When I pre-registered for PAX earlier this year, I did so without even knowing if I would attend.  I did it in the hopes of being selected for the Omegathon.

The Omegathon is a video game competition among 20 gamers who are randomly selected from all those that pre-register.  There are five elimination rounds conducted with predetermined games and a final round between the two remaining players.  The culmination of the entire PAX conference is the last round of the Omegathon and the final game is always kept secret.  Prizes are amazing – expensive custom PCs, a complete Nintendo Entertainment System with every game ever published, a Toyota Scion with an XBOX 360 thrown in for good measure, and this year, a trip to Tokyo and $5000.  The final games for the first three Omegathons were Pong, Atari Combat, and Tetris, respectively.  After seeing the 2005 crowd’s reaction to the Combat match, I knew I had to a least throw my name into the hat.

With 20,000 attendees last year, my odds of being selected as one of the 20 were slim.  But if I were to be selected… Well then, that would have forced my hand.  1 in a 1000?  I’d have to buy a plane ticket to Seattle.

The Omeganaut announcement came and went, and predictably, I wasn’t chosen.  However, by that time I’d already committed to going.  Turns out I was to become more involved in the Omegathon than if I’d been merely playing as a contestant.

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I think I spent most of Friday in Oksana’s car.  It sure felt that way after all the back-and-forth.

We started with breakfast at the Southeast Waffle Company.  After carbo-loading, we had an hour to kill, so we went to our apartment.  I sat my mom down in front of the PlayStation 2, put a Guitar Hero II controller into her hands, and forced her to play through the first two tutorials.  She missed a few notes; I was concerned when her frustration began to show.  But after she successfully finished the tutorial, I put another guitar into my step-dad’s hands and encouraged them to try playing a song together.  Their first attempt went poorly because they started on the first song they recognized — You Really Got Me, by Van Halen — a tough one.  Oksana and I suggested the ubiquitous Surrender and they managed to stumble their way through the entire song.  They appeared more flustered than anything, and I thought they were about to give up entirely.  Then they looked at each other and exclaimed, “That was so cool!” 

Hook, line, and sinker!  I think they would have played all day if we didn’t have a naturalization ceremony to attend.  We piled back into Oksana’s car and drove downtown.

The oath was to be given in the Federal Courtroom in the Federal Building.  We went through the two metal detectors Oksana and I were so familiar with from previous visits.  Again, we surrendered all our electronic items, but at least we were allowed to keep our cameras this time.  About 5 minutes before our 10:15 appointment, we filed into the courtroom.  We found seats near the back while Oksana was ushered to the front.  She, along with the other 37 soon-to-be U.S. citizens, turned in their green cards and verified the information on their new citizenship certificates.

Mr. Lee, our INS agent for the day, announced to the courtroom how the ceremony would proceed.  The only thing each new citizen needed to know was that at some point they will be called to the podium.  The only requirementwas to say their name and their country of origin.  “Take 3 seconds or 15 minutes.  This is your day and you can use your time at the podium to say whatever you like.”  I scanned the list of names.  If everyone used up 15 minutes, we’d be there over nine hours!

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Once again, UAS topped itself in its own Halloween celebration. It’s been rather amazing to witness how quickly the competition for best costume, best department, and best group has expanded from a friendly rivalry between two departments six years ago to an all-campus, no-work-gets-done day of competition here in 2006.

Our department decided on an Italian restaurant as our theme this year. Only after the theme was voted upon did anyone come up with ideas on how we’d pull it off. Chef uniforms; mafia undertones; lobster, spaghetti, fork, wine bottle, and buttered bread costumes – it all came together through post-decision brainstorming.

And, of course, without even donning a costume, I got to have my own fun. Read the rest of this entry »

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On our last day in Moscow – but still three days from home, because, you know, Moscow is, like, on the other side of the planet – Oksana and I returned to Arbat to have our portraits painted.

Earlier on the trip we had walked the length of both streets known as Arbat – Old and New.  New Arbat was a four-lane highway bordered by loud neon, bright casinos, and TGI Friday’s.  Old Arbat was pleasantly pedestrian with souvenir stalls, outdoor restaurants, musicians with hat-pushing assistants, and dozens of portrait and caricature artists.  It was these artists’ work, photo-realistic and painted while you wait, that captured my attention and imagination.

While Oksana put her Russian to good use comparison shopping for prices, I wandered among the painters.  I stopped behind one woman who was painting a portrait of a young boy.  To my eye, the monochrome image was almost photorealistic.  Watching her perfectly recreate his eyes, I decided that if the price was right, she would be the one to paint us.

It seemed as though most of the artists on Arbat had agreed to set their prices uniformly: 700 rubles for one person, 1500 for two; doubled again for color.  You could either leave a favorite photograph and pick up your portrait later, or sit still for an hour while they painted from the source.  It seemed incredible to me that anyone could paint so well, so quickly, but on this street in Moscow, that particular talent was in abundance.

Oksana’s cousin, Vanya, was with us that day and because he was planning to wait around with us, I convinced her to ask our painter if it would be alright if we videotaped her process.  I could tell that our selected artist, Lena, thought it a rather strange request, but she was polite enough to rearrange her easel for the camera, anyway.  I set the camera on the ground, against a wall and out of the way of Arbat’s foot traffic, and started recording in LP mode.

We sat down and began our suspenseful hour-and-a-half wait.

(Don’t want to wade through more prose?  Here’s a link straight to the video.)

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Sigh. How does one manage to write coherently about death? I want to write about our hedgehog, Yozhik, who died over two months ago. I want to commemorate him – and Oksana’s and my relationship with him – with eloquent language, but even two months after his death, painful emotions accompany the search for words.

Sometimes I think I would willingly abandon my memories of Yozhik, if given the choice. Oksana, without saying as much, would do the same. “I don’t ever want another pet,” she told me. “It’ll just remind me of hedgie, and that hurts too much.”

Wouldn’t it be easier to think about sometime else; to turn the mind away whenever thoughts of Yozhik materialized? Not that he’d care, but I don’t think that’s fair to the pet we loved and cared for for four years. (You see what I mean? “…for for four…?!” These are the words my brain supplies me with when I try to describe my feelings!)

Death affects us in such profound and personal ways that it’s hard to imagine that anyone else could ever have felt similar sorrow, anguish, and confusion. But that’s stupid. Practically everyone who has ever lived on this planet has lost someone close to them; it would be callous to think that they wouldn’t have experienced the same emotions. In that respect, what seems profound and personal is actually common and shared.

So even if you didn’t know Yozhik personally, perhaps the memorial video I put together will resonate with you as strongly as it did with Oksana and me.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (59.9MB)

Four months after we created the Post-It Note mosaic of our boss at work, we decided to take it down. Ever since I published the accompanying time-lapse video, ideas have been batted around on how to memorialize its removal. When the big day came a few weeks ago, we didn’t record another time-lapse video… though you wouldn’t know it, looking at the final video. You might like to watch it without spoilers before I start talking about it.

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Early November and another Halloween has come to pass. This year was remarkably similar to the last – video editing to get me in the mood through the weeks before, an enjoyable social evening spent carving pumpkins, and a surprisingly taxing half-day of videotaping my department’s at-work shenanigans.

This year, our department decided on a Willy Wonka theme. I must say, despite procrastinating until the last weekend, our crew turned out some great costumes. Orange-faced, green-haired Oompa Loompas paraded around a purple-suited Wonka, a tuxedoed Slugworth, and four college-age adaptations of the lucky golden-ticket-wielding children. During our tour around campus, everyone handed out Wonka Bucks that were intended to be exchanged later for treats at our “Candy Store.”

Unfortunately, our lack of planning came back to haunt us when the student judges selected two other departments for the coveted campus Halloween awards. Not that the competition wasn’t deserving. We were handily beaten by the same strategy our department had created years before – the Presentation. That’s right; capital P.

We didn’t go home empty handed, though. One of our student assistants took home the best individual costume for Violet Beauregarde’s blueberry. I would never have guessed that an oversized blue jumpsuit, filled with balloons, would beat out all the other impressive costumes!

Back at home, Oksana spearheaded our pumpkin carving. She went corporate this year by selecting a Dodge Ram log while giving me the difficult task of carving a design whose difficulty was listed as “moderate” in our book. After punching maybe a thousand holes into the pumpkin through the cheat sheet, using a tiny jack-o-lantern saw to carve out tiny, intricate bats and a swooping ghost’s cape, I wondered what horrors lay in wait for those that chose to tackle a “challenging” design.

No Halloween would be complete (at least, not for me) without the mad rush to finish editing the previous year’s Halloween music video. 2005 was no exception. I finished the “SPAM!” video with just five days to go, but a little push from the campus PR department ensured that it got played around campus and helped to build excitement.