Monday afternoon, he came into our office and said that he had a meeting all afternoon, and that he'd sit down with us Tuesday morning and give us projects.
Tuesday and Wednesday, neither CK nor my officemates came in to the office because of the snow and crap on the roads.
Yesterday, CK seemed to have forgotten altogether about the possibility of giving us work to do. So in a fit of boredom, I'm writing my own personal version of Minesweeper.
I get mesmerized by games really easily. Especially fairly simple games that don't require high levels of thought. In college, before I had Windows, I spent hours at a time playing Tetris - which was especially mesmerizing on my monochrome monitor. When I went to grad school, I cashed in about half of my savings account and bought a brand new computer with Windows installed. I had no life in grad school, and I spent all my time playing Minesweeper. (I'd played it for months before I learned about clicking both buttons. That almost halved my times.) I was the Minesweeper goddess. I'd seen better scores bragged online, but I didn't know anyone personally who could beat me.
I could play Minesweeper without really thinking about it, while I mulled over some other problem. I invented variations of the game - playing without flags, or having to move only to adjacent squares. Like that.
Now I'm at a new job, and corporate policy won't let the IS department install even simplistic Minesweeper and Solitare games on our computers. So when I was faced with another long day of nothing to do, and the idea came to me of writing a Minesweeper game - maybe even include my variant rules and a system of lives and points rather than a simple timer - it seemed pretty reasonable.
It's harder than I thought it would be. But at least I'm not as bored.
Matt was almost done making dinner last night when K.T. called and asked if we wanted to meet her and Kevin and Matt O. for dinner somewhere. Matt put the decision in my hands (which I think was cheating, since it was his night to do dinner) but since I've been feeling sortof cabin-feverish, I decided dinner out sounded good, especially since they'd decided to go to Don Pablo's.
So about forty-five minutes later, Matt and I sat down to a table at Don Pablo's, and a few minutes after that, the rest of them showed up. Our waiter was a stitch.
"What can I get you to drink? Soda, lemonade, marguerita, shot of tequila...?"
K.T. spoke up: "Diet whatever."
"Diet tequila! Right!"
Giving our orders, K.T. asked, "And can I get a side of sour cream?"
"No way!"
When I'm out with my friends, I like a friendly waiter; I fall right into step behind Matt's grandfather, who asks restaurant hostesses to give him "a waitress he can harass." Occasionally Matt and I will be having a romantic evening, in which case I want the waiter to stay in the background as much as possible. But usually, I enjoy having a waiter or waitress who understands that they are part of my experience and who want to make it enjoyable for me.
Ask, and ye shall receive.
We finally got our project. It looks like it's going to be a truncated version of the project I was on at 3GI before I left. Argh! Will I never escape??!?
At least this time I got to pick which piece I was going to work on. I chose the one that, while being potentially more effort, was less likely to make me run screaming for the hills. Why can't I get a job that doesn't involve internet security?
Oh, well. Guess I'd better go read some manuals...
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