Upheaval. Gnashing of teeth.

Hola!

Hey, less than a month, pretty good.

And a month of excitement it has been! You may or may not know that I moved to New York to work at a company that develops ESL books for extension of core educational programs. I was hired to work on one particular project: a huge, multi-million dollar endeavour. The difficulties were immense. Our client (let's call them Bloughton-Blifflin) was going through a rough spot, due to a recent merger with another huge educational publisher (say, Blarcourt), so people kept quitting their jobs at Bloughton, leaving us consistently scratching our heads as to who we were supposed to ask when we had questions.

Suffice to say, the entire issue was rendered moot when, three weeks before the project's end date, Bloughton-Blifflin cancelled the entire project.

ROFL and LOL don't begin to describe it.

So, I was obviously deported from the United States.
Well, no. They just put me on a different project and told me how wonderful I was.
Anyway.

The project I'm working on now is a McGraw-Hill product called SuperGoal. I'm actually writing/revising/editing the entire student workbook for the project, so in a few years, you happy folks still teaching ESL can pick up a copy of SuperGoal and say, "Check it! That's Teacher Adam's handiwork!"

So. What else is new? Oh, TONS!

I've been meaning to point this out for a while now.

Our apartment is located in south Queens (so south, in fact, that people often think we live in Brooklyn). Our neighborhood is full of flower shops. Katie agonized over this for quite a while before realizing that it's not just flower shops we're surrounded by, but cemeteries.

While, for most people, this represents lower property values and a slight disinclination to go for midnight strolls, for me, it basically means one thing and one thing only.

Yep. Fuckloads of potential zombies. Oh, well, at least I'm informed.

And, as promised, I will no longer rant about Super Smash Bros. Brawl, because I own it. Now, will people please kindly buy it and play it with me on one of the internets.

This is my Super Smash Bros. Brawl friend code: 4339-2232-6946. Give me yours and then feel the wrath of the electric mouse.

The recent Game Developers Conference took place somewhere that was not New York. One of the things they displayed was a game that you control with your mind. With your good God-damned mind.

I also found a post on another website that displays Peruvian riot police in full gear. Worrisome? Or awesome? Discuss.

Then, of course, there's the urgent cnn.com news story about the two girls who were (wait for it) too pretty to fly. Yes, you read that right. Just go watch the video. I'll wait.

Meanwhile, in actual really important news, there's a bar in Denmark (where else?) called Scrollbar (best name for a bar evar), where they staged a Mario Bros. party. The linked site contains instructions for several delicious-sounding Nintendo-themed drinks. Bloody brilliant.

Amusing: a website where someone who has a great deal for free time has digitally removed Garfield and his attendant thought-balloons from several Garfield comic strips. The result is arguably funnier than any complete Garfield strip of the past decade.

For those of you who care about such things (Chris, Arnold, Paul, I choose you!), the newest trailer for Iron Man looks just frigging fantastic.

I am a bit of a computer nerd. But I'm that worst kind of computer nerd: one who actually doesn't know that much about computers. I know just enough to (just barely) be able to get my head around what a meet-me room is. No, it's not an online macthmaker; it's a room, an actual physical room in a building where different internet service providers hook all their cables up to one another's so that the person in California can look at this website that I created from my house in New York. Wired.com had a recent pictorial showing what is, effectively, the guts of the internet. I thought it was cool, so I'm sharing. It reminded me, eerily, of Taiwan.

Also, courtesy of Wired:


I want them, but I don't think I should be allowed to have them.

That's kind of all for now. Winter (such as it was) has ended here in New York. One of my bosses just had a new baby. It's 10pm, and I'm tired, so I'll leave you with this thrilling and hilarious video. The FMG-9. That's precisely the sort of thing I need in case the living undead rise from their graves while I'm taking my evening constitutional.



That's all. I hope you're all well. I miss everyone I can't see. Which reminds me, I'm growing irate with everyone who hasn't gotten Skype yet.
Now fuck off.

Love, Adam

Kitty had a grand day out at the Build-a-Bear Workshop.