Author: Scott

I spent part of my Sunday running through the woods shooting at friends and strangers.  The place: Outdoor Adventures Paintball.  The occasion was a friend’s 29th birthday.  Paintball has changed quite a bit since I first tried it as a sophomore in college.  There are college and professional leagues now (my alma mater apparently has quite a good team).  There are corporate sponsors.  They even have TV coverage on ESPN2 and the Versus network.

For novices like us, it was a great time.  We teamed up against a group of what looked like undergrads from the University of Maryland.  In three rounds of matches (3 games per match),  we won each 2 games to 1.  Usually it was by killing all of them off, but at least a couple of times we captured their flag and moved it all the way down the field.  The “center flag” variant of the game (one flag midfield that a team must capture and move forward through their opponents) was our least favorite.  We had a really long field for it in the second match, and our strategy didn’t work that well at first.  The one thing I would differently the next time is buy more ammunition.  Even though you have to pull the trigger for each shot, I ran out of ammunition before our third match was over.

I saw this production of Macbeth this afternoon with my friends Jen and Alban.  We were rewarded for our wait in the freezing cold (for standing room tickets) with actual seats for the show.  Thanks to Alban (I owe you big for this one), yours truly got a front row seat to the show.  Directed and produced in large part by Teller (of Penn & Teller), it was anything but your typical Shakespeare production (if there is such a thing).  I’m no aficionado of magic, but they pulled some incredible tricks in this show.  People appeared and disappeared before our eyes.  We saw fake blood which looked uncomfortably real.  I knew we were in for quite a ride when the show began with a Folger Shakespeare Library staffer stabbed through the back while reading us an announcement from the stage.  This doesn’t even include the excellent acting, the great fight choreography, the sound effects and percussion.

Instead of management and code, I’ll just be writing code (at least for now). Today, I started a new job at a small consulting firm in Virginia with a software lab that wants to start putting out products.

Today consisted of the environment configuration and filling out of forms typical of a first day.  Most of the last half of the day was taken up by a boot camp.  I found it to be a very enlightening how-to on consulting, as well as an intro to the company’s culture.

Barack Obama spoke at length yesterday on the issue of race in general and his former pastor in particular.  If you haven’t already seen and heard the speech, or read the transcript, I encourage you to do so.  There is no soundbite that can do justice to the importance and brilliance of his message.  If there was ever a politician who could legitimately argue that he’s a uniter and not a divider, it is Barack Obama.  I only hope it helps him win in Pennsylvania.