The Canadians? They do not mess around...

I have been incredibly, horribly busy at work, at least when I haven't been feeling like crap. So blogging hasn't really been on my horizon all that much, alas. Sorry.

I try not to write about work for a variety of reasons, but this is kinda interesting. Or at least it was to me, but I'm also the kind of person who likes to talk about fonts. Bear with me...

A while back I wrote a grant for work to buy a rather large piece of hardware. That hardware arrived yesterday, in a package of such magnitude that I have to write about it. The device in question is the SmartTech Rear Projection 3000i unit. The entire surface of the screen is touch-sensitive, and it responds to touch as if you'd clicked your mouse there. It's cool but I am really aching to try one of their Sympodium models, even though the name sounds more like something from Pfizer than anything else.

So anyway, this gets shipped to us from the Great White North in a giant cardboard box. After undoing the straps, we find that the entire unit is wrapped in plastic, shielded by styrofoam in the corners, and bolted to a pallet. Which has shock absorbing rubber as part of its construction. Each corner was bolted with two three-inch-long bolts about 3/4" thick, and then they'd screwed a RAMP to the pallet to roll the thing off. I wish I'd taken a picture—it's the best packaging I've seen since I unwrapped my Dyson vacuum.

I'm excited about packaging of home products. I must be getting old... On the other hand, the other thing I've been doing lately is playing LEGO Star Wars, which takes everything I liked when I was 6 and compresses it into an everlasting gobstopper of fun.

First of all, it's LEGO. I adore LEGO, always have. Then it's Star Wars, only the second trilogy which is a bit of a shame. But I am reminded a bit of Dark Forces, which had plugged into the collective unconscious of my generation by running around shooting stormtroopers with real blaster sounds. (I am guessing the transition of kids running around neighborhoods yelling, "bang bang!" to "p-chewwww! p-cheeeeww!" can be tied back to 1977 or so...)

One of my favorite things about LEGO Star Wars is that they manage to make Episode I actually watchable. There's no dialogue. You see Jar-Jar but you do not hear him. You can chop him into pieces with a lightsaber.

And that, my friends, is worth the price of admission alone.

One other fun thing—as you collect new characters, they wander around your little digital world, so as you explore the parking lot of the diner that serves as the game's hub, the various factions (Sith and Jedi) start fighting like the Jets and the Sharks. Bystanders are blown into their component parts. Shots are fired. And you get to pick up all the candy that falls out.