A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

Nintendo's "Check Mii Out" Wii channel is up for free download. I just dumped my BSG and American-politician Miis all over it, and they are now dancing amongst the 1,000,001 Chuck Norris/Darth Vader/Mr. T ones that others have already uploaded. The best of which are actually quite clever, and which I grabbed my own copies of. I laughed out loud at the ingenuity of the Robocop, Mr. Spock, Geordi La Forge and Some-Guy-With-a-Bear-Head ones.

Apparently, of my collection, my Bill Adama Mii has received the most "I like this" votes so far. It and my Laura Roslyn Mii are my two favorite creations. I think Laura is actually my personal favorite, but I can see any population of video gamers favoring ol' Bill. (In my version he is sporting his Flashback Mustache.)

If I knew how to link to my entries I would, but I'm guessing there's no easy way. Nintendo continues to favor the isolationist approach to online play. Meh!

Also, I would have forgiven Bee Movie for portraying its protagonist as a boy-bee if a scene revealed by its trailer were slightly different. The plot setup apparently involves the Jerry Seinfeld bee exploring the world beyond his hive because he manages to accompany a squadron of soldier bees on an air sortie and then gets separated (just like the last 5,000 talking-animal pictures, including the one I just fell in love with, yes).

Now, if they made those soldier bees into lady-bees, that would (for some reason) allow me to overlook the film's other gender issues, but instead every bee seen in the trailer seems to be male, and you're gonna have every smarty-pants reviewer pointing this discrepancy out with at least as much relish as they applied to the udders in Barnyard.

Maybe there'll be an in-movie reveal that actually all the worker bees are female and they just happen to look and sound (and act?) like dudes when anthropomorphized. But really when you think about it too much it's hard to keep caring.

I predict I'll still end up seeing this movie in one form or another anyway, coz the jokes in the trailer are actually pretty funny, and Seinfeld's delivery doesn't seem to suffer for coming out of the mouth of a cartoon bug. The "it's a disease, a horrible disease" line has cracked me up both times I've seen it.

Andys and I went to a presentation last night about seeking angel funds. It was at MIT's Kresge Auditorim, and there was a 90-minute networking session scheduled in front of it. This was supposed to be in a big tent set up outside, but heavy rain moved it into the lobby, which therefore ended up packed with hundreds of people for the duration.

Ironically this made it kind of hard to start any conversations. Not counting meeting up with our friend J, I had only three: greeting a fellow I had met at last week's startup clinic, talking to some random friendly guy who was just there because he liked to talk to entrepreneurs, and then again with another guy trying to launch a company around a single board game. Well, you can imagine what my reaction to that was. Gave him a meaty follow-up pitch via email this morning... might follow up some more with a call later if I don't hear back.

Call it a practice run for Origins.

The presentation was pretty good, even a little entertaining. Had some lively moments. No major insights, but a enough take-aways to fill the backs of three of my new business cards (coz I neglected to bring a notebook).

Then the four of us retired to the Cambridge Common for beer and meat and nurdy chatter. Came home and went bed before 1, so exhausted was I.

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At some point before all of this I managed to call slacker guy, and left voice mail. daerr correctly sez I gotta try earlier in the day. I hate it so much though... bleah.

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You may have noticed that in my networking stories so far I have spoken only to men. It's happened to come out that way, even though there are always women at these events (though they always make up significantly less than half the crowd). I was just now thinking about how I felt an odd instant of repulsion every time I saw a lady entrepreneur walk past yesterday, just long enough for me to let her go. Why was this?

My first insight is that I instinctively wanted to avoid feeling like I was hitting on anyone! Even now that I'm thinking it through I have to admit it seems a little skeevy: sidling up, drink in hand, to one of these women, and while looming down with a big grin (for I am most likely gonna be several inches taller) saying "So tell me what you do, over there in, uh," at which point I overtly eye her chest in order to read the name and company off her tag.

I know it's foolish, though its heart be in the right place. I will attend my next networking session with this new bit of self-knowledge, and see what might happen differently. Surely I can find a way to act that creeps out neither party.

(It probably doesn't help that the presentation's panelists, men and women both, really liked to compare the entrepreneur/capital relationship to dating and marriage.)

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Got up around 8am today (a feat I'll have to repeat tomorrow, except moreso) and spent the morning writing various businessy email and the afternoon and evening working on our store. This is the bit that will sell the inventory of partners' games that we have, all the Fluxx decks and such. Collected some good advice from friend and fellow entrepreneur Mr. Jivjiv and set up a merchant account with PayPal because it's very easy to do so. They accept lots of payment types, and their basic service has no setup, cancellation, or recurring fees. The commissions they extract from purchases is moderately high, but I think it's still a great place to start, and we can switch to something better when we find it.

It's not online yet... will be going up alongside all the other new webstuff I've been doodling with over the last couple of weeks as soon as someone else manages some bugfixes. (I've been saying that one a lot, haven't I. I'll press the issue over the weekend and will see what happens.)

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Tomorrow meeting at the office at 8 and moving on to a local VC outfit to meet with VC guy. I'd be asleep now but I'm waiting for daerr to stop putting out other people's fires at his job so he can help me fix the damn projection spreadsheet that I messed up last month argh.

The presentation on Wednesday made me even more skeptical about the utility of this meeting, since I'm fairly positive that we don't want to come near any VC money and all the strings usually attached to it, just as I'm sure that we're asking far too little for any VC to think we're worth their time. But our asking figure was right there in the summary I mailed him. Assuming that he actually read it, maybe he has something else in mind? Well, we'll see very soon. Wish us the best!

I had a very detailed dream this morning. It actually came on the heels of what felt like an unsettling nightmare; I was on a bus or tram, and fidgeting that I had forgotten something important. But then the vehicle stopped and I found a good friend of mine waiting to greet me, and the whole tone shifted.

I think I was visiting her, and had not seen her in a long time. We were close enough pals that I wasn't shy about touching her (my way of greeting her was to muss up her short dark hair), and yet we had somehow fallen completely out of touch. While taking me to her home, she started to talk about her young child, and I was caught off guard, not realizing that she even had one. For some reason, I chose to fake it and act as if it were no surprise. When we arrived at her house I got to meet the child, whose name was Robin: a healthy, precocious toddler wearing overalls and short blond hair.

The thing has has me remember the dream was that my friend, as a single parent, had decided to raise the kid as androgynously as she could. Besides the ambiguous name and way that she dressed the child, she had taught Robin to answer the question "Are you a boy or a girl?" by saying "Relax!" In other words: it's not really important that you to know, so don't worry about it. Invariably the questioner, confused, would ask again, and the kid would repeat, emphatically: "Re... lax!" Smiling the whole time.

I was really bothered by this last detail, thinking my friend was taking a legitimate philosophy and applying it with very poor judgment by using her pre-sentient kiddo as a mouthpiece, but couldn't work up the gumption to say anything to her face about it. Instead I resolved to write about it in my LJ once I got back home. I remember thinking that I might want to refer to Robin as "he", and when my friend would object to this, I'd counter that Robin must be a boy "because boys have short hair," knowing that my friend (a through-and-through female who identified as such) had a boyish haircut. This may sound kind of acid but we were actually close enough friends that she'd take it the way I'd intend it. However that may have been; I'm not really sure, writing this now. I don't think I was quite myself in this dream. I found it very interesting anyway.