1:55 AM
Leaving work late again--due mainly to completely screwed-up sleep schedule this time, though I still have work to do. On the plus side, I've been watching the excellent Cowboy Bebop movie, which less than a half-hour in has the classic line "I was only 500 points away from meeting Spooky Donkey!" Plan on many screencaps in the near future.

I forgot to say earlier that at some point during the week my copy of Uplink arrived in my mailbox. I'm just starting to dig into it--not even really past the kind of things I was doing in the demo yet--but I did get a warm, fuzzy, nostalgic feeling when after I installed the retail version the game asked me to pull out the enclosed hard-to-read, hard-to-photocopy black-on-black codegrid and cross-reference two numbers as its anti-pirate scheme. It reminded me of the box of old Apple ][ and Mac software doo-dads like that--the Dial-a-Pirate, the Bard's Tale IV chronomancer wheel, that kind of thing--I have somewhere in my closets. Why can't Windows XP have something like that--Dial-a-Bill!--rather than making you call them up every time you change your clock speed?

Already the OD backlash has begun: my friend Jon wrote to indicate that he would rather not be stalked, as was previously indicated in my Links. He has been appropriately moved, and the legions of scantily-clad women that were closing in on his home should all abort; Operation Pickle Rain has been canceled--repeat, cancelled.

My verbal torrent may actually slow tomorrow, folks. I have a game to run tomorrow night, and despite six weeks to prepare I have only a vague idea that needs to be nurtured over pancakes.