Turning Points

Friday night was the longest five minutes of my life. Five minutes where the only woman I've ever considered my soulmate debated our future in her mind. I sat and waited, swimming in a mix of hope and dread. True happiness can't be obtained without risk.

By definition, not every risk pays off. But to paraphrase Shaw, I'm not going to sit down and die of a broken heart - but in the world for me there is Sara and a lot of other women for whom one is the same as another.

I don't know what the future holds now - I confess at this point I'm not completely interested. It looks like my free time is going to be taken up for the next six to eight months (more on that later). After that maybe I'll know what to do.

I don't normally get this personal on my blog, and I don't know if I will again. But I felt that if I didn't talk about this then this blog would not be a genuine record of my life. It could never be, if I didn't reveal this moment, a turning point in my life.

Even Stranger Personal Ads

I was sitting yesterday with my friend Sara and we were reading the Stranger - specifically, reading out the weirdest personal ads aloud.

She lamented the fact that there's no newspaper or personal ads for philosophical people who just like good conversation. I imagined it would look something like this:

"Luscious brunette seeks intelligent conversation. Must be willing to do Locke, Kant, and Neitzche. Descartes fans need not apply. No Greek on the first date."

I don't often blog about work...

...because usually I can't talk about what I'm working on. Today at the Microsoft Game Developers conference, we announced XNA Game Studio Express, which allows C# developers to write games and run them on Windows and their own Xbox 360. It's generating some excitement, including the front page of CNN.

I'm currently working as a documentation writer on this team and I'm happy to see this announcement go out with the fanfare it deserves. I'm pretty excited about it.

What advertising really says:

At work, they've come out with special "Windows Vista" cans of Talking Rain. The only flavor available in the new cans?

Lemon.

Update: Engagdet has finally broke this story, complete with pics. Remember you saw it here first, my five loyal readers.

Freelance Writer becomes Gold Farmer

GamePolitics posted a review of a book called Play Money: Or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot. From their review:

he sought to prove that he could make more money in one year trading items from massively multiplayer online games (MMO's) than he had ever earned as a freelance writer.

Considering you can easily be a freelance writer and make $0 in a year, this is a highly suspect goal. Though it does give me an idea for a book!

Women prefer Plasma TVs to Diamonds

I normally don't just repost stuff on my blog, but this is too good to pass up - According to a study by Oxygen network (called "Girls Gone Wired") , 77% of women prefer a new plasma TV to a diamond solitaire necklace.

I've heard Plasma TV's described as having a high WAF ("wife approval factor") but this is the first study I've seen confirming it.

Other findings:

Cell Phones are preferred over shoes.
So is a digital camera or a media center PC.
They prefer iPods to slinky black dresses (Quelle dommage!).

The next time I need shopping advice from a woman friend, maybe I should take her to Fry's instead of Macy's.

Thanks to Ars for the story.