Relitivity Level

He, he. I can explore this little world again! This is the Half Life 2 level I made in drafting class a few years ago. It was crazy fun to build.

New Video Chat

Cool. Gmail now has Video chat. Last night I was thinking that it would be cool to be able to use the web cam built into my computer, I don't know what for, but was thinking it would be cool to be able to use it. So I started looking around out there to see what I could find, maybe a sidebar gadget or something. I found one but it wouldn't help to be able to actually reach out to someone else.

I then started looking for other ways. I did find that Live messenger has the option but even though I work at Microsoft I avoid some certain services. Something about an old irritation with Hot Mail adds and spam injection.

So, I check my email this evening, and wouldn't you know it, there is this "New feature" Link at the top, advertising Google Video Chat. Cool! It installed nicely and worked after a little bit. Now I just need to find a reason to use it... hmm...

Ah the Sensless Sillyness of Work

Before Halloween there was this rather long email chain broadcasting through the team, of people reporting that they would be getting off work early on Halloween day to avoid the Traffic congestion that tends to swamp Microsoft campus on that day, with parents bringing in their costumed kids to collect candy.

Well one of the people who replied in the chain said he was going to stay just to pick off the chocolate, then a few seconds later the same guy emails again only this time with some SQL code involving Lambdas. It was quite the strange response to the topic of candy and taking off early. But one person on the team had an idea of what it must mean, so he replied back saying that "Lambda expressions are chocolate for the mind..."

A few days later another email was sent out announcing an anniversary of one of the team who works off-site. He wanted to continue the tradition of providing a pound of chocolate for every year he had been employed with Microsoft but being off-site he couldn't put the usual bowl out, so he sent "virtual chocolate."

Well, one of my Managers has quite the sense of humor, so he found that Lambda expression and replied back with it. Someone asked if it would become the next team T-Shirt. Of course I got the idea to see what it would look like as a T-Shirt. So I created a Zazzle account and whipped out a quick design. Ah, what fun.