Carbon Operator

Massive layoffs were meted out yesterday at my company, wiping out about one-third of the total staff. Although cell phones and IMs lit up last night, the real means most of us had of finding out who still had their jobs was to see who was present today in the office. The person I shared the back corner of the design area with is gone; I will be after our current project is finished. There were some surprises, some shocks, and overwhelming relief for some. As we walked past each other in the hallways today, never have the words “good to see you” meant so much.

About a year ago the disembodied head of Dr. Kawashima laughingly pronounced me borderline retarded; and Wii Fit, after careful study of my feet on a platform, judged me to be obese. I can’t say I was surprised, really. I am somewhat built like a truck, so the BMI scale considers me a porker. Removing limbs might help, but I won’t count on it.

Expected results aside, I really like Wii Fit. The balance board is very high-quality and sturdy, and the software is very friendly. Having read several reviews that stated that Wii Fit was no substitute for a gym, I found the program surprisingly complete and challenging, and I look forward to progressing in it. The only problem is that I’ll have to rearrange my living room, but this is probably just another one of the vaunted “lifestyle changes” I’d have to make eventually. After spending half of my test wiping hair and crumbs off of the balance board, thereby baffling my strangely patient female trainer, I decided to finally weaken and buy a vacuum cleaner.

Perhaps the most intersting feature of Wii Fit is the voice that commands me to get on the balance board among other wholly technical considerations. It is an interesting combination of the gentle, high-pitched menace of the turrets in Portal, and the soothing menace of the female “Computer” computer voices of dystopian sci-fi films from the era when we actually feared the extent to which technology would take over our lives. For some reason “Westworld” kept leaping to mind but it’s probably closer to something out of “Logan’s Run.” Either way, the yoga program is kicking my ass.

Today I had to simulate text communication with a disturbed individual. I did this by laying my face on the keyboard and rolling across it a few times. The results weren’t particularly dramatic but my problem is that I have a long nose, so one key will be far more prominent than the rest in the output. My face hurt a bit after doing a couple of rolls.

I used to joke that I could faceroll the first ten levels in World of Warcraft. Research has established that my character would probably just end up walking backwards a lot.

The Law of the Sociability of Healers states that if you are a healing class of any kind and are in a major population centre for more than five minutes, someone will ask you to join their guild.