Side projects galore

I had a fun weekend. I had rscott and his girlfriend crashing at my place. They seem tentative about being a couple but I think they have that certain mutual annoyance and camaraderie that suits young couples. It made me miss being in a relationship. Then again, everything makes me miss being in a relationship. "Oh look... an ear of corn."

We crashed Vericon, which is Harvard's attempt at a geek convention. It's a shot glass filled with skim milk compared to Arisia's gallon of clotted creme. However, it was neat to watch people play Katamari Damacy -- this weird, brilliant video game where you roll a sticky ball over the surface of a place trying to collect stuff on the ball. Yes, really. As you stick more stuff on the ball, the bigger the stuff it can glom. So, you start out picking up dolls or road crap and then roll up some people and then cars and next statues and soon entire islands. The scale of the world perpetually changes to make the ball seem the same size, so you'll want to roll between a couple objects at one point and be large en enough to absorb both objects within a few minutes. Here's a better description.

I need to mention the traumatic moments of Saturday because... well, they only happen to me. Perhaps I provoke them by asking to be a socially-engaged, interesting person. A couple of you had told me I was in this week's Weekly Dig. I assumed that meant a small picture of me was in, say, a corner of something. So I grabbed a Dig. I turned to page 54 and found a tabloid-sized, full-length shot of me and chthulia seated on a couch at a really good party from Arisia. Above and to the left of my head are the words slag heap. I think this makes me a photograph that defies description. There are no other words on the page. There is no context besides the one I'm giving you now. My hair is out of place enough that I look like a hick. Tens of thousands of indie geeks around the Boston area have seen me looking like I was freshly molested by a Playboy bunny.

Life is good.

Then again, I was walking around Harvard Square in the exact same outfit as I'd worn in the picture (jeans and a "that's a moire" tee). I have this look on my face like I'm about to say something smart but it'll be in an Ozark accent. It's jarring. I wonder if anyone saw the pic, then saw me and said "trolling, are we?"

Didn't get me any trim. Ah well.

Speaking of which, I'm tired of being horny. Bah. All these working hormones are annoying and frustrating. I met a woman over the weekend that I quickly came to like. However, I have no clue what to do about it. I want to be cool, but it's not necessarily my bag. I did what I do for everyone -- I fixed her computer. She's a Russian Studies grad student at Harvard. She quoted some Pushkin in the native tongue to me and all I parsed was "I love you". I was, like, stunned and stupid. This was totally turning me on. Then again, I am male. Then again, it's Russian. Seeing anyone hung up on a topic that passionately really makes me want to stop what I'm doing and listen.

I guess by talking about it here I blow any chance of developing anything. Right? Wrong? Dunno. If dating is a game of poker, then yes. I hope it's not. Anyone got any advice? By the way, don't say "be yourself" because Dante doesn't know which part of himself would work here.

I shouldn't think too hard about this. I also shouldn't think so hard about the flicker-ad I saw in the subway. I was on the Red Line between Harvard and Central, reading my geek book. I then thought to myself "oh hey, where are my earplugs?" and I looked up to search. That's when I saw this flickering Target spot going on outside the window of the train. It looked like someone had a flip-book projecting onto the windows five times. It's hard to describe this. I think it's using a permutation of the zoestrobe lights -- LEDs on a vertical stick you can look at straight on but it isn't until you look away that the entire picture unfolds. There was no one else near me that I could ask whether they also saw it. I felt like I was hallucinating some new kind of advertising straight out of Transmetropolitan.

Today was more relaxed. I dropped off my cool guests, did some vocal work to finish my part in Farnsworth, finished setting up my old roomie's computer and scored an 8-gig drive for my troubles. Then i got to another friends place. The best I can discern is that her southbridge died -- the system sees a network card but can't make it move packets, no matter the operating system. It's a good thing I have spare computers all over my pad.

Two more days at Comcast. I have a weird life, It's time for me to see the advantages of it and get comy with it.

By the way, how do I turn a set of 40 RAR files into the one file they're supposed to be? I've never used WinRAR before.

-always something new, Dante