6 June 2000

I had a really good day yesterday. I was between projects, so I didn't have to do any work, but my manager came in at one point and told me I'm getting a new project today, so I know I won't be bored for the rest of the summer. (Well, I might, depending on how this project goes, but there's a chance! That's me, the eternal optimist!)

Not having any work to do at work gave me the leisure to work on the MeadeHall story and spend a lot of time chatting on AIM. I talked to Kevin about his concerns for his character in my game, and I think we achieved a good compromise. I talked to K.T. about a series of stories she's writing - she sent me some snippets that I thought were really well-written and darn funny. And I talked through a bit of a misunderstanding I'd had with Braz, so I'm feeling much happier.

After work, Matt and I went to the grocery store, which we always do on Mondays. We were getting low on popcorn, so we turned down the junk food aisle to get some and just to be sure, I glanced at the rack of Tostitos as we passed, and there ("there... there on the other side... in the middle of the other side...") There they were. Hint of Lime Tostitos. The chips I've been craving for two weeks and not been able to find anywhere. They had two bags, but we only got one. As I told Kris later - I was being generous. Who knows how many other desperate lime-chip-craving souls were wandering hopelessly around that store?

I enjoyed the Meade Hall session, too, though by the time we were halfway into it, the argument on the side-channel was taking up so much typing time that things had slowed to a crawl. Kevin, apparently, was feeling antagonistic and got just about everyone caught up in an argument about John Rocker and the freedom of speech. I'm not going to get into it here. I left the side-channel altogether last night because, after making my points a couple of times and not even having them acknowledged, I decided that I didn't feel like banging my head against a brick wall, and that if I stayed, I was just going to get angry. So I left, and had some chips.

One of the websites I visit on a near-daily basis has something like a quote of the day. Friday's was pretty funny, and I wrote it up on our whiteboard in my office: "Women complain about sex more than men. Their gripes fall into two categories: 1) Not enough, and 2) Too much." (Anne Landers)

When I came in yesterday morning, one of my office mates had written a note off to one side: "This proves that women are two times as complex as men." And my manager had converted the quote into code:

int complain (int having sex)
{
    return (having_sex ? too_much : not_enough);
}

It was decided that this code was imcomplete, so we expanded it:

int complain (int having_sex, int gender)
{
    if (gender == MALE)
        return not_enough;
    else
        return (having_sex ? too_much : not_enough);
}

Word of the Day: tsunami - a tidal wave; a wave produced by earth movement or volcanic eruption

Braz and I decided yesterday that it would be a good thing to combine all of the stuff we've written on the Meade Hall story so far into a single document, the idea being to illuminate where we had gaps that needed filling and to give us a master document to work with. Now, we'd come to the conclusion a couple of weeks ago that if we actually got this written up the way he wants it (it's his baby; I'm just helping) then we're looking at something the length of a novel.

But still, it was astonishing to look at the combined document. Page after page of writing. It was a veritable tsunami of words.

Even if we never finish it, I'm sortof proud of what's already been accomplished.