OK Star Wars

My Star Wars memory:

I was too little to be aware of the first Star Wars film when it was released, but I nonetheless had contemporary exposure to it when my mom brought some a couple of Kenner dolls, a Sand Person and some other guy. My guess is she went to the toy store to get me a treat, and the clerk showed her these as the new hotness.

Anyway, I had never owned "action figures" before, so my mom demonstrated how I might play with them. She took them out of their blister packs, left their tiny plastic weapons aside, raised their arms and had them embrace. "See? You can make them hug."

The first movie in the series that I actually saw was Empire, but I knew all about Star Wars by cultural osmosis by then, just from one or two years of grade school. When the movie was over, I didn't want it to end, and I cried and cried. I asked my brother Peter how many more they would make. "I don't know. Six?" he said. I cried more.

Debugging

The first six hours of my day got torpedoed by a volity.net bug that was preventing people from playing our most popular game. Helluva hairy bug involving garbage getting stuck in the gamefinder's craw. It took a long time to isolate, and I ended up writing a filter that's better than a hacky band-aid but worse than knowing how that garbage got there in the first place.

Every time Fluxx breaks we hear about it pretty quickly, quite often from someone we've never heard from before. This is kind of a cool consolation prize in its own way.

I wanted to spend the morning on the Testbench release and then spend the rest of the day doing whatever. Meh.

Ricky plans

I finally called Ricky back just now. He wants to come down for Art Beat this year. We went to only a little bit of 2005's (2006 being the Ricky-(and-art-)free Volity Year) but he has only good memories of it, as well as sadness that he didn't buy "that piece with the string". I don't remember this.

I do remember feeling a little antsy when he was trying to have a conversation with one seller about her stuff when it was clear that How much is this? was the only question she wanted to hear. Ricky does not pick up on these things. It is too bad that it makes me antsy, but it always does.

Anyway, he's how tentatively scheduled to be staying at my apt for that weekend. We will probably hit the MFA too so he can enjoy its courtyard, where he hasn't sat in a long time.

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In other news, I finally cleaned my keyboard this afternoon. I didn't have the article author's specialized scrubby tool, but I did have a whole lotta Q-tips and some Windex, so I got most of the gross (and I do mean gross) matter off the base. His sandwich-baggie method of mass key-cleaning worked like a charm.

Sadly, as a fan and frequent user of mammalian skin and hair, it's bound to get all gunked up again soon enough unless I invest in a cover thingum. karlvonl recommends this one. Maybe!

Also, the AC is up again. Whirrr. $$$$. eh