"And I was waiting over here
 For life to begin..."
    Pete Yorn, Life on a Chain

When I take stock of my life out hear I'm pretty pleased with what I find. I love the area, work is good, I like where I live, and I'm keeping pretty busy.

However, today I had a terrible thought, and I've been depressed ever since. You see... 97% of the people I encounter are only interacting with me because they have to. At work, in the ballrooms, at the gym... *sigh*. On the other hand I have only met three people I really want to spend time with, and two of them are married to each other :-) So perhaps its my fault.

But enough whining! Something neat did happen today. I was finally in a meeting where I wasn't the most lost person there. We had a meeting to plan the testing for one of MY features. That's right, MINE. I wrote it. Me. I RULE! Ahem, anyway... one of the testers was a new hire who had just graduated from U. of Nebraska, and she was very quiet. Just like I am when I don't really know what's going on. I meant to take her aside after the meeting and tell her it was all good, but I had to leave early for an appointment. Ah well... her Test Lead is a really friendly woman whom I think the world of (even though she has assigned almost a hundred bugs against my code :-)

Anyway, life moves forward. Swing night at the Century tomorrow. Perhaps the girl from a few weeks ago will put in another appearance. I invited Vanishing Jenn as well, but that was just for the sake of good form. Here's to hoping!

You probably don't want to hear advice from someone else
 but I wouldn't be telling you if I hadn't been there myself.
 It's all right, it's all right, sometimes that's all it takes.
 We're only human, we're supposed to make mistakes."
    Billy Joel, Second Wind

Ain't it the truth? My officemate, Gustavo, has rather odd taste in music for a Mexican who claims to have a hard time with English. (His is excellent, but he's modest). He's got all four of Billy Joel's Greatest Hit CDs so we had an all-day Billy Revival in our office today. Gustavo's an intern, and will only be here for another two weeks. I'll miss him, but don't tell him I said that ;-) Got to keep the interns on their toes, don't y'know?

My mentor had one of the Tablet PC prototypes to play around with today. SOOoo cool! Its like a color Etch-A-Sketch that works with a pen. The handwriting recognition is still too slow for my liking, but the size and the resolution of the screen are awsome! Its about as large as a medium-sized textbook and weighs about five to ten pounds. Looks like Microsoft finally found a good form-factor for its "desktop" concept.

Has anyone else been having problems with Blogger? I can't log in from some machines. I've got one machine where I can just use the browser's history to go straight into the editor, but then I can't log out.

Not much else to tell really. Had a dress rehersal for our little dance showcase. Most of the performances look incredible. I had never danced with my partner before, and I still don't actually know my choreography yet. So we just smiled and danced random waltz patterns around the floor like we were doing them on purpose or something. Works every time.

And just in case anyone from CompUSA is reading the page: GIMME MY XBOX, DAMNIT!!! To paraphrase J.R.R Tolkien: "Do not meddle in the affairs of Geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger."

"Hey, yay, yeah-ah-hey
 I'm happy and I'm satisfied."
    Toshi Reagon

So I finally had lunch with The Vanishing Jenn and a bunch of her co-workers. I actually only got to speak to her for a few minutes, but we're (all) going dancing this week so we'll just have to see. Actually the best part of lunch was eating in the Red West Cafeteria. The place looks like a ski lodge with a sweeping view of the snow-capped Cascade Mountains. Very upscale (for a cafeteria). They even have a Sushi Bar for heaven's sake.

I also had another lesson with "The Russian Princenss" as some people have taken to calling her. She really is an incredible teacher (especially for someone so young), but what I like best is her accent. "You must DRIVE viz your laig. Poosh off hard", "Kweek, kweek, slow... kweek, kweek, slow...", and "Iz very beautiful, yes?". She's a trip :-)

I have about two weeks to get my waltz together before I actually have to perform (with two other couples) at the little in house showcase that my studio puts on every year. Why I agreed to do this is beyond me. I'm pretty comfortable with public speaking at this point in my life, but dancing for an audience? This is perhaps the stupidest thing I've ever done ("And just between you and me. That's saying something." -A. Dumbledore).

You see the reason most guys won't dance is they're worried what they'll look like. Its the realization that no one is actually watching that finally liberates guys to start enjoying dancing. However, people are actually paying money to come watch this. Not good. Ah well, too late now. All I can do now is practice and apply what I've learned: Suft neez, kweek stips, rhyse and fol, rhysse and fol... :-)

"Take it hip to hip rocket through the wilderness
 Around the world the trip begins with a kiss"
    The B52s, Roam

This was one of the most well-rounded weekends that I have had in a long time. Bear with me whilest I expound :-)

Friday afforded me a rare opportunity to lay the smackdown as only one of the Gardner Children can. My roommates let me tag along to a gathering of some of their friends. Thirtysomethings are always fun to hang out with: they don't break things and they usually have good food. Anyway, they all decided to play a board game, and the host was fairly insistant on playing Encore. He seemed to think he was good at it or something. I wouldn't say I personally kicked his team's collective ass, but.... on second thought, yes, I did :-)

It was all in good fun, and we all actually went out to watch the meteor shower together the next night. We drove a half hour out into the mountains to watch the storm from Rattlesnake Lake. Now I had never seen a shooting star before that night, and I was blown away. We set up some lawn chairs and just lay there for over an hour. I tried counting the seconds between meteors and I rearely got above five. Absolutely amazing.

I also saw the Harry Potter movie with some friends. The acting was good, but it was painful to see how they kluged so much into so short a time frame. That's the problem with movies I guess. The Quidditch match was incredible, and the chess game was also very cool.

Then as we were leaving the theatre who should I (literally) run into, but Jenn... the girl who vanished from my dance studio after I invited her to lunch. It was a sadly awkward moment, and so I hoped to just do untroductions and call it a night. However, she suggested we do lunch this week. So we shall see.

In happier news, my roommate Susan is engaged! I'm so happy for her I get a warm fuzzy feeling just thinking about it. Her boyfriend...'scuse me, fiance, is a tall, intelligent, scrawny, eyeglass-wearing, engineer named Scott. NO NOT ME, YOU THUNDERING GOOFBALLS! I just happen to posses a lot of the same traits that apprently make him Marriage Material (including the name 'Scott'). Needless to say this makes me optomistic in my long ranged romantic forcast :-)

Have a lovely week.

"I knew the bride when she used to rock and roll
 I knew the bride when she used to rock and roll"
    ????

Went back to the Century last night. The dancing was most excellent, but the girl from last week was nowhere to be found. Another time perhaps.

PS - If you happen to run into anyone associated with CompUSA tell them I WANT MY @#$%&*^! XBOX!!!!

"I will try not to breathe..."
    REM, Try Not To Breathe

The phrase of the day is: breath mint.

Like most people I have taken to keeping some sort of breath freshening agent on hand. However, it really isn't enough to just have this material on hand. You have to USE it. Failure to do so can lead to what Nick accurately described as A Seinfeld Episode.

Yesterday I found myself in downtown Kirkland an hour before I had a private lesson with a new instructor so I decided to get some dinner. Kirkland is a sort of uppity Young & Wealthy town so its got some decent places to eat. I decided to try a likely looking seafood restaurant, and had a wonderful meal of Alaskan Sea Scallops with peppers, onions, and a good local beer to wash it all down.

Checking my watch I realized that I was going to be late. I paid my bill and ran back to the studio. (In the rain, but this is Seattle so that goes without saying). Anyway, I got back in the nick of time, changed my shoes, and dashed out on the floor. So I am introduced to the new teacher, and we begin working on Waltz technique.

Now to do waltz correctly you really need to be in contact with your partner. So I spend most of this lesson hip to stomach with the instructor, and almost cheek to cheek. Now this may not sound too bad: I get to spend an hour dancing waltz after a most excellent meal. Thing is: I can still taste the meal, which means my breath could probably spontaneously combust. So as we're going through the lesson I'm doing my best to give non-verbal answers to her questions, and thinking constantly of an excuse to run back to my bag and grab some Altoids.

To make things worse my teacher is Russian and english is a second language to her. She has a good command of the language, but she was constantly searching for just the right word for something. Which meant asking me the :"How do you call it... etc." At which point I would try to turn my head away from her face, and offer some possible words. A truly Seinfeld Experience.

Moral: Make sure you have a point before you begin writing a journal entry or it will sound really dumb.

I'm testing a new comment system.

"The ability to speak does not make you intelligent. Now go away."
    Quy-gon Jin, Epsiode I: The Phantom Menace

I would be a living testament to that statement.

I saw Monsters, Inc. this weekend. Cute, but not really all that funny. It was a Disney movie so we got to sit through about 35 minutes of previews. This was all made worthwhile, however, by the last two previews. The preview of Harry Potter showed that all the casting rumors I heard were true (Oliver Platt as Hagrid, Alan Rickman as Snape, etc.). The last preview was the Teaser Trailer for Epsiode 2 I'm so pumped.

The Xbox is only days away from its release date. I've got one on pre-order, but I'm not even in the first round of pre-orders. That's how much friggin' demand there is for these things. I'm finally ready though. You see up until this point I did not actually own a TV (which makes owning an Xbox less fun I'm told). So this weekend I did some serious internet research and bought myself a nice, modest, 36" TV :-) This and my plane tickets home are my final contribution to the Effort to Restart The Economy.

I'm flying into Baltimore on Sunday, December 23rd and staying through January 1st. I have no specific plans, but I would really, REALLY like to see anyone who might be passing through Lancaster during that time frame. :-)

So I guess I'll close with the anecdote that inspired this entry's quote. I went out dancing last week at a place called the Century Ballroom. Now when I lived in Raliegh I used to go dancing every Wednesday at a club called the Warehouse. Big dance floor and lots of good dancers. I was intimidated to dance on that floor. Well let's just say that the crowed at the Century puts the Warehouse scene to shame. Still I was there with a guy I met in my lessons and we managed to get each other psyched up enough to get in a decent amount of dancing. Hey, its a scary thing to ask a girl to dance. Especially when she's just lit up the floor with some other guy.

Anyway, I danced with this one girl who was not only a good dancer, but just sort of had a good nature that set you at ease. She was someone you can talk too. So I did. Turns out she's also from back east, and actually lives not to far from me over in Kirkland. She went to Cornell, but then no one's perfect. Anyway, we had a nice long chat, and wound up dancing quite a few songs together. Finally I decided I was going to call it a night. She decided to leave to, and asked me to walk her to her car.

Now friends, The Century is in a sketchy part of town and I'm sure this girl is just as friendly to everyone she meets, but I imagine that if I had said 'Hey, would you like to come to a dance at the Orion sometime.", or maybe even just asked her for her number I think she just might have agreed. Did I do either of these things? No. I intorduce her to Steve, the guy I came with, and ask him if he'd walk with us.

Its a wonder I've made it this far in life.

"I'd let you watch. I would invite you,
 But the queens we use would not excite you."
    Murry Head, One Night in Bangkok

Puzzle Hunt!

One nice thing about working for Microsoft is that I'm surrounded by other people who enjoy getting their Nerd On as much as I do.

So this past weekend was Microsoft's fourth semi-annual Puzzle Hunt. Its a day and a half long competition where teams of up to 12 people hole up somewhere on campus and solve puzzles from 10:00am Saturday till 5:30pm Sunday or someone wins (whichever comes first). Over the coarse of the two days you are given a whole bunch of tough (but solvable) puzzles. However, solving these puzzles only gives you the data you need to solve one or more meta-puzzles, and in those puzzles is where the REAL competition occurs.

The theme for this hunt was Clue so each puzzle was titled after a room, person, weapon, or time of day from the Clue game (and movie). Each solution would provide some information about that person place, time or thing. Once you had all that information you could solve "solve" the game of clue, and with THAT information you got a room location on campus and a combination to a safe to be found at that location. The team that first cracked that safe won the game.

I managed to find a shorthanded team to join, and had an awsome time. Sadly we only had between 3 and 6 people for the weekend so we wound up taking 21st out of 37 teams. All told there were a few hundred people playing, and the teams that one all had twelve people and were made up of the Creme de la Geek of Microsoft.

What's the appeal you might ask? Well people in our line of work do what we do because we LOVE solving problems. So for the most part the only reward is getting a chance to test your mettle against some of the best and the brightest out there. However, the winner does get something extra: the right to create and host the next years hunt.

So you might be wondering what a puzzlehunt puzzle is like? There are all kinds: word puzzles, picture puzzles, logic puzzles, etc. Most puzzles are actually a combination of things and have to be solved on more tha one level. So understanding the riddle, identifying the picuters, or solving the equations usually just gives you a bunch of data the provides the basis for a second level of the puzzle.

Well the puzzles from the Hunt I played in have been taken off the web for some reason so for now I'll give you one from last years hunt. I chose this one becuase I managed to solve it in a few minutes (as opposed to a few hours with some of the puzzles), and it doens't involve any sneaky anagrams or need of computer knowledge. Good luck!

"Oh all the money that e're I had
 I spent it in good company
 And all the harm I've ever done
 Alas it was to none but me
 And all I've done for want of wit
 To memory now I can't recall
 So fill to me the Parting Glass
 Goodnight and joy be to you all."
    The Parting Glass

This is the story of a minivan. The Million Dollar Minivan.

One of my co-workers turned forty today. This means he was born during the Eisenhaur administration. Anyway, a whole bunch of people turned up for his brithday lunch which was held in one of the all you can eat buffets that seniors like so much (and there were a LOT of them there).

After evereyone had been to the buffet a couple of times we were sitting around teasing the birthday boy. One of his old friends broke out a whole stack of Bingo cards with various embarasing and/or memorable episodes from his fifteen years at microsoft, and as each square was called out someone would tell the story of the square. This guys has seen some crazy times.

One of the squares was marked Million Dollar Minivan. I didn't have this one on my card so I missed the initial telling of the story, but I got it later form one of the older guys. It seems that during the early nineties Microsoft's stock price had plateaued. Figuring that it wasn't going to appreciate signifigantly this guy sold off his 500 shares in order to buy a minivan. Shortly after that the stock began to skyrocket and split several times. Someone did the calculations and if he had held on to that stock and sold it in the spring of 2001 it would have been worth over fifty-three million dollars.

Kind of puts some of your own bad decisions into perspective, doesn't it?