Yes, yes, it’s been a while, even after I said I knew it was a while. Let’s see if we can get back on track here…
During the week, I work, as you already know. So, let’s skip that boring stuff, shall we?
The past 3 weekends have been puzzle weekends. They’re part of why I haven’t blogged in a while. Let’s start with July 9, the first puzzle weekend. This one was pirate-themed, and the goal was to eventually open the treasure box. In the morning, they hand you a puzzle kit, containing a bunch of puzzles (I forget the exact number, but 20 sounds close), and you use the solutions to those to solve a meta-puzzle (the BIG puzzle). These puzzles were hard! Some we never solved, such as one where you have turrets and boats in a grid, and you have to figure out where the boats fit so that they’re not in the line of fire of the turrets, and then use that to look at the letters in the boats to spell the solution. We finally got the boats in there right, but we couldn’t see how the letters were forming an answer. Oh, this was a 12-person team, the maximum allowed (minimum 10) if you’re curious.
The meta-puzzle was a grid, and you used the solutions from the other puzzles to locate on a chart which boxes on the meta-puzzle needed to be filled in. After a while, we saw what was appearing: a section of the Microsoft campus. Conveniently, it had an X on it. So we sent some out there, and they returned with another meta-puzzle. This one required taking all the answers, and using them to determine which turns to take within this maze deal, which then eventually took you to the treasure (which we found, not taking the right path). The treasure chest had a lock on it, and you had to use the number of turns you took (number of lefts and rights, based on your puzzle solutions and the instructions to navigate the maze thing) to multiply out the combination. Since we didn’t solve all the puzzles, and oddly enough, didn’t track the number of lefts/rights we took, we never opened it. In any case, it was a fun day, if you’re into puzzles.
Fast forward to July 16. This is a not-so-hard puzzle day, called Puzzle Safari. In this one, the puzzles are easier, and their solutions lead the way to locations on campus where they’ve placed stamps. You stamp this logbook with the stamp next to the puzzle name that took you there. We were a team of 3, with 4 being the maximum team size allowed. We started at 10:30, round 1 began at 11 and ended at 2, and round 2 went from 2:30 to 5:30. Like I said, the puzzles were easier, but the running around campus was, for someone that never runs around, just awful. I know I’m not Mr. Universe, but sheesh was I sore for the next few days! (They warned us about that. They also said we could blog during this, but we’d be dumb if we did, so I didn’t 
). Even with the soreness, this was still fun to do.
Jump to July 23 and 24. Yes, two days. Teams of 6 to 8 (we were 7). Rent a van. Buy food, bring clothes. No hotel room. Just you, 6 other people, a van, snacks, puzzles scattered around the State of Washington, and 40 hours of, “Go, go, go!” We started at 7am on Saturday in downtown Seattle, which we didn’t know we would until 2 days prior, when we solved one of the prepuzzles and the solution yielded this information. They took our vans from us and drove them to Tacoma, and we had to solve a few puzzles to figure out we needed to catch a bus to get to Tacoma (first puzzle), then solve a few more puzzles to eventually end at this library, then solve more puzzles, and then finally have the puzzle solution to ask for the van back. We then drove to Olympia, Centralia, somewhere in the middle of there that I don’t recall the name of, somewhere east of there that I don’t remember either but it begins with a P, Fedearal Way, and eventually back to the Microsoft Campus for the final meta-puzzle. Some cities had mutliple visits, so we were driving back and forth and back and forth here and there. One time we were all tired, and we figured out a puzzle after several hours, solving it at around 5:30am on Sunday, and I incorrectly said to go South on I-5. After a half hour, and realizing we were arriving at a prior stop and thus went the wrong way, we laughed for about 10 minutes, I felt really bad, and we went back the right way. Game Control called and asked why we were late to our next stop… I wonder if they laughed at it, too.
We finished this one at about 11 pm on Sunday. Hotel rooms were not allowed, and that’s good… it took all the time we had to complete the puzzle chain. We slept in shifts, and while some got about 4 or 5 hours of sleep, I wound up with 2. Needless to say, I, along with the other driver, were both burned coming into work Monday. But we all enjoyed the weekend. I got to see lots of things, and the pictures I have will be up in the gallery soon. I’m waiting for the others in the team that brought cameras to share theirs, and I’ll bulk upload them all at once.
So that’s what I’ve been up to. I have 4 weeks left, and then it’s back to Michigan for classes. I do hope I get to come back here after I graduate in December. I could speculate here, but I’d rather not. Let’s just see where this goes and take it from there.
Ok, so what else besides puzzles? Umm… I saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was just ok. I like the other one with Gene Wilder more, even though I know the goal of this one was to follow the book more closely. The other one had that magical feel to it, whereas this one, like most other garbage out of Hollywood, focused on special effects rather than storyline. I’m not sure what it is, but Hollywood seems to have determined that taking movies from 15 years ago and remaking them with special effects will rake in the dough. Are there any original films made anymore? It’s like they switched their brains off and instead recycle past films… this way they don’t have to think of a movie plot, they just take a past one and totally ruin it.
I had the pleasure of meeting Subratam Biswas (he runs http://www.subratam.org) while he was at Microsoft for interviews. I took one picture of us and that’s in the gallery, and I’m waiting for his to put in there also. He was hired and will return in a few months as an employee. Hopefully in January I’ll get to do the same, and we’ll meet again. Of all the places we could go, we went to Wal-Mart, and he bought $50 worth of chocolate stuff to take back (his flight was the same night). He likes our chocolate better than India’s, so that’s why, if you’re curious. He also thinks we eat way too much, which he’s right about, and that our portions are really big and so forth. Seems to be the consensus of those that come to the US and see how much food we eat in a single sitting. And we wonder why we’re overweight and gee let’s not exercise and instead take this diet pill that’ll fix it, right? Anyway, it was cool to meet him (only spoke online in IRC) and hang out for a few hours before his trip home.
By the way, I do have an IRC server I run that you’re welcome to lurk in. It’s at irc.manageyourpc.com on port 6667. #webroom is where to head. When I have time, which many have noticed has been less lately, I jump in there and say hello to whomever happens to be around.
That’s all I have for now. I’ll see if I can get back on track with weekly blogging.
