little inspiration to write… bleh.

David Silver again!?

Wow, I gotta say… the bus definitely has its moments. Today, David Silver and I happened to meet up on the bus again! this time on the way home.

Here’s something cool. My initial inclination was to say that the conversation was one-sided, in that all we seemed to talk about was my current research, but you know what? David is a terrific person to talk to and bounce ideas off of… Normally when I find myself talking about what I’m doing, I’m doing most of the talking, but this time there was so much back and forth with David continually pressing me to clarify… it was great! So, we did sort of just talk about my research but the dialog was so very organic that it didn’t feel one-sided.
Anyway, I just also have to say that it is totally awesome to talk to someone who actually finds what you do interesting. How validating!

Deja Vu

I was in a meeting today with the TEP people and at one point I had a very, very strong sense of deja vu. I mean, I could practically predict what a couple people were going to say. Most times I have deja vu, I just shrug it off, but this time it was so prolonged… like a good minute or so, that I wrote it down during the meeting. Anyway… I just wanted to capture the fact that it happened. 😛

Just dreamed about soccer again…

I need to go out and kick a ball around… and remember how much I SUCK at it… sheesh.

I’m a total geek as defined by Freaks and Geeks

Robin and I have been watching Freaks and Geeks on DVD from the library. It’s a TV show set in 1980 that lasted one season in 1999-2000 that’s about two traditionally ostracized groups of kids in high school. One group represents the stoner/smoker/hang-out-under-the-bleachers type–the Freaks. The other group are the nerdy D&D/straight-As/bad-at-sports type–the Geeks.

My brother said I should watch it and that it represented our high school experience really well. Other than being a tad 7-10 years earlier than when we went to high school and the fact that we didn’t really interact with the “freak” group (a better description might be punk and maybe nowadays goth, but I’m just pulling that out of my ass) and that I don’t think we were nearly as girl-obsessed as the guys in the show… yeah, we were geeks. But we knew that already…

Continue reading I’m a total geek as defined by Freaks and Geeks

Live action MMOG?

I was playing around with the idea of working for my former employer, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. My old manager (who I thought was horrible at managing) isn’t there anymore and the head of the department we were in (who I also thought was a horrible manager) is also no longer there. I daydream about what the workplace could be like, but in the back of my head I know a lot of things won’t change. If I were to get there, any grand designs I have for their website and education programs and incorporating games into education would be put on the back-burner while the day-to-day crap would overwhelm me.

But still… I was thinking this morning. What if we created a mini web-based MMOG which featured science learning as quests? Would kids be into that? Completing an activity/quest could give players an equipable item for their paper doll inventory… I dunno… The details could probably be worked out, but it would require money which a non-profit does not have.

Then I thought… hmm… what if it were a live-action MMOG which took place in the museum itself? That might work. Kids would complete quests by demonstrating knowledge which they can get from certain exhibits. Upon completion they get a reward of some sort which allows them access to other areas… hmmmm…

I dunno… Just a thought.