QuarterWorld was packed last night. Although QW is easily within walking distance, we drove there on a rainy night. Ryan didn't realize ID would be needed to get in, so we returned to fetch that. He's 24 and doesn't drink (me either anymore, but for 0.5% beer), but alcohol is served on the premises, so they screen upon entry after a certain time.
Minors are allowed entry (we're talking an arcade palace after all) earlier in the day.
I've been mentally keeping and "idiot scorecard" meaning I monitor myself for acts of unintelligence for fun.
Examples:
- leaving the car window down, such that Ryan got to sit on a wet seat
- leaving the car door open overnight, risking draining the battery (she started quickly)
- trying to fix a floor lamp switch for many minutes before realizing the lamp was unplugged
- leaving the SD card out of the camera making pix go to internal memory but I can't find the cord
Sometime around when Ryan was playing Tetris, or maybe DigBug, must've been when Operation Pound Sand was going down (my name for it). I woke up to a flurry of YouTubes (today, June 22) decrying the much anticipated strike against some vintage equipment bunkers.
Ryan is visiting faculty within the Cascadia context, in an advisory capacity, as a fellow math nerd. He's been studying my Number Theory notebook and reading up on factorization algebras.
I'm being connected to other scholars via LinkedIn contacts, including a physicist into lambda calculus according to Rowan. Call it "curriculum hardening" or "tying off loose ends" maybe. The goal is not to become inflexible (a different meaning of hardening), so much as becoming riddled with many tiny holes, versus fewer gaping large ones.
Dante and Casey were here earlier in the week, also visiting faculty, although Dante is from outside the Cascadian bioregion. We're working independently of any District think tank and receive no federal funding. Our subculture is more a Pacific Rim based phenomenon, than anything Atlantic-oriented.
Last night we starting watching Atlas Shrugged, the movie, a three part DVD extravaganza, set in a parallel universe where train tycoons battle it out against a backdrop similar to ours, technology-wise, with cell phones and private jets, but no commercial air or truck traffic to speak of, only rail lines. Call it a "simulator reality" wherein issues relating to ideology get hammered on.
As I was telling Ryan, this science fiction story reminds me of another one, The Iron Bridge, which features Quakers who were likewise rail and steel tycoons in a non-egalitarian backroom-governed society: that of the English industrial revolution.
In The Iron Bridge, our heroine travels (naked) back in time to sabotage said bridge, future analysis having determined that homo sapiens industrialized too soon, before they were sapient enough. Were this hallmark of industrial progress to fail, humans could healthfully be set back on their timeline, vs mutating into monstrous warmongers.
I'm learning some video and computer game lore from Ryan, which is useful going forward in my role of Coffee Shops Network CMO, which is all about winning high scores for charitable causes and projects around the world, and building a profile on that basis.
