(no subject)

Saw The Big Lebowski last night. While showering this morning I smiled to interpret Sam Elliot's utterly random oracular cowboy character as a manifestation of Eris. He does, after all, appear to the main character only in a bowling alley...

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Had a very nice lunch with Jon and Mike, a couple of fellow former ORAlians whom I had not seen in a while. They're both working today for the local R&D arm of France Telecom. Got to tour their space a bit; a whole lot of street-level square footage near Kendall. (Much like ORA-Cam's office space, in fact. Pre-shrinkage, anyway.) Actually, I think the office space has achieved what Jon was hoping ORA-Cam would become, back in the day. Everything is modular (all the walls -- and there are many -- are on wheels), there's a communal Tivo and PS2 and other fun toys (ostensibly for keeping up to date on all the latest communication technologies, of course), a big espresso machine, and so on. A quiet little bulldog wandered about and seemed to belong to nobody in particular (though I'm sure it did).

They have a round-table room called an "imaginarium", and one of my hosts said this word enough that I wonder if he was seeing whether or not I'd succumb and scoff at it. (I didn't.)

Jon & Robin (not present) are about to have a baby. Appropriate congratulations were offered from the me. Mike & his wife (of unknown name) apparently had a kid some time ago, cuz he made reference to modern toddler-type activity observed in his house (specifically, calling imaginary friends on cell phone, not getting them, and leaving voice mail instead) at one point in the conversational threads.