Umbral Echoes Blog

My friend Cary is going to be moving to Atlanta — he got a gig as a paid programming intern for the World of Darkness MMO.  And if he does well with that for 2-3 months, then he’ll be hired on as  a “real” programmer.  He might possibly be bunking here; such details are yet to be determined.  There shall be a welcoming party with much booze, oh yes.  Yes indeed.

For those who don’t know Mandy, he plays on Criminal Minds, and also the HBO series Dead Like Me. Also, he played Inigo Montaya in The Princess Bride.

Samantha linked me to this video today; it’s the first time I’ve actually laughed out loud from something on the Internet in some time. Enjoy

There was a minor upgrade of Wordpress available (that’s the software I use to run my blog on my website), so of course I upgraded. Or at least, I tried to. Copied the files, everything worked fine. Ran the upgrade script… PHP vomit all over the screen. Tried tinkering with things to fix it, but unfortunately my web host was having some issues at the time (read: the server was choking again), so that was an aggravating process. Today I finally got things up and running again, though. So let’s cross our fingers, NOT run the latest version, and hope the next version they create doesn’t break things.

I’ve always said that I was a pretty good kid.  I didn’t do drugs, I didn’t run with the “bad crowd.”  I did extracurricular activities.  Yet my mother and I constantly fought anyway.  Then today I remembered this particular story from childhood, and I realized maybe I was more of a little shit than I give myself credit for.

As a bit of background information, I took years of Spanish.  About 11 years total, though my vocabulary is totally lost these days.  My mother also took a bit of Spanish in school, so she knew a few words.

Okay, so three friends had just spent the night.  Next morning, we were at the table eating breakfast, and I randomly ask, “¿Mama, dónde está tu cabeza?” (Mom, where is your head?)

She looks over and replies, “What, the cheese?  The cheese is in the fridge.”

My friends snickered, and I immediately responded, “Sí, es queso.”  (Yeah, it’s cheese.)  Laughter ensues, as does a confused expression on my mother’s face.

I had another great idea recently. I was going to keep it to myself, but a few friends told me that I should share things such as this with the world. So, I present you my idea:

Master Rogers’ Neighborhood

This show will be like Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, except… not. Master Rogers enters the scene, walking down creaky stairs into a faintly lit dungeon. He’s wearing a leather mask, one of those studded strappy Dom harnesses, a thick belt with floggers and other toys attached,  a leather thong, and a pair of spiked boots. He sits on one sub who is crouched over on elbows and knees, puts his boot onto another which is lying flat on the floor, and unlaces boots. Then unzips the mask, puts it on a spike on the wall, stands (on sub #2), and says, “Good evening, subbies. Today, we’re going to learn about electro-torture. Can you say ‘violet wand’? I thought that you could.”

Seriously, someone should make this show. You know you would watch it.

White Wolf, as most people reading this probably know, is developing an MMORPG.  They’re currently filling positions for programmers and other such things.  One position that they can’t seem to fill is that of female game designer — currently, the design team is all males.  And, wanting the game to be appealing to women too, they want a female designer.  Except they can’t seem to find anyone for the position.  There’s even an article at ComputerWorld.com about the general lack of females in game development.

So come on, ladies.  Job opportunity right here!  Where all the lady game designers at?

My friend Cary came down to apply for a job doing MMORPG programming for the upcoming World of Darkness game, and he picked quite a good weekend to come; partying abounded all weekend long.

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