Milestone

Recently, my car hit the major milestone of 100,000 miles. Quite something. As much as I malign my car for its dents, scrapes, and disintigrating interior, the Altissima has been extremely reliable. Not bad for my first car.

I hope my frequent talk of replacing my car hasn't offended it. I don't particularly enjoy the fact that passengers worry about the door handle falling off. But the car's been paid off for a while now, so every month the Altissima holds up is like money in the bank.

Here's a blurry photo that dramatically implies I was going much faster when I hit 100k (although the speedometer tells the real story).

Teh Winnar!!!!!!!!!11111oneoneone

A few weeks back, I entered a little internal game design contest at Maxis. Borrowing an idea or two from another game, I managed to come up with a decent design that fulfilled the requirements (2-4 player co-op, theme of "generations"). My favorite aspect of the game was that I used yellow gemstone tokens to represent the bladder motive. How could you not love a cheap gimmick like that?

As I said, that was several weeks back, and I hadn't heard anything back about the results. I had pretty much forgotten about it (except that Ben kept asking me about it every time I saw him). I wasn't really hoping to win, but I was strangely proud of myself for getting the dang thing together and actually entering it.

Anyway, I got to work a bit late this morning and realized everyone was in a departmental meeting. Oops. Oh well. Then on my way to lunch, a co-worker told me, "Congratulations!" During the meeting, I had been announced the winner of the game design contest. Throughout the day I had people stopping me in the hall to wish me congratulations. I'm like a minor celebrity around here. For the day, at least.

Here's the prize. Guess I know what I'm doing on my upcoming trans-Atlantic flight.

Not bad for a $7.48 investment in colored glass tokens (and a few office supplies that no one will miss).