Within my extended family, we do a Secret Santa gift exchange. Some time ago, someone decided it would be fun to add in a gift wrapping competition as well, with the winner receiving a small bottle of booze and bragging rights. The entries became more and more elaborate and insane and eventually we decided to make it harder by restricting entries to a theme. That also became too easy, so this year we also had to assemble the gifts in under two hours, using only items from a community chest of crafty detritus. And so:

Missing Image ;(

"Wheel of Fortune" to my mom, "the queen." Vanna White is a yellow Lego spaceman with packing krinkles glued to her head. Second place.


"The Latvian Gambit," a fully functional chess set with pieces made from wine corks, pom-poms, buttons, paper egg carton cups, packing peanuts, and pistachios. Third place (tie).


"Top O' the World," a ferris wheel with riders made from clothes pegs, champagne corks, and hair rollers with pom-poms.


"Whack-A-Mime," a functional whack-a-mole type game. Third place (tie).


"Maris In Motion," a charade game. Before the gift was open, we each had to perform Unmarislike tasks in a Marislike fashion.


"Very Beary," using teddy bears from around the house.

"Les's Fun Park," an entire amusement park with free-fall ride, house of mirrors, and functional ferris wheel. First place (no picture yet).

"Christmas Tree," with packing bean snow. (No picture yet.)

- Z

...behind

Danielle and I went to college together, but when she graduated she moved to Los Angeles to become a movie star [to some extent - she's an animator]. We haven't seen each other in five years, so it seemed Important to make an opportunity to get together while I'm in southern California.

The thing you have to understand about Danielle is that she is awesome in an understated way [and I am not just saying this because I think she's reading]. A couple vignettes from my brief visit:

---

[Ext., balcony]
D: Hey look, it's the Hollywood sign.
Z: I can't see anything.
D: Neither can I.
[N.B.: the sign isn't lit at night.]

---

[Int., restaurant]
D: Remember how you used to try to make me snort milk out my nose at the cafeteria?
Z: You make it sound like I was doing it on purpose. I never really did it on purpose. It just kind of ...
[Some ridiculous person in the next booth over starts nattering on very loudly about something very inconsequential.]
Z: [losing train of thought, pulls a face]
D: [snorts Italian soda out her nose]

---

[Ext., stopped at traffic light. Too early to be conversational. After some silence, Danielle makes a sound like a lost sheep.]
D: Ehhh...
Z: Huh?
D: Nothing.
Z: Existential ennui at the traffic light?
D: I thought that guy was pissing on the bus.
Z: Ah.
D: ...
D: Ennui, too.

---

- Z

My family has congregated in San Diego for Christmas; (e:dragonlady7) is with her kin near Troy. I received this text message last night:

From: (e:dragonlady7)
To: (e:zobar)

Argh I thought [XY] was joking about [XX] ovulating But there's an awful lot of suspicious creaking from the bedroom next door. am i an aunt?

- Z

How a hip computer geek spends his Friday night:

1. Will it blend? That is the question.

2. Catfish/green bean wrestling: the bean loses. Everyone else wins.

3.

4. Yeah, it costs $80 a bottle and it has to be delivered by independent courier, but at 136 proof it makes Johnny Black taste like sun tea. You only live once.


- Z

On Tuesday, I received an unusual message from an unusual person best known for his work on a highly regarded local website - 'due to creative differences we have decided to part ways, and I wonder if we could be of service to your company in the future.'

Naturally I was dying of curiosity as to what constitutes creative differences these days. Answer: Zack believes 'content is king' while George is enamored with bells and whistles . Whereas the visual signal-to-noise ratio of their current site is about 60:40, the SNR of their new site [due out by the end of the year] bottoms out at around 35:65 - and that is past a critical threshold. With our better content and his better site, he believes we can rule the universe. I tend to agree.

Of course, their timing couldn't be better - we've been focusing strongly on our website lately, and we have a number of huge changes planned. Thus far, my greatest concern is one of staffing. I am the web department, and thus far any requests for more staff have been met with suggestions to hire part-time unpaid interns. This is where it gets funny: while I don't think I'll ever get actual funding for the actual website, I will bet that we can get as much funding as we need to drive certain people crazy. And if the most efficient way of getting things done right is to play personalities off each other, well - I'm not above doing that.

We shall see. We code in interesting times.

- Z