I really like the new design Pepsi has adopted for their cans. There’s just something really cool about the simplicity of it. Have a look.

New Pepsi design

It’s been a few days, but I wanted to post something about my time at Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) last weekend with Riad, Gautham, and George. To sum it up, I had an absolute blast.

Being a fan of the web comic, all of the panels headed up by Mike and Jerry (or Gabe and Tycho, if you prefer) were a lot of fun, but I think the convention has so much to offer that even those who don’t really read Penny Arcade have plenty to do and see.

Highlights for me were:

• The keynote speech by Ken Lavine where he admitted to having a teenage crush on the Scarlet Witch (kind of an interesting statement in these post House of M days)
• The “make a strip” panel where they drew this past Mondays comic live
• Our pitch of Eco-Slayer in the “pitch your game idea” panel which really got the crowd going and scored us three honorable mentions. George wrote more about the experience on his blog here.
• Awesome concert performances; most notably the OneUps, MC Frontalot, and the Minibosses.

I also saw some cool games:

• Project Origin (which made me forget the ridiculous number of keyboard commands I needed to play it’s prequel: F.E.A.R.)
• Little Big Planet
• InFamous
• Resistance 2 (well, the multiplayer part of it )
• Gears of War 2 (cool, even though I don’t own an Xbox 360 (yet…?)
• Tom Clancy’s HAWX looks like the first cool flight game I’ve seen in a long time (no, I’m not counting Warhawk in that category)
• Mirror’s Edge (I actually managed not to barf while watching someone else play)

I also got to try Brawndo and now have a better understanding of why plants crave it so much. I think I’ll probably head back next year too and in 2010 there’s going to be a PAX East in Boston which would make for a pretty awesome time as well.

Owning a home has presented quite a few challenges for me since I moved in last year. Some have been small like replacing bathroom fixtures while others have been tough enough that I need to call in the cavalry. In particular, I always see to be fighting the local fauna like it’s some damned post-apocalyptic nightmare!

Here’s the body count from 2007:

• Qty. 1 Scorpion who greeted me on my first night in the place - Saved by my naive mercy
• Qty. 1 bee colony of over a thousand bees - DEAD (required hiring people in bee suits)
• Qty. 4 wasp nests in the attic and periphery of the house - DEAD

For 2008

• Qty. 1 baby rabbit - DEAD/DECAPITATED, by the sharp edge of my lawn mower blades (relax, it was an accident)
• Qty. 1 bird rotting inside the wall outtake for my dryer - DEAD & BLOATED

The bird thing happened today, while the unfortunate rabbit incident of 2008 happened a couple of months ago. Fall and winter tend to bring out more critters in my neck of the woods so we’ll see what the year-end body count will be.

What’s the worst email exchange you’ve ever had with a colleague or co-worker? Today, I think I might have hit an all-time low in that category. Essentially, I traded 6 emails with someone this morning who argued semantics with me about a statement I made in another email.

In the end, and what really made the whole thing ridiculous, is that the person didn’t actually read the entire email in question. They picked out one snippet (actually a grand-total of 3 ASCII characters; without the all-important words before and after it), and then tried to verbally beat me with it for the better part of the morning. Ugh.

After doing some polite maneuvering to get the person to realize what a bonehead they were being, I felt completely dead by 10am. Not only that, but I got no apology, retraction, etc. whatsoever after the fact.

I was so bewildered, I walked around the halls near my office like a ghost for like 5 minutes this morning contemplating how crazy the last hour had been. What a waste.

While the rest of the world is talking about the death of Arthur C. Clarke, I wanted to draw attention to another person of great import that has also passed away. Professor Jin Au Kong of MIT died yesterday at the age of 65.

Professor Kong was/is a prolific figure in the field of electromagnetics and one of the most memorable personalities of my MIT experience. His charming personality and unbelievable acumen made an impression on all of his students.

The research community and the world of higher education have lost a great man. May he rest in peace.

The CNN “magic” pie chart

Pie Charts! I meant to put this post up quite a while ago, but I completely forgot! Anyway, yes, pie charts are back in full force this year. This includes a new nemesis of mine, the “magic” 3D CNN pie chart. For crying out loud people, just show me the numbers, I don’t need useless faux-visualization.

I don’t like to get all that political on my little piece of the Internet, but I did want to point out that the current presidential election process has placed some emphasis on the whole youth vs. experience, 18-25 year-olds (i.e. Millenials) vs. the older crowd (presumably mostly Baby Boomers). Not that I’m ready to endorse anyone yet, but Barack Obama seems to be heavily associated with younger people (since he is himself the youngest candidate this year, I believe). At first it seemed like there was some lack of respect towards the man’s legitimacy because he was a young presidential candidate. I’m glad this has seemed to go by the wayside as I don’t really see how a grumpy old man could do much better (I’m looking at you Cheney).

I’ve been thinking a lot over the last couple of months about generations. A few years back, thanks to the now-former MIT admissions director Marilee Jones, I learned that my generation had finally gotten a semi-official label - the “Millenials”. I never really identified myself as one, nor did I feel the need to. Being surrounded by Millenials in college probably contributed to my apathy on the subject quite a bit.

Now that I’ve graduated and have joined the working class I’m starting to realize that being a Millenial classifies me a bit more than I would have thought. At work, my Millenial sensibilities clash with my Baby Boomer colleagues time and time again. It took me months to think about things in this context, but once I started to a lot of the daily little confusions that would happen at the office were easily explained by some sort of clash in generational values.

I think a lot of it has to do with how closely we all have to work with technology. All of the “confusions” I’m talking about usually revolve around computing preferences or the way we think about or model some piece of technology. It’s probably also got a lot to do with my almost OCD-like attentional to detail that comes and goes.

At any rate, this generational thing has been burning up my brain for a while now, so I’m thinking this might be a theme for the new year. Look for a few posts in the coming days with more of my musings. Here’s a link to the Wikipedia article on Millenials. It’s a little rough, but it does somehow magically hit on some salient features of our supposed “hero” generation.

I’ve had bad days and weeks before, but this month has been pretty awful. Even in college when I would have a bad semester, there were always bright spots to help me push through. For some reason this November has been a non-stop set of “kick you when you’re down” moments from pretty much the first day.

Events at work have been to blame for the majority of the crap I’ve had to deal with this month. The late hours continued to pile on starting around Halloween and things didn’t let up. I was soon sent off to Japan/Korea on 4-days notice to attempt to mop-up problems that were way more complicated than anyone knew. After returning from that firestorm, things continued to get difficult at work.

On top of that, I’ve had a few insect problems here at the house that took forever to solve thanks to my work commitments. I even got a flat tire the day after I got back from my trip out east as well. Today, on the final day of the month, after being chewed out this morning I am now starting to get sick.

At least I made it out alive. December will hopefully have better times in store. In the meantime, I’m going to get some rest and see if I can’t shake this new cold.

A funny thing about working with SLICs for a living, you never know if that sound you’re hearing down the hall is the phone in your office ringing or just someone testing their equipment.

Also, you wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find a decent document online describing what a SLIC is. Here’s an article about VoIP with at least an overview.

I’ve been incredibly busy lately. It seems that the work week is completely consumed by goings-on in the office, leaving me with only the weekend to get anything done on the house. Between my goals for the house and hanging out with all the cool people surrounding me, there’s little time left. That being said, the list of things to do is slowly being whittled down so I’m praying I can take a deep breath soon (it’s already sort of starting to happen).

In other news, my family (mom, dad, brother, and sister) just finished visiting Austin. We all had a blast hanging out and I received some incredible help “accessorizing” the house as well. More visitors, May and Hippo, are due in town next weekend too!

It’s hard to believe some times how much has happened since moving to Austin at the end of January. My life has changed quite a bit!