Go Congress and Dainty Diane

Originally posted August 1, 2001:

I spent all last week at the Go congress, lost most of my games (which I wasn't too happy about), but I learned some good things that have my game better (which I am happy about). Monday, back in Virginia, I played at the NOVA Go club and won my game handily using some of the techniques from the go congress. My roommate in my dorm at the college at York (York, Pennsylvania: it's biggest attraction is a coffee shop that serves greasy meatloaf as its lunch special -- ugh!) was a minister (Methodist), so we would have conversations long into the night about Faith and Grace. We didn't know out voices carried until someone from another dorm banged on our door telling us that it's hard to sleep at 1 a.m. with loud conversations ... *blush* hehehe!

I also had the pleasure of talking to one of the vendors of go books/equipment. She told me that she was living off of royalties from a contract her (wholely-owned) company set up with NEC in Japan. NEC puts a Go program on every computer it sells there, and for that they pay her (I think) $0.10 per copy. Galing! She wants to do that again for the Macs, so she was quizzing me about my Mac-OS X skills (which're good, so, *hope*, maybe I can get a piece of that action). At any rate, that got me thinking: creating a simple, "killer app" and licensing it to a hardware vendor sounds very possible now (instead of the difficult path: creating the app and selling it as shrink-wrapped media). Diane, I believe, has come up with two business plans off this idea.

Kwento: I was preparing to shower. I laid out the foot towel, then carelessly stepped on it whilst still wearing my slippers. Diane exclaimed: "Hey, don't walk on that with your dirty slippers! Think of my dainty feet!"

Kwento: My sweetie had an urge for a fast-food burger and McFlurry. Whilst I was getting the food, she waited for me in the car. I returned carrying the goods, and she said, "I didn't know 'facial' was spelt with an 'i'." I didn't understand her until she pointed to a big neon sign outside a spa: "F-A-I-C-I-A-L" was how it was spelt. I turned to her: "Wheal, Hoouney, when you in da Soufh, you spail 'faicial' waith an 'ah-ya'."