TwelveStone | Chicago Boozification, Part 3
Finally, we meet Jeff (persist)! He’s another one of the forum mods, and does some wicked, god-like stuff with ActionScript. We hadn’t heard from him all weekend, but as it turns out, he had sent me a PM on twelvestone.
But what happened a bit earlier in the weekend was that Ian (who is also a forum moderator) had left his login information on my computer. So then everyone started posting using his name, and we suddenly had moderator status… meaning we could edit anyone’s posts, and mess with thread titles and so forth. Take a looksee.
Well, since we were always logged in as Ian/arigato, I never logged in as myself. Thus, I never got persist’s message.
But, despite it all… he, Melissa and I got together for a nice dinner at Feast, nearby my place. Jeff was great to talk to, as nice in person as he is online. He offered to take us on a tour of IBM and, on our way out there, we got a hold of Scotty and Dana. All of us met up at the IBM building and Jeff gave us the dime tour.
Yeah!
My crappy photos don’t do this place justice. These (above) are some display screens, and the whole thing slowly revolves. Unfortunately, everything was turned off. But according to Jeff, they were touch-screens and you can use them to surf the web.
One of the meeting rooms. There are directional microphones in the ceiling, and I think they automatically target whoever’s speaking or something nutty like that. There are also targeted microphones on the tables, and everything is designed to make whoever’s talking sound like they’re right next to you, no matter where you’re sitting. And, each position at the table also has a Wacom tablet, one per seat.
The dark area on the wall back there? Two big display screens. Jeff said that they’ve used those big ass monitors to play UT. Two people in here, two others in an adjoining room with similar displays, each person with their own large screen.
Jeff, if you do that again anytime soon, I am still SO INCREDIBLY SERIOUS about paying you money if I can join.
This is a speaker setup, next to another display area in the front lobby. I vaguely overheard Jeff talk about it, and had him explain it to me again. The sound comes through these speakers, and they’re attached to a pane of glass that’s then suspended. The entire glass vibrates, and serves as an amplifier. At the start of the tour, Jeff was talking about all the fancy sound devices and speakers and setup in the room. I had wandered away a bit, and didn’t see, exactly, what he was talking about.
On our way back around, I saw these five slick looking devices. I figured they were part of the speaker setup and tried to look inside to see how this fancy, technological wonder worked. I was just about to ask Jeff to explain the acoustics of these speakers, when I peered around the side.
Jeff, you rock! Thanks SO MUCH for the tour!
Afterwards, we met up with chelle and went to O’Callaghan’s for drinks. Our waitress, Linda, was reading David Sedaris. His name had been coming up all weekend for me, so I insisted that I get a picture of her and the book. She was nice enough to let me use this on the blog, and as I was looking over my receipts… I realized I didn’t tip her enough.
Linda, if you’re reading this, I’m really sorry. I’m a drunk bastard who can’t do math, and I owe you money!
I ended up conking out here again. Jebus, it’s like I’m a narcoleptic this weekend.
Had fun chatting it up with Dana, Scotty, Jeff, Michelle and Melissa. After a while, I ended up ordering shots and well, I got rather ugly. I tried to pick up the tab, but these bastages snuck money back to me anyways.
Chelle came back with us to keep drinking and I think I was able to open a beer and then kick it over. Everything after the cab ride is really hazy, and I think I fell asleep at some point in the living room. All in all, a rather sloppy way for me to finish off the weekend.
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