A few quick updates for the update hungry:

1) I accepted a full-time job. I chose this over this. This means sometime in February (or so) I’ll be moving to Washington. Fortunately I’ve watched plenty of “Frasier” so I’m well prepared.

2) I was hit by a car. Everything is fine, except my bike, although Brian has promised to try to fix it. I need to write up a full detail of this but I need to take some pictures first, for the benefit of those not who haven’t used the crosswalk where I was hit.

3) Another Black Friday has come and gone, and once again I get into an argument outside Best Buy. Really it was the best option for entertainment anyway.

4) School is winding down. Two more weeks of classes left, two finals, then commencement. There are, I should mention, less than 12 hours between the end of my last final and when I have to show up for graduation. I hope they grade quickly.

5) My new clock is cooler than yours.

Chat with a spammer. Despite the fact that I called him, more or less, deporable, he tries to sell me bulk email services.

I need to write up a real entry up here one day. And close the window, it’s raining.

I got this in the mail the other day from one of my credit cards:

I believe what they want me to do is write down my username and password and tack it up somewhere by my computer.

Yes, my credit card company has actively encouraged me to do this.

I so badly don’t want to work on my homework I’m going to update my little web log.

Not too much interesting or exciting has been happening, hence the lack of updates. I moved into a new apartment. The best single word to describe this place would be “classic”. Or maybe “vintage.” Less highbrow people would probably just simplify that down to “old.”

The complex was built in the early 70′s — as proven by the “Lead Paint And You” brochure I received upon moving in. Despite being gigantic it is far from luxurious — I miss having a washing machine and a dish washer. Oh, yeah, and carpet that isn’t green shag covered with what appear to be blood stains.

Nah, it’s not too bad though. The only real problem is my oven has two settings: “surface of the sun” or “off. Or so you believe.” Brian would be more better suited with this oven, as he always leaves his on. He could not do that with this one; his apartment would otherwise melt. Yes, melt.

I also recently attended a job fair. Having an outstanding job offer you could simply accept and be lazy thereout is, well, something that makes you want to simply be lazy and accept. The job market, however, seems to be looking up. I already have had two interviews, was just emailed for a third, and was promised I would definitely be interviewed for two other positions.

People I know keep telling me “oh, I just accepted my Microsoft offer” and it tempts me just to do the same… but I know it will come down to a point where I will wonder what was out there if I don’t at least look, so… I am.

On an unrelated and tangental note — when people protest “peace in Iraq”, did it ever occur to them that there wasn’t peace there before the war?

This past Saturday was a Microsoft intern event known as Puzzle Day. Basically at the beginning of the day some Microsoft employees set up this poorly acted story (that our Dean — Dean Bean — had his kidneys stolen) and we’re then given a bunch of puzzles to solve loosely tied to some central theme (urban legends).

A group of 12 of us formed a team, working against 30 other teams (of about 300 interns total). Some puzzles were pretty straight forward, others were a bit tricky. Some were incredibly tricky. Each answer goes to help you solve a ‘meta puzzle’, an uber puzzle you can solve only with the answers from the other puzzles you’ve solved. The metapuzzle gives an answer — in our case “Find kidneys in building 9 cafeteria” — telling you how to finish the quest.

Despite the fact that many of the team members got sick of puzzles in the middle of the day and more or less stopped working on them, our team did really well. We placed 5th and finished just about 15 minutes behind the 1st place team (I believe they were the Harvard team, and one of the other teams we lost to was the MIT team).

It was really cool looking at some random jibberish and suddenly saying “woah, this makes sense.” Or looking at a puzzle that 11 other rather smart people looked at and couldn’t figure out, and figuring it out in about 30 seconds.

All in all a really cool experience. And we even got a can of beans as a 5th place trophy (and a bag of cookies, too. Microsoft is cheap).