January 5, 2007 by Nitin Dahyabhai.

How do you clean up a vacuum whose bag has unexpectedly burst, covering the inside and parts of the outside with large amounts of dust?

Duh.

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December 31, 2006 by Nitin Dahyabhai.

With an old buddy in tow, I made my way to Ben and Cynthia’s last night for a New Years Eve Eve get-together. Frankly, they live pretty far out from where I am and the quickest route that Google provided wasn’t simple. Plus it was dark. And raining. And I’d never been there. We only took two wrong turns.

And then there was this stuff that Mark brought along to drink. Non-alcoholic, of course, since everyone knows I don’t drink (isn’t it time for fake rumors of me being a recovering alcoholic?), but good grief it was stronger than the syrup they use to make fountain drinks! The evening was otherwise filled with delicious finger-food, Guitar Hero, and not one, but two different Karaoke games. Mark claims to be tone-deaf and I didn’t do any singing, either…allergies, you know how it is.

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December 19, 2006 by Nitin Dahyabhai.

It’s almost Christmas. How can I tell? The fat man is back on Coca-Cola bottles.

It was only a few days ago that one of my favorite online communities was extolling the virtues of Egg Nog, at times even swearing allegiance to it. Of course I’d be betrayed days later. Remember kids, if something’s chewy, chew thoroughly. If that something is Egg Nog, for goodness sake throw it out. Being violently ill is too high a price to pay just to get your money’s worth.

And no, there were still a few days left before the expiration date. Who decides these dates anyway? It’s a conspiracy I tell you.

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November 21, 2006 by Nitin Dahyabhai.

The machine itself is tiny. The lack of readily available S-Video cables is disappointing. The Wii Sports Tennis game it comes with is awesome.

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November 19, 2006 by Nitin Dahyabhai.

There was a plan, you see? Showing up at a 24-hour Wal-Mart a few hours before midnight to buy a Wii seemed like an interesting enough thing to do. After all, we’d be waiting inside where it was warm–in what way could this be that different from waiting for a really popular ride at an amusement park, especially among friends?

OK, so Plan A failed.

My cohort and I, let’s just call him Dave, were going to try to get Wiis (Wiii? Wiien?) at the stroke of midnight. While I had no doubt that the machine would be worth owning eventually, I was mostly going along out of curiosity. To our dismay, two different 24-hour stores already had unoffical lines in place, some as early as the night before. Dave, however, was prepared to go the distance by staying overnight. Oh, the folly of letting him drive.

Apparently the local Targets were getting a fairly good supply of machines, the one minutes from my apartment included. Dave had this determination about him that wouldn’t be stopped, and leaving a friend in a parking lot overnight by himself wasn’t the sort of thing I felt comfortable doing. A quick dinner later we were unpacking folding chairs and blankets from the trunk of his car. We settled in as, and I’m not kidding, people further up in line were singing odes to the Wii, accompanied by guitar. And hey, there was sidewalk graffiti: Link and God (adjacent PS3 haterade not shown).

North Carolina isn’t known for its bitter winters, especially for those of us who’ve lived up North for a bit, but this night was cold. I’m talking it’s-too-cold-to-play-DS-while-waiting cold. Although, as we found, not too cold for the college crowd to loudly play football in the parking lot all night long while tossing back a few cold ones (cooler not required). Kudos to you gentlemen, I certainly didn’t want to sleep through this night.
A scant 11 hours later we were let into the store to make our purchases. We made it back to Dave’s where he promptly unboxed his machine and started making Miis of himself, his wife, and son. While debating the shape of my jaw was moderately amusing, I was dead tired, and it was my mother’s birthday–and my parents happened to be visiting at the time (I had called to tell them I wouldn’t be home that night, you can imagine how that phone call went over). In short, it seemed a good idea to quietly go home. I managed my way home and promptly fell into bed, the Wii box sitting on the floor, unopened. Dave was hosting a party of sorts around the Wii later that day–of course I ended up sleeping through the whole thing.

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November 8, 2006 by Nitin Dahyabhai.

Yesterday was both a mid-term election day in the U.S. as well as the 5th birthday of Eclipse. Birthday parties were held, stuff was given away, people drank together (at least until the open bar fund ran out). 5 years ago, we hadn’t caught Osama bin Laden, people thought of Eclipse as mostly an “IBM thing”, two next-generation home video game consoles were days from launching in the U.S., one of which supported some new-fangled video on disc format, and geeks worldwide were eagerly awaiting Sam Raimi’s upcoming film about an obscure superhero calling himself The Human Spider.

The times they are a changin’.

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November 6, 2006 by Nitin Dahyabhai.

Yay me. You’ll find that I put this blog up some time after I started writing things down, so the publish dates will often be confusing.

Deal with it!

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October 31, 2006 by Nitin Dahyabhai.

IBM provides us with discounted soft drinks, all the better to keep us going.  While Diet Coke is my vice of choice and this machine can vend that sweet, sweet nectar all day long, for some reason our floor has the most tempermental machine I’ve ever seen.

It ’s true, I hate this machine sometimes.  Happy Halloween!

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October 8, 2006 by Nitin Dahyabhai.

Two of my friends just got married, to each other no less.

It’s rare that I attend a wedding where I know both the bride and groom well, but with these two it was a natural fit. Honestly, at times I wondered how long Ben was going to wait before asking Cynthia to marry him, given how obviously the two of them were meant for each other from almost the first time I saw them together. Way to go you two.

Many friends and familes were on hand for what turned out to be a very touching ceremony involving quotations from diverse sources as The Princess Bride and Babylon 5. As my Evil Twin would say, NERDS!

Among attendees, old friends from Gamers’ Gauntlet, including Bad Mojo, who has an uncanny ability to spot a camera when you’re trying to take a picture of him.

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September 9, 2006 by Nitin Dahyabhai.

Nalin managed to get us tickets to see Bruce Campbell speak at a local theatre as well as see Bubba Hotep afterward. It was nice to hear Bruce talk about the importance of local theatres, supporting the performance arts, and how independent films and “B-movies” are increasingly the best place for fresh ideas. He then did some Q&A and signed copies of his new book. Hot news: his role in Spider-Man 3 is “pivotal“. And while I’ve seen Bubba Hotep many times, I never had a chance to see it on the big screen. It’s admittedly not for everyone (a large portion of the movie is very much reflection upon the main character’s life, and there’s a particularly uncomfortable monologue when the movie opens), but it’s a film that moved me in a way that most don’t, while still offering a good dose of humor and even some low-budget action. Even if he’s not a superstar, you can’t deny that he’s a actor who earns his pay.

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