Magic and Money

Wizards of the Coast, the company that owns Magic, sponsors a series of Magic tournaments through its Organized Play division. The top level Magic tournaments are called Pro Tours and each have a total prize pool of about $200,000, with the winner taking home $32,000. Five Pro Tours along with numerous smaller tournaments are hosted during the year, allowing a handful of "professional" full-time Magic players to exist. Though perhaps not a life goal of mine, playing a game and making money while doing it would be pretty neat.

Unfortunately for TFH and I, neat idea it will remain. For us, Magic remains an entertaining liability, not a career.

That isn't to say I haven't tried. Way back in middle school, my brother and I had just discovered Magic. With limited funds, we needed to find some way to grow our collection of cards. The challenge was our only assets were the very things we wanted to get more of – other Magic cards.

Our plan was to repackage cards we owned and sell them at school. Instead of a 15 card pack for $3, we'd sell 3 card packs for $1. We guaranteed that each pack had at least a rare or uncommon card in it and told everyone a few of the best rares that were in our packs. The packs actually sold surprisingly well. In retrospect it makes some sense, as there was a lot of demand for Magic cards at school, but no store to supply them.

With the profits, my brother and I bought pricey individual cards. You can make the argument that some of these purchases were legitimate investments. For example, we bought a single unlimited Ancestral Recall for $72*. As Magic cards are not much different in look and feel than a normal playing card, the price paid may seem high. But as of this day, the Ancestral Recall retails for $599 on cardkingdom.com; this is a compounded annual growth rate of 21.26%!

The truth, though, is I never really sold any of my cards, so to claim I am a card-investing genius is a stretch. The Ancestral Recall and profit are still sitting in a box somewhere at home.

While my Magic profits may not be tangible, the expense certainly is. I currently spend most of my Magic money on Magic Online. Like the name suggests, the game is an official online version of Magic. What's more, you have to separately buy digital cards in order to play. There is no discount over buying cards online versus real life, and you really can't transfer cards from one medium to another. That means I have spent hundred of dollars on virtual cards.

TFH, though, wins the prize for biggest purchase. During Freshmen year, he impulse-bought Magic's "Power 9" on eBay. The Power 9 includes Ancestral Recall along with eight other similarly rare and out of print cards cards. Though he bought it before prices really inflated, it couldn't have been cheap - TFH refuses to tell us how much he paid. What's worse, weeks after he bought and paid for the cards, TFH still had not received them. G$ and I ask about when they are coming, but TFH dodges the question. When TFH finds a few buyers who never received their cards, I figure he's been scammed for good.

One day, though, TFH invites us up to his room. His set of Power 9 are laid out on his bed for display. When we ask how he finally got the cards from the eBay seller, TFH explains, "I left a voicemail and wrote him an email saying that I am a college student. I will get those cards. I have nothing better to do (certainly not attend classes), than get those cards. I will physically drive up to [10 hours away] and call the local police if I do not get those cards." His strongarm tactics apparently worked, as the seller was so intimidated he even included a few extra cards in TFH's shipment.

The Power 9 are exceptionally pricey because they are out of print. But the prices of even normal cards are high enough that it is often economical for them to be shared rather than have each person buy them individually. Before a Magic tournament, TFH, who by this time already moved out to the east coast, has decided what deck he'd like to play, and needs some more cards. He sends an email to our gaming circle describing what he's missing:

"Please please please. My entire function in life at this point is to play this deck, and to do that I need these cards in my mailbox on Friday.

Each person who helps hook me up will also get 10% of my winnings from the Pro Tour that this tournament qualifies into. TEN PERCENT OF $32,000 IS A LOT."

TFH gets the cards from us, plays in the tournament (which goes poorly) then sends them back out to the west coast. I receive the cards and play in a similar tournament the week after (it goes poorly as well). The Monday after the tournament, I am standing in line in the Stanford post office, realizing that in a month my cards will have done more traveling than I have in the last year.

"Can I get insurance on this?" I ask. The deck is in the same cardboard box which we've been using to carry our cards for the last 3 years.

The post office guy nods. "What's that worth?"

"Oh I don't know," I think a bit. "Maybe $500?"

He looks a bit surprised but starts filling out the slip. "What's in there?"

"Uh cards… just cards actually."

I don't try to explain more.

* I recently discovered that any Magic card that sells for more than $44.16 is worth its weight in gold (See the question from April 24th)

Party, TGS Style

“Oh boy.”
“NOOOOOOOOOO!!!”
“Hahaha we had that coming”

There are eight of us here gathered in Zephy’s small living room, having a LAN party. A LAN party is not really a party in the traditional sense – it involves guests bringing their computers to a single room so they can play computer games together while face-to-face. Five of us are crowded around Zephy’s average sized kitchen table, trying to find space for several thousand dollars worth of electronics. The table is cluttered with three 19 inch LCD monitors, two labtop (one of which is an Acer Ferrari), and an assortment of mice and wireless keyboards.

The table isn’t enough. Emonu is sitting on the floor, keyboard in lap, monitor set on a shin-high Ikea table. UrsaMajor’s laptop and mice are balanced between an adjacent chair, an old textbook, and his lap. Walking anywhere is difficult due to the Ethernet cords, power strips, and microphone cables that litter the floor.

In fact, walking anywhere just got a bit tougher as the power blew out. Apparently 8 computers and 1 hairdryer were too much for the circuit to handle. We now fumble around in the dark, cell phones flipped open to provide light.

Welcome to the TGS Lan Party.

TGS is our guild in World of Warcraft (WoW). TGS stands for Teen Girl Squad (a reference to the Strongbad flash comics which makes fun of stereotypical teenagers). Since we are a group of real life friends and friends of friends, we have the luxury of knowing that everyone is pretty cool. The idea of a TGS social met a warm reception from the guild, so lunch and a LAN party was planned.

We meet for lunch at a Japanese restaurant in [location]. Everyone is there except G$, our “guild master.” As the one who runs the show, many are disappointed he could not make it – apparently without explanation. However, we later find out later that he overslept (though lunch was scheduled at 1:00 pm).

As our food arrives, conversation naturally gravitates towards WoW, as we make jokes about “executive decisioning the order since I am raid leader,” “ninjaing the Hamachi,” or “drawing aggro on the wasabi.” Tasty tells us that besides his desktop, he has received (for reasons no one can understand) four additional laptops. He brought one of these laptop with WoW installed just in case someone’s computer broke.

My girlfriend at the time was with me, and fortunately, she seems to be having a not-so-horrible time. However, you can imagine it is tough to keep track of 8 people most of whom you have just met. Compounding the problem, everyone is referred to by both their real name and their Warcraft name. “Hey Tauren, can ya pass the Soy Sauce?”

After lunch, we all head towards Zephy’s apartment in a multicar caravan. I stop by my own apartment to pick up my computer. By the time I arrive, everyone has just finished setting up their computers. This leads to the described-earlier mass of electronics that liter the room. My girlfriend looks… stunned. To be honest, so am I. I have yet to see so much computer equipment crammed into one place. I even forgot my Ethernet cord at my house, but both Tasty and UrsaMajor have a spare. I set myself up on the dining table.

My girlfriend actually has tickets to a film festival, so we take off for a couple of hours. When I come back (girlfriend choose to leave…) everyone is working through a dungeon called Upper Blackrock Spire. In true LAN party fashion, we order pizza and cheese sticks for dinner, not wanting to miss WoW time. Right after we finish our pizza Zephy’s roommate, “Meghan,” returns. It looks like Meghan and a few of her friends are preparing to head out to a party. We hear many barely concealed scoffs as Meghan’s friends walk into the apartment and see what we’re doing, but shrug and go about our business. In fact, everything is fine until the whizzing of a hairdryer can be heard in the next room…

This is when the power blows out.

I’m no good at electronics, but it appears the hairdryer may have been the cause of the problem. A quick search reveals that hairdryers eat up around 1300-1800 watts, while a computer uses less than 300 watts. By this comparison, at least 6 computers need to be running to equal one hairdyer!

Well at this point we are sitting in the dark. We try resetting the fuse for the room, but we aren’t sure if it works. What are we to do then? Well, Daikon comes to the rescue by building a multimeter from random junk in Zephy’s place. Yes, he shows us that his EE degree from Stanford is really not going to waste by using a LED light, two paper clips, and some current to prove that our fuses really do work. This is actually useful as we now know the problem is that the fuse in the basement blew out, so we have to call the repair guy. Zephy understates, “we were using quite a bit of power,” but manages to convince management to send someone. Not knowing how long this repair is going to take, we decide to actually do something non-WoW related and watch “Inside Man.” We do that, grab some pearl milk tea, and by midnight most of us are back where we started – sitting in front of our computer in Zephy’s room.

We decide to play some Warsong Gulch, which is basically a 10 versus 10 capture the flag battle. We have never played with a full team before – you need to play with random people on your side if you cannot form a full 10 person team. In addition, we have instant communication. Instead of typing, five of us are together at the LAN party, and the rest of us are communicating through a voice chat program known as Ventrillo. And somehow, we are unbeatable.

Winning these capture the flag matches turn out to be quite addicting. Part of it is because we are a group of friends working together. In WoW it often feels that people with superior gear (which they can acquire through spending more time in the game) are just unbeatable. However, we are able to win games against them, making us feel like we actually earned our wins through skill rather than time. We crush anyone who is disorganized and unprepared. As an example of the addiction, BigPika, who has apparently not slept in a while, logs off around 4 am. Despite playing Warsong Gulch for three and a half hours and it being almost daylight, we are disappointed he leaves. After all he is our only priest! Just a few minutes later, though, BigPika is back on. He explains, “I stabbed myself with a vial of adrenaline so I can stay a bit longer.” He doesn’t try to leave again until the rest of us do.

At around 5, Warcraft starts becoming funnier than it should be. “Tags” sees an opponent named Taks. He decides Taks is an imposter and repeatedly yells at us to “pwn his face.” While defending our unattacked flag, G$ and I start pretending we actually are teen girls (to us, this means Justin Timberlake, “ohmigod,” and the mall), putting bystanders through a lesson in bad acting.

Near 6 am, there are only nine of us still around. We invite a 10^th random person into our Warsong group and Ventrillo channel. Besides us, who is still up at 6 am? Well, this guy lived in Australia. Hearing the giggling mess we are all in, he asks us what we are high on. We truthfully answer “cheese sticks.” Then he hears Zephy laughing over Ventrillo and types “lol I heard a girl… who was it?” All of a sudden, we are all claiming it is us. “It’s me,” says Daikon. “I am the girl,” I say. “Me,” says BigPika. He also tries to find out our ages, but gets similarly little information. “Single digits!” “12.” “16.” “Hermione Granger’s age.” G$ points out we weren’t even true to the “teen” part of Teen Girl Squad. “Come on guys, 12 is not even teen yet. It is pre-teen. Tween even. We are TEEN girl squad. Can’t you get that right?”

As it is approaching 7 am, the sun is rising, and the morning light triggers the tiredness of staying up so unnaturally. The LAN party starts petering out under the heavy haze of sleepiness. Tasty has brushed his keyboard out of the way, and he lies asleep on the wooden kitchen table flanked by a mouse and wires. Daikon and Tags are deciding whether to just sleep on the floor or take the five minutes to unroll the futon. I double-check to make sure I am awake enough to make it home, though it is literally only a four block drive.

I manage to make it home, and when I fall on my bed, I do glance over at the clock. It reads 7:17 AM. Sleep comes quickly, and it is 3 in the afternoon before I awake again.

The Deli

By all accounts, it was another bad travel day. “Dom” woke up at 4 am to make it on a 6:30 flight to our client’s offices in mid-America. The flight was canceled and he had to wait over an hour to get on a different plane. By the time he landed, Avis was out of cars. All told, when Dom arrived, he'd been up nine hours for just a two hour flight. Still, he walked into our team’s conference room with a huge grin on his face. After all, he was carrying a sandwich from The Deli. He unwrapped the sandwich and contemplated it for a moment. "Man that's beautiful," Dom said. Then he began eating.

The Deli has been elevated to an almost spiritual level for our team. We drove by it the very first day of the project when we were trying to find our client's offices. “Mike” noticed it and immediately said, "That place might be sneaky good," so we stopped.

The Deli did indeed look "sneaky good" as the parking lot was packed. On the menu was a variety of sandwiches, and an affordable combo meal that came with chips and a drink. We each ordered a combo meal and wolfed down the chips. When we got our sandwiches, we were not disappointed. The bread was soft, the meat plentiful, and the toppings fresh. "This is a damn good sando," Dom said, using his favorite moniker for sandwich. "Damn good."

The rest of the week, we take trips to The Deli every day for lunch. Each trip is accompanied with even greater praise lavished upon The Deli. The Deli "crushes," the bread is "unattainable in California," and the proximity to the client site is "huge." At around 10 am, Dom stops what he's doing and says, "Damn near time for lunch at The Deli, right guys?"

That week we flew back to California on Thursday. Our flights are all around 3 pm, so we have to leave the client site right around noon. That meant a quick trip to The Deli to pick up a combo meal. Mike and I are getting to work on the sandwiches on the way to the airport, but Dom has to drive. Dom is incredibly jealous as we eat, "Shit man, I'm damn near starving and I'm not going to be able to eat my sando for another half an hour." He pauses, "At least I ate those chips like they were my job."

We arrive at the airport. Dom returns the rental car then runs into the shuttle while unwrapping his sandwich, backpack bouncing on his shoulders. "What'd you get," Mike asks. "Chicken Pesto," he says, and takes a bite. "Wow, I’m a huge fan of this one." It only takes around five minutes for the shuttle to reach the terminal, but Dom's done before we hit the gate. I look over at his direction and he gives me a contented nod.

Over the next few weeks, whenever we are traveling to the client site we get excited for The Deli. So much so that Dom and Mike, who both have families, would almost rather fly out than stay at home. One week, only Dom and I need to be at the client site. We have a conference call with a client, who has just provided us a ton of information. After it wraps up, Mike asks us to stay on the line for a bit so we can catch up.

Mike: "First things first, what did you guys get for lunch?"

Me: "Italian"

Dom: "Prime Rib... with the Horseradish sauce"

Mike: "... Whoa! You don't have to rub it in"

It soon becomes apparent that our client does not share the same amount of enthusiasm we do. When someone skeptically asks us "How many times have you been to The Deli?" we ask for lunch alternatives. She mentions Subway. This does not go over well with the team.

Mike: "I mean, maybe there are places better than The Deli, but don't throw out Subway as an alternative."
Dom: "I know! I wanted to slap her!"

Another client mentions that The Deli isn't even the best deli in town – according to him, there are at least three places better. Dom is again incredulous, "Three places better than The Deli? What is this? The sando capital of the world or something?"

Dom at one point even decides to put together a list of all the sandos he's had at The Deli. He pulls up the online menu and begins scribbling in his notepad. I remind him we've only eaten there 5 out of 6 days we've traveled, because we once tried one of the places allegedly better than The Deli. "That's a day we'll never get back," Dom says. "Okay, I definitely had Prime Rib, Italian, Chicken Pesto, Club, and Turkey Avocado. And I just ate Tuna. Wow, did I really skip Ham and Swiss? I am a jackass if I did not get Ham and Swiss, I'm a HUGE fan of Ham and Swiss."

Dom of course picks up the Ham and Swiss that day. You guessed it, it "crushed," was "damn near a work of art," and was "huge."

As long as The Deli was open, the project probably could have gone on forever and we wouldn’t have cared. Our final week on the project, Dom and I arrive on a slightly earlier flight than Mike, so we pick up the rental car. Dom sends Mike a few text messages ostensibly to coordinate. In reality, this exchange occurred:

Dom: "I'm damn near starving."
Mike: "Eat here, or wait for The Deli?"
Dom: "Dumb question."

An hour later we were at The Deli.

Freshman Year: Live and Let Live (Part 2)

TFH was the second floor RA in my Freshmen dorm, "Egypt" (See Part 1 here). I got a chance to talk to him when we were walking to our first dorm event, a dorm versus dorm freeze tag match in the Stanford quad. We exchanged some pleasantries and discussed our chances in the freeze tag match. I explained that I never get too hung up with losing in freeze tag as people are apt to unjustly unfreeze themselves. TFH shrugs and tells me "If you're not cheating, you're not trying." It was at this point that I realized TFH would be a very different RA experience. You see, Spamus, G$, and I were the evil influences in Gently's life, constantly chatting in her room, distracting her from work, or causing havoc in the halls. And that's how it's supposed to be. We're raucous Freshmen, she's the responsible Senior. Fortunately or unfortunately, it never worked this way with TFH. TFH sending us down "the other path" would be a common theme throughout the year.

What started it was the discovery that TFH was a Magic: The Gathering player. You may have heard of it – it is the same game that many boys played while they were in middle school (for me, it was around 1995-1997). This fantasy card game pits (typically) two players against each other, who assume the role of "wizards" that summon monsters, cast spells, and use artifacts all in an effort to reduce their opponent's life total from twenty to zero. TFH had a bunch of cards for us to play with because his dad worked for Hasbro and sent him a few free boxes each year (this is the same way we got our light sabers in Part 1). Magic wasn't even hip when I was in middle school, so you can imagine it was positively women-repelling when I picked it up with renewed vigor in college.

TFH was looking for gaming partners, and like any drug dealer with business sense, he broke us in slowly. He convinced G$, Spamus, and I every once in a while to browse his cards, throw them into fun concoctions, and play. We were more than happy to comply. After not playing for 4 years, walking into TFH’s room to see his collection of cards was more exciting than I’d like to admit. As I was in a long distance relationship at that time, I had the perfect excuse to ignore the rest of humanity, including the other main attraction on TFH’s floor – a hallway full of college girls of all shapes and sizes. While social life happened outside, I was methodically flipping through TFH’s collection and pointing out old cards like past lovers. Ah yes… Hypnotic Specter, I’d say, I remember that card was pretty sweet.

As TFH had been playing more than us, it soon became apparent the way the rest of us played the game – carelessly and impulsively – was no longer competitive. TFH was eager to teach us how to play better so we talked Magic theory and analyzed games after they had developed (I was particularly susceptible to this pastime). We even created our own dorm Magic league with numerical rankings based off the ELO Chess rating system. TFH updated the website after every night of matches so it reflected our new rankings; the website also functioned as an archive of results of every game we’d played.

As the competitive aspect of the game became more appealing, TFH and I eventually began going to local Magic tournaments. I won’t get into those here, but as a preview, our first excursions had mixed success. This prompted even TFH’s dad to get into the trash talk. “I don’t understand why you guys don’t just win. Not only am I paying $30,000 for your education, I’m sending you boxes and boxes of cards for free!”

As another way to improve, we began looking up Magic decks that have won recent tournaments on the internet. TFH built a now-classic deck known as the "Keeper.” He beat us all for a bit, but then G$ and I researched a decklist called “Old School Expulsion,” or OSE. OSE was created just to beat the “old school” Keeper deck, specifically on the back of a card called “Misdirection” (which, like the name suggests, redirects a positive spell from the Keeper player to the OSE player).

G$ was the chosen pilot for the OSE deck; not because he was the best (he is happy to remind me he was “dead last” on our league), but because he was the best against TFH. It seemed every day they would play, TFH would be slowly and skillfully winning the game. Then, he would try to play the spell that would seal the deal. “Ancestral Recall?” TFH would hopefully ask. G$ would let the moment simmer for just a bit, before shaking his head. “M-M-M-….MMISDIRECTION!!!” he announced with fanfare. G$ would then “windmill slam” the card, which involved taking the Misdirection in the palm of his hand, standing up, rotating his arm a few times “like a windmill,” then slaming the card faceup on the floor. TFH of course would go on mega-tilt from the display, but G$, Spamus, and I would be in absolute stitches.*

By the end of the year, it was not unusual to spend 4 or more hours playing Magic in TFH’s room each night. We frequently slept through lunch, so you can imagine what attendance on our morning classes was like. Unfortunately, the amount of school work we had to do steadily increased as the year went on, and it didnt take a genius to see that something had to give.

While all our academics cracked a bit, TFH suffered the most. The night before a midterm, he half-seriously wrote on his whiteboard “If you still see this message tomorrow morning at 8 AM, please knock.” That message and a conscientious student were all that was between him and a fifth year at the Farm. Even so, his performance on certain classes, notably statistics, left something to be desired. The details are gory, but let's just say he "passed" the course in only the most generous sense of the term. To this day, the ultimate rejoinder to TFH inspired trash talk is to say "please – you understand this game no better than you do statistics.”

Sadly, TFH moved to North Carolina, so I do not currently get to see as much of him as I’d like. Though this might be a good thing from a work and career perspective, I’d gladly trade a few points on the real world ladder for the unadulterated good times that Freshman year was. That said, TFH and I are still good friends. Since Freshman year, has TFH continued to be a strong influence in my life? I will leave you with this discussion regarding online poker we had just a few months ago.

Me: I itch to buy in for real money, but I'm kind of scared where that path leads.
TFH: yeah, me too -- exactly my sentiment
Me: I am looking to you for guidance... meaning, to push me into the wrong direction.
TFH: HAHA
TFH: when have i ever done that!

Do I even need to say that we eventually both bought in for real money, TFH first, me following?

* A variation on the “windmill slam” – taking the card, pretending to use it to wipe your bottom, then presenting it to your opponent – actually got “Magic bad boy” PTR (search for "Searing Flesh") disqualified from the Pro Tour.

Freshmen Year: Live and Let Live (Part 1)

Dorms at Stanford are largely run by Resident Assistants (RAs), students employed by the university to put together fun events for the dorm, act as a shoulder to cry on, and (lightly) enforce dorm or university rules. Most RAs are friendly, energetic upperclassmen, and “Gently”* was no exception. Gently was a tall, attractive brunette majoring in History. She was the type of person who I am sure has always been naturally popular throughout her life, without a hint of malice or manipulation. Even as a Senior, Gently was mature beyond her years, and quite ready to leave the Stanford bubble. This led to an interesting dynamic, as she was placed as an RA on the first floor of “Egypt."

Egypt was actually divided so that the first floor was all guys, the second floor was all girls, and the third floor was coed. I am not quite sure what the logic behind placing Gently on the first floor was, but I assume the powers that be guessed a shot of estrogen was needed to balance out the floor. This was on the right track, but somewhat short of the mark. You'd need truckloads of estrogen to turn the first floor of Egypt into anything close to "normal." You see, Egypt 1F was the place where I met many of the depraved friends who remain to this day constant characters in my life. As Freshmen, we just had that much more time to generally act like the social retards we were (and arguably remain).

If you peered down the hall of Egypt a random day that year, there would be little surprising about it. There was the carpeted hallway and the usual row of dorm room doors, each decorated with brightly colored name tags. If you walked in, you might pass a few rooms and stop at 110 - where Spamus and G$ reside. In a typical scene, the pair are at their computers playing a first person shooter called Quake on matching LCD monitors. It's actually dead silent, as they both have headphones on, are facing away from the door, and are engrossed in the game. Maybe G$ would be running around with Quake's version of a pinprick - a mere machine gun. Spamus is sporting one of the game's stronger weapons, the rocket launcher, and is on the prowl. He turns the corner and Aha! finds G$ frantically darting towards the end of the hallway, where there's a better gun. Spamus leans slightly in towards the monitor, as he tap-tap-taps the mouse, unleashing a gratuitous volley of rockets. Rocket blasts explode all around G$'s screen, and it is at this point that the silence is cracked by G$'s high pitched scream (“fuuuuuuuuuUUCK!”). His character is quickly reduced to giblets.

This was actually a common phenomenon as the floor was just filled to the brim with gamers (or generally weird people). There was a guy who tried to readjust his sleep schedule so he slept 8 of every 36 hours, another was a bronze medalist in the International Math Olympiad, a decidedly not in shape third repeatedly walked around with his shirt off. Of the 20 or so guys on the floor, I can think of over half who ended up as Computer Science majors. Multiplayer Quake matches amongst people living just down the hall were a reality, and when the whole floor was playing, a cacophony of insults, taunts, screams and gloats could be heard whenever something interesting happened.

With the personality of the first floor thus, it should be no surprise that the release of Star Wars: Episode II was highly anticipated. We prepared ourselves the only way we knew how - by repeatedly playing Jedi Knight II matches against each other. Jedi Knight was a Quake-like game themed Star Wars style. We'd fight on a stage that was designed to look exactly like the "Duel of the Fates" scene from Episode 1. John Williams' score would be blaring loudly in the background while I desperately tried to use the force to choke and throw G$ off the ledge before he sliced me in two. The music became ingrained in us. One day, I walked back into the dorm to see G$ standing in the hall talking to Gently. Though we are half a hallway apart from each other, spontaneously, he turns to me and begins loudly singing:
G$: "KOR-AHHHH. MAH-TAHHHH"
Me: "KOR-AHHHH. RAH-TAH-MAHHHH"
G$ and I start giggling, and we hear Spamus - "Is that BeatenByJacks? What're you guys even doing??"

Another Star Wars fan and character on the Egypt stage was TFH. At the time, TFH was the RA of the second floor. In a later story, I will describe the gaming heaven that was his room, but what is relevant now is that his dad worked at the toy company Hasbro. This meant a free shipment of six lightsabers. They were put to good use:

1) G$ and I decided to choreographed a lightsaber duel for an hour or so in the Egypt lobby. We'd run through a few moves, earnestly discuss how "cool" they looked, then practice a few times. The Egypt lobby was a highly trafficked public space.
2) On the day Episode 2 premiered, we were obviously in line for several hours waiting for good seats. Fortunately, we brought the lightsabers to the theaters. TFH and I decide to engage in a spontaneous lightsaber duel, which culminates with TFH pretending to use the force on me, while I act like I am pushed to the floor. I could see parents standing in line with their kids thinking "God, Little Johnny better not still be obsessed with Star Wars when he's as old as these losers."
3) Near the end of the year, non-local students often put their stuff in temporary storage for the summer. This meant there were 10 or 20 Door-to-Door storage containers scattered throughout the Egypt field (the containers basically look like outhouses). G$ and I saw this for what it was - a perfect place for a lightsaber battle. At 1:00 or 2:00 AM, we ran into field and tried to ambush each other from behind the storage containers, lightsabers providing our only source of light.

It seemed so natural at the time, but looking back I can only imagine what it was like to be one of the few non-gamers on the floor. Gently's room, for example, was situated directly across from Spamus and G$'s. As an RA, her door basically had to be open the whole day, so sounds of gunfire and virtual explosions constantly interrupted her attempts to catch up on reading. My roommate came from a musical theater background and was another non-gamer. I basically had nothing in common him, which was unfortunate because he was a cool guy. The difference was pretty obvious when you looked at the posters up on our room:

Him: Framed pictures of friends. Posters of Abercrombie & Fitch models.
Me: A single "demotivator" from despair.com which read, "Adversity: That which does not kill me postpones the inevitable."

Despite the widely different personalities that lived there that year, I have to say there were few major fireworks or drama that came out of our floor. We all loved Gently, and I like to think she liked us as well. My roommate and I may not have become best friends, but I think there is no bitterness there. And I did meet many of the people that have defined me from that point on. Far from a disaster, Egypt was just a bunch of cool people hanging out together, letting each other do whatever they wanted to do. And that’s what it’s all about, right?

* The origin of this nickname is from a dorm tradition known as Secret Santa. This is where each participant draws a name of a person they will anonymously give a gift to. The catch is that the recipient are given anonymous commands that must be followed in order in order to receive the gift. This led to an entertaining week of random feats. In the midst of this, G$ and Spamus interrupted a widely attended dorm meeting to serenaded Gently to Tenacious D’s song “Fuck Her Gently” (NSFW). The punchline of this is G$ and Spamus’ dance wasn’t even a part of the Secret Santa – they did it just for kicks.

Unexpected Gaming on the Carribean

Using up some much needed vacation time, I went on a cruise to the Carribean right before Christmas this year. I had been to one cruise before with the parents to Alaska, which was a lot of fun, but this was my first time going with college friends. I’m sure my impression of a cruise is the same as yours and I was really looking forward to days of overeating, partying, exploring, and relaxing. While we did do all those things, there was one activity I can’t say I was expecting: competitive Jenga.

It wasn’t long until we discovered the ship’s game room. Our days were taken up by shore excursions and exploring the sports deck of the ship, but nighttime was a different story. Dinner time for us was 6 pm, and despite often ordering several appetizers, main courses, and desserts we were normally done by 8. Our other main activity was heading into “The Vault,” the ship’s nightclub, which we couldn’t really do until 10 or so. This is when we’d head up to the game room.

The game room was far from the prettiest room on the ship. It was largely undecorated, with blue carpet and bare walls. A glass door leading to a deck outside was obstructed by a big caution sign. The room was sparsely inhabited to begin with, but when there were people there it was a combination of senior folks playing bridge and families trying to keep their young kids occupied.

It was in this environment that we walked in and started playing semi-sober, obscenity-laden Jenga. “Fuuuuuuuuck!!!” we’d say after realizing the piece we picked was squarely wedged in the tower. Trash talk would fly back and forth about how “you just certified your incompetence as a Jenga player.” After a successful piece was plucked, we’d return to our drinks that we’d brought in from the bar next door. Inevitably the shacky table legs, natural rocking of the ship, and alcohol would lead the Jenga tower to crash.

That may have been the end of it for some groups. But not us. After a session or two of blissfully ignorant Jenga, the analysis began. We quickly uncovered a few Jenga basics: 1) choose a piece which has space around it to increase your chance it isn’t wedged in the tower, 2) look at both sides of the tower to make sure that a piece is truly free, 3) if a tower is leaning, the side leaned toward is more likely to have structure bearing pieces.

Soon Jenga games are being played for rounds of drinks. Advanced Jenga techniques are developed and not shared. There are no take-backs – select a structure bearing piece and deal with the consequences. Fever does maximum damage to the tower on innocent pieces, just to cause chaos for the person following him. I innovate with the “lightning pull” to deal with particularly snug pieces (friction is minimized the quicker you pull out a piece). Pieces are twisted, lifted, and tapped, out of the tower – anything to prevent the tower from being destroyed.

In the midst of one of these “intense” games, one of us hypothetically brings up the ultimate Jenga challenge – pulling out a single middle block which supports the rest of the tower. This culminates in a situation where we decide to just stop playing the game and concentrate on improving our Jenga technique. We call this “Jenga Academy.” We frantically build up mock towers with only a middle block holding up a few stories and attempt to pull the piece out. It seems doable, and indeed it is – after several tries, Spamus is the first to succeed. Immediately after, we set up a real game so Spamus can try out the technique “on the field.”

Two moves later, Spamus has an opportunity, which he greets with open arms. Spamus explains that he needs to first “channel his chi.” Apparently the way this worked was by posing in various freeze frame action poses reminiscent of a 1950s Chinese karate movie. Spamus then began a drawn out “Hiii-yaaAAAAAA” yell. Meanwhile, his hand approached and pulled away from the target piece, as if taking practice swings before a critical golf shot. A final yell, he plucks the piece out, the remainder of the tower falls down, a nervous beat while we await the crash, but somehow, stability. Spamus has done it – victory and high-fives all around!

Needless to say, when we were done with our Jenga session that day, there was no one left in the game room.

While that move was the culmination of our Jenga cruise, strangely, it was not the last we would hear of the game. Two months later, T-dag has flown down to visit us. She excitedly informs us that her boss uses Jenga for different purposes. Apparently, he has a 100% success rate of hooking up with a woman who comes back to his place if the two of them sit down and play Jenga together. Does T-dag’s boss play vanilla Jenga? Or does he apply obsessive analysis and kung-fu yells in the midst of the action? Though the former is probably more likely, I must admit a part of me hopes it’s the latter.

Intelligence is Not Wisdom – A Character Study of BigPika

I wrote this one for BigPika’s birthday.

bigpika: my friend it could ALL BE OURS

bigpika: the HOT CHIXX0RS

bigpika: um dude that's not a word.

bigpika: shut the fuck up dude.

bigpika: dude stop fucking talking to yourself.

bigpika: what the fuck?

bigpika: FUCK YOU

bigpika: NO FUC YOU

-one of the smartest minds to ever (barely) graduate from Stanford.

Imagine this - you are peacefully drinking from the water fountain in the hallway of your dormitory. All of a sudden, a door bursts open. From it, a disheveled Asian male pounds the floor, making a beeline from his room to the bathroom door. You hear a loud “OH GOD!” as he enters the bathroom. Presumably relieving himself in record time, he soon blitzes back to his room and slams the door shut, all while your mouth hangs agape over the drinking fountain.

This is a true story from my college days. The guy I speak about is none other than my good friend BigPika. Now, I’m sure the question burning in your mind is “what was BigPika doing that made him in such a rush, denying himself even the fundamental human right to pee?” Well, he wasn’t finding the cure for AIDS, I can tell you that much. He was playing a computer game. And not just any computer game. A COMPUTER GAME YOU CAN PAUSE.

Why would BigPika not just pause the game when he needed to pee, instead of desperately dashing to the bathroom during the cutscenes?

Simply put, if he thought that rationally, he wouldn’t be BigPika.

My friends tell me that BigPika is one of the smartest and best programmers out there. I believe it. He has demonstrated his ridiculous knowledge of computers time and time again by busting out random technical facts. BigPika also possesses the most computer equipment of anyone I’ve ever known. Need a gadget? You don’t go to Fry’s, you go to BigPika. Zephy made him throw away five keyboards – he still has another four. His new Radeon 9800 pro physically fried since he was playing video games 24/7. No worries, he replaced it with a slightly less new Radeon 9700 Pro he had lying around. Spamus wanted some thermal paste to help cool down his system – BigPika had it.

I don’t even know what thermal paste is.

BigPika’s prowess goes beyond simple technical support however – his raw smarts are solid. Last quarter, the team of BigPika, G$, and two other dudes won the best project contest in the Human Computer Interaction class. He also simultaneously placed 3^rd in the Othello contest of the grad-level artificial intelligence class (one of the hardest classes at Stanford). After this experience, AllSoundSame (who surely was belittling his own contribution) said “if there's anything I've learned from this week, it's that dominating a tournament of uber-nerds involves nothing more than a couple lines of code, a nice dry erase board, and BigPika.”

But as epic as BigPika's smarts are, his errors in judgment are somehow even more legendary.

Several times we would be on the way to dinner when we’d stop by BigPika’s dorm room. We’d say hi, and go through the pleasantries of checking up on everyone.

G$: “How’s the CS140 program going for you, BigPika?”

BigPika: “Wh… what program?”

G$: “… The one that’s due tomorrow.”

BigPika: (blood leaving face, mouth hanging open)

G$: “Tell me you’re joking.”

BigPika: “THERE A PROGRAM DUE TOMMORROW? WHY DIDN’T ANYONE TELL ME!”

All: (mutterings that attending class, reading professor’s emails, or glancing at the syllabus may help)

Most of the time BigPika’s foibles are caused by a combination of his addictive personality and love of video games. The game he was playing when he blitzed to the bathroom was Homeworld, a real time strategy game that he beat in apparently a single seating.

In Super Smash Brothers, BigPika once repeated a single move ONE THOUSAND TIMES in his quest to discover the true distribution of outcomes.

If BigPika can get so into allegedly non-addictive games such as Smash Brothers, what happens when he encounters the most addictive game genre of all time, Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games? Well, after he bought World of Warcraft (WoW), he immediately disappeared from the real world, playing apparently 24/7. In just two weeks, BigPika wrote in his blog that the game ruined him. He cancelled his account.

Less than 6 weeks later, he had reactivated his account.

BigPika is still subscribed and plays a lot. A lot. I think, though, what really separates him from other gamers is the way WoW has really affected his real life psyche. BigPika no longer uses “IRL” cuss words to yell at bad drivers; he instead yells “PVE NUB!” BigPika no longer compares trees to Redwoods and Sycamores; he instead sizes them up against the trees in Ashenvale or Silverpine. I am convinced when BigPika’s avatar takes damage, he himself feels physical pain. I’m sure Spamus would concur - he’s been woken up numerous times at 4 AM by screams when Warcraft monsters take BigPika’s character apart.

Though I’ve known BigPika for a while, and have tried my best to explain him, much still remains a mystery. How do you know the location of every powerup in every map in Quake, yet repeatedly turn up the wrong way on the same one way street? How can your Warcraft bank space be meticulously organized while dirty laundry and change litters your floor?

The truth is, to know BigPika is to not expect answers to these questions. And as this young man reaches the sweet age of [Age], I expect him to get less, not more, mature. But that really isn’t a bad thing. Knowing BigPika has, is, and will be an unforgettable experience.

Happy birthday, BigPika.

Gamer / Consultant Multiclass

It's before 7:30 AM, I've just landed in [Location], and Avis doesn't have my car again. I am sitting in an uncomfortable stool of a chair, grumpily waiting to see what the rental car roulette deals me. The Avis guy taps at his computer for a bit. Finally, he announces "Ford Taurus."

Fuck.

It's one of those days.

To be accurate though, it's always "one of those days" on Mondays. I'm not quite used to my new life as what's known as a management consultant, but I'm slowly easing into it. Instead of working out of our home office, our team spends four days a week at our client's offices in [Location]. For the last month and a half, I've been flying from [Home] to [Location] every Monday, staying in the Marriot for 3 nights, and flying back home on Thursday. Waking up Monday morning is particularly brutal, as I need to be up by 4:30 am in order to catch a 6:30 flight.

Though honestly, the early morning flight isn't solely responsible for my current tiredness – it's Bloodlord Mandokir. The Bloodlord is a boss in World of Warcraft, Blizzard's enormously successful massively multiplayer online game. He resides in a dungeon called the Zul'Gurub. Last night, 20 of us, some of us friends in real life, threw ourselves at this boss several times in an attempt to beat him. It is a tense battle for our "guild" – new we are to “raiding” Zul'Gurub. At 12:30 am or so, Bloodlord finally dies. Cheer erupt around the room, we distribute the rare items the Bloodlord dropped, and I get myself to bed.

This mix of serious gaming and professional work is one of the daily dilemmas in my life.

Take just last week. I was staying at the Renaissance near the client for the first time. I check in, and as normal purchase internet for myself. Unfortunately, the room I was staying in had access to the internet only through wireless. I thought briefly of the extra convenience of having wireless access, but then soon fixated on how I'll have extra lag when trying to make my Warcraft raid on Wednesday night (this is in fact a scheduled, weekly affair). I soon got myself transferred to a room with a wired connection.

Conversations also occasionally get into tricky territory. The Big 3 of wine, exercise, and cars dominated this team's non-work discussions. I have a limited expertise in one of those (cars), am ignorant but curious about another (wine), and know nothing about the third (exercise). Despite this, I can still navigate and enjoy these conversations.

The real question is whether my team can deal with my own contributions. This is a common one - at a team dinner, the partner asks each of us what we did for the weekend. Person #1 hosted his kids birthday party at the local Swim & Racket club. Person #2 competed in a sailing tournament. Person #3 went mountain biking. Person #4 is me. In truth, I had a great weekend, but what I have done is 1) competed but performed poorly at a Magic tournament and 2) went to BigPika's house to play Super Smash Brothers for a few hours.

While I love and believe in games, I'm not sure there's a non-awkward way to answer the question. I could blatantly lie, I could give the half-lie that all gamers know ("I played some poker"), or I could tell the truth.

That's why I was excited when Slowplay showed up. Slowplay is a fellow gamer who works on the same client as I do. Slowplay played WoW in the past, but quit when he realized it was a destructive addiction. Unfortunately, the day after he met me he started playing again (my bad). Anyway, while I try to reduce the amount of gaming talk that goes on to be courteous of not boring everyone to death, it's increasingly tough with both Slowplay and I hanging around the table. Normally, we get to the gaming discussion gradually, skip around a bit, then move on. My favorite, though, is when there is a lull in the conversation and Slowplay abruptly changes the subject to a WoW detail. During lunch one day he stopped talking, turned to me, and asked. "So… do you have the ZHC?" Everyone else just looks at us quizzically, realizes what we are talking about, then picks up where they left off.

I mean, to me it is still funny that we are sitting in the middle of the client cafeteria, where we are professionals working to solve complicated business problems, when someone asks "Hey … how's that virtual equipment going in World of Warcraft?" Maybe it will be common in the future with the way games are becoming more mainstream, but for now it is still funny.

Though for me gaming will probably never be as productive as actually, well, working, there are some hidden synergies between consulting and gaming. For example, my senior manager once noticed me working on rewriting some bullet points.

"You type really fast," he said.

"Oh thanks," I say. I hesitate a bit, but decide to carry on, "It's actually because I used to play this game when I was younger where you had to type to do everything." I explain that Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) were text-based precursors to online role playing games like World of Warcraft. In MUDs, you only know where you are by reading descriptions of each room, and pick up items by typing "Get Sword" into the console.

I continue, "Yeah so for example if you were walking around outdoors, and someone else who was way stronger than you attacked you, you would need to be super fast at typing 'flee' to run away, and then maybe "North,' 'East,' 'East,' 'South' in order to get to a safe place"

The team seems to enjoy the story – probably because the image of me furiously typing 'FLEE' to avoid getting player killed is good times. Everyone agrees that these games seem like a really good way to learn to type. I am satisfied for a moment as I have convinced yet another small group of people that there may be some merit in gaming.

"Okay, back to the slide," says the manager.

"Sounds good."