28 July 1999: Another Journalling Connection

Wednesday, 28 July 1999:

Another Journalling Connection

I met another on-line journaller today: Jenn of Abstract Thoughts. We got together for lunch at a burger joint near Apple (Clarke's - decent burgers, though unremarkable; admittedly, I am something of a burger gourmet, if there is such a thing).

Jenn brought along her friend and cow-orker Casey, which made it a challenging meeting for me, since I was meeting two people for the first time simultaneously. Of course, they're both nerdly types and they're also both QAers, so it's not like we didn't have things to talk about.

Jenn was pretty quiet; she told me that she's shy about meeting new people (I'm not giving away anything here she hasn't said in her own journal, I think). I think she was trying not to say the wrong thing, although to paraphrase my Mom, my feathers aren't easily ruffled. (Besides, saying the 'wrong thing' seems to be my stock-in-trade at times, so I cut people a lot of slack on that.)

It's hard to get a 'read' on someone in an hour over lunch, but she seemed nice enough. (I always feel odd using the word 'nice', since so many people seem to think it lacks content, but it often seems like a useful, accurate word to me, as here.)

Hard to say if we'll become friends, although it didn't take long for Ceej and I to make that connection, once I moved out here and we started hanging out together.

The day was bookended by gaming night at Subrata's. I finally persuaded everyone to try out North American Rails, the Empire Builder railroad variant. It seemed to go over well, although what with starting late, eating pizza, explaining the rules, and the slow going of the early game, we ran until 11 pm and then called it quits. But people seemed willing to play again. I think if we start a little earlier and have people more familiar with the game next time, then we can complete a game in an evening.

I think it went well in part because it compared favorably to the 1835 series of railroading games, which apparently are very long and very computation-intensive. Plus, Empire Builder and its kin have the childlike advantage of letting everyone draw on plastic with crayons!

Michael Rawdon (Contact)