Electric Ladyland

Dwight vs. the computer

This is one of my favorite scenes from The Office in quite some time.  Jim and Pam take messing with Dwight to a new, IM-enabled level.  Priceless and, for any of us who might have engaged in such pranks (cough), a little familiar in its execution.  Reminds me of an email-based prank my fellow computer consultants and I played on a little punk who richly deserved it back at Oberlin in the mid-90s when email was still new to most people.  He fell for it hook, line and sinker.  Nothing as elaborate as what you see Dwight buying here but it was still pretty good!  As for Dwight's response to being pranked, I appreciate the binary code shout-out.  Too bad it doesn't mean anything though!

ID4 Geekfest

The 4th of July was actually pretty fun this year.  For some reason I haven't done much for it in recent years.  Last year I think I remember hearing the fireworks while puttering around my house and going "Oh, that..."

Last night a college friend took me along to a geek house party in Brooklyn where we watched Independence Day (dang aliens blew up my office!) and bonded over jokes about everything from Battlestar Galactica to Heroes to Star Wars to... well, you get it.  Reminded me of my Oberlin days and that was a good thing.  There were other geekgirls there and that was a good thing too.  The host of the party shrewdly noted that Jeff Goldblum's character used Zmodem to upload his virus into the alien mothership.  Zmodem?  That would've taken a while!!  Man that's old school... and it was even fairly old school in 1996, when Independence Day was made!  The thought of Zmodem makes me twitch.  I remember cursing at a lot of dropped file transfers from my 14.4K modem in high school because of that thing...

Anyway, I digress.  Had a great time at the party.  I got home at about 2am, though, and since I'd gotten up at 6 that past morning that meant my body clock was a little off. 

The iPhone rang with its lovely old-school analog phone ringtone just after 8 this morning.  I stumbled out of bed and answered "Whaaa?"  Mom immediately said "Oh.  You were sleeping!  Go back to bed!"  I mumbled something and think I fumbled my way back into dreamland.  Next thing I knew it was 11 and she was calling to let me know her and her husband's ETA at my house (just after 12).  Got ready, met the fam and drove out with them to Long Island. 

We had a lovely picnic at Sands Point overlooking the water.  Mom made deviled eggs, potato salad (my grandmother's recipe, woo!), corn salad, and plenty of other yummy snacks.  There were cold cuts for sammiches as well as chips and hummus.  We had free-ranging, wandering and rambling discussions about everything from religion to opera, also Japan and language acquisition.  Very stimulating and fun for us all, also a relaxing way to spend the afternoon.

Mom and I ended up back at my place in Astoria after the rain started and the plan was adjusted.  We ended up getting some fast food (it is Amurrrican after all) and watching the fireworks on my TV in HD -- after having watched an episode of Star Trek:  The Next Generation, which Mom enjoyed because she has a crush on Riker.  I really appreciated the HD factor for this first time since getting this set.  My goodness was it crystal clear!  Note to self:  watch more fireworks in HD.

would you like to play a game?

last night i went to the museum of the moving image, right here in my home neighborhood of astoria, with a friend.  admission is free on fridays.  i didn't know that along with a tutorial on the history of film and television i would also have a chance to play the arcade versions of tron, asteroid, space invaders and mortal kombat as much as i wanted to!  no need to insert a quarter, all you had to do was press the "player 1" button.  there was a game of pong showing on an old television display somewhere too although we didn't get to play it. 

it was seriously nostalgic to be playing these games.  mortal kombat wasn't even that long ago!  i remember playing that in the student center at oberlin.  my boyfriend at the time got a real kick out of saying "finish him."  i did well last night at the museum and busted quite a few people up... until raiden showed up and kicked the ever-living @#^%! out of me.  decaptitated me.  doh...

oh, but it was fun!  i felt like a kid again and you know, no matter how much the technology advances those old games still have their appeal.  they definitely have their own mystique and an added cachet now that you can't find them anymore. 

my friend and i followed up our museum outing with a dinner at mundo, which was tasty as always.  friendly people there, great food too.  a real addition to the neighborhood.  i'd say that was a nice evening out in astoria!

oberlin geeks

talk about your coincidences... so i get an email from christy who's out in palau right now and that reminds me how i'm probably primarily going to be communicating with her via google talk for the next year or so (get this:  broadband costs $500/month in that country!!), which gets me to thinking about how nice it would be if google talk could just be integrated with my other IM services in proteus, the OSX client i use for all my IM needs.  well, google isn't bothering to put out an OSX-compatible client but at least its search engine helped me find a how-to blog posting on setting google talk up in proteus using jabber.  i noticed the poster's name was the same as someone who also worked in the computer center and studied cs while i was at oberlin.  turns out it's him all right.  what a small world it is out there.  and just a couple of days ago yet another fellow computer consultant from my days at oberlin asked to make a connection with me on linkedin.  so many of us have gone on to work in IT and even though one wouldn't necessarily think of our alma mater as being a springboard for techies it certainly turned out to be just that for a lot of us who were there at that time (not coincidentally just before the internet hit its first boom... i was there the summer they wired the campus with ethernet).  go obies go.

obies live on

ok, wikipedia is messing with my head tonight.  a search on oberlin leads me to oberwiki which leads me to (!!! geek alert !!!) o.g.r.e (oberlin gaming & roleplaying establishment -- their page is very old school), which several of my friends/classmates founded.  i think i was present when that name was chosen.  and they're still doing their thing in 2006 -- they've organized a gaming called OBERCON.  unbelievable.  wonder what the old gang would think of this.  actually i don't have to wonder -- i know they'd be proud.  those were the folks that would knock on my dorm room door on a sunday night as i was trying to do my political science homework begging "can we just do this scene?  my character needs to play out this plot line so i can get the experience points..."   junkies!  ;-)

if anyone thinks i need to cool it up to make up for that flagrant outburst of geekiness, i can boast that i went to school with ed helms of the daily show.  nyah nyah nyah.  chances are i gave him tech support at the computing center, even.