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Category: Personal

Speedy repair

Nobody ever blogs about good customer support.

So I sent my Powerbook into Apple to be fixed on Thursday. On Saturday, I checked the repair info page, and the issue was marked as closed. This was somewhat worrisome; I had visions of my poor little laptop lost in Apple’s vast cavernous shipping bays, never to be seen again. So I called customer service.

Turned out they’d fixed it the same day it got there, and dropped it back into the mail. I got it back Monday. Three business day turnaround! Go, Apple.

Family matters

Mom, who has informed me that she is not to be referred to as “a family member” anymore, is doing good. (“But Mom, it was for privacy… oh, OK, fine.”) The surgery went well and she’s recuperating as quick as she can, although it’ll still be a while. If anyone feels inspired to send a card, I’m sure she’d greatly appreciate it:

Priscilla Durrell
c/o Cape Cod Hospital
27 Park Street
Hyannis, MA 02601

She’s in the ICU for a couple of days, after which she’ll be back in the normal ward to keep healing up. She also thanks (as do I) everyone who sent kind thoughts.

Bigger burger

O’Sullivan’s Pub in Somerville has burgers that are two inches thick, made of ground sirloin, and if you want they’ll put garlic on it. Or roll ‘em in pepper. Or whatever. Also, the french fries are slabs of potato. The beer selection isn’t great, but they have Bass on draft, so that’s OK.

I’m feeling very content, food-wise, just now.

Mmm french toast

Haven’t fared past the first run of breakfast joints I found for a while, but I did today. The Lighthouse in Medford Square is not exceptional and does not provide any unusual taste treats, but it does a basic breakfast damned well and I rather expect I’ll drift by there again from time to time. The coffee is OK and the hash browns are not too greasy; the french toast is angelic. Bring your own real maple syrup.

Deaf dumb and blind kid

The first person who changed my life, I never met. He or she left some old SF paperbacks in a little villa on Green Turtle Cay, in the Bahamas — Perry Rhodans, as I recall — and I read them while I was ten or so and on vacation. They blew me away, far more so than the golf books. I haven’t stopped reading SF yet.

That’s why my dad’s friend Peter Olotka said “Hey, your son likes SF — he can share our room at Boskone if you like.” Dad said sure, and that was my first SF con. I enjoyed the hell out of it, but I more or less stopped going when I hit college.

That wasn’t permanent, though, because I went on a youth group trip to China a year or so before I hit college. That’s where I met Stefani. Afterwards, she introduced me to her friend Pearl.

In college, Pearl met Susan, who organized trips to SF cons, which is why I started going to those again. Susan introduced me to Randomness. Randomess introduced me to TinyMUD. (The original one, at CMU, thank you very much.)

I met Gretchen on TinyMUD, and roleplayed with her on Amber, which is why I figured it might be worth taking a shot at San Francisco. Bruce, god bless him for this at least, got me the job at Netcom a few months after I got out there. That was my entry into high-tech.

I also met Rich on TinyMUD, and he’s why I can call myself a professional writer.

Time passed. Ambar suggested I come work for Altavista, which is where I got into management. I would have gotten into management at the other job I was considering at the time, but I wouldn’t have had one of the world’s biggest Web sites on my resume, and that made a difference later on.

Finally, Jamie Wakefield, who I’ve never met, wrote incredible articles about a game. If I hadn’t read those, I wouldn’t have applied for (and gotten) the job I applied for most recently.

And here I am.

There are many other people who changed who I am, and some of the people who’ve sent my life bouncing in wild new directions overlap with that category. But those are the people who’ve changed my life in terms of pinball.

Things I want to remember

Look, it’s the only place I have where I can put the packing list and be constantly reminded of it.

  • iBook

    * charger

    * DVDs?

    * memory card reader

  • Camera

    * Batteries

  • Shadowfist cards
  • Razor, toothbrush, toothpaste, hair bands
  • Wrestling tapes
  • GBA

    * Games: AW II, AW, Crash, Yoshi’s Island, p’raps Warioware

    * Charger

  • Cell phone charger
  • iPod & headphones

Galway to Gencon

I’m off to Gen Con soon; specifically, I’m leaving Thursday. Blogging may be sporadic during that time, or it may be frequent — it all depends on what kind of wireless access I can find in the convention center. I’ll have my laptop and — hey, why not? — my camera. In fact, I’ll set up a Typepad photo blog for those so they don’t clog things up over here.

If you happen to be planning to attend Gen Con, I will be playing a metric ton load of Shadowfist and will likely be at the Z-Man Games booth off and on. I might also be at the Vivendi Games booth. Or drop me an email.

As far as I know there’s no blogger meet set up, which is a pity. I should stop thinking of these things two days in advance.

Where? There.

Right there, in the big tan building at the center-left of the picture. If you were driving northwest along the road that cuts from the east side to the north side, you’d take a left after the semicircular driveway; then drive down one block. See, it’s the tan building on the left side of the street. Can’t miss it.

(I’m pretty sure these wouldn’t actually work as directions if you didn’t know where I lived already. I hope, anyhow.)