John Borwick’s blog

I’m at work every day this week except New Year’s. Wake Forest is totally empty, though… even the food courts are closed.

I don’t have internet access much outside of work, and I’ve made a strict self-imposed vow not to do personal stuff (like blog or check personal email) at work, so I’ve been using verve’s webmail and replying to as many messages as I can when I do get access.

Check out our Winston-Salem pictures if you’d like to know what our hangouts look like.

Lauren and I waited all day Sunday to get a truck from Raleigh, NC to Winston-Salem. We talked to U-haul at

• 3 PM Saturday: they called but didn’t leave a message
• 4 PM Saturday: we called, they postponed confirmation until 7 PM
• 8 PM Saturday: we called, they postponed until 9:45 AM
• 9:45 AM Sunday: we called, they postponed until 3 PM
• 10 AM Sunday: we called, they “guaranteed” something would be available
• 3:30 PM Sunday: we called, they postponed until 5 PM, at which point I said we would not be doing business with them if we didn’t get a truck that day
• TUESDAY: they called and offered us a truck

It wasn’t worth the (potential) $30 savings (compared to other companies like Penske or Ryder). When you’re moving, you should value your time over your money. Pay the extra few dollars to ensure that you’ll have a truck at a certain time.

Too bad all my board-game playin’ buddies moved out of Raleigh, otherwise I’d be all over this shiznizzle. Cheapass Games publishes board games, video games, and other varieties of games. The catch? It’s all very cheap, because the manufacturers are independents! You should check out “Kill Doctor Lucky” and “One False Step for Mankind”.

From the “One False Step” page: “California: 1849. Where the mayors of stupidly rich Gold Rush towns can squander the resources of their citizens on pretty much whatever they want.

“This month, it’s a race to the Moon. Will it work? Probably not. The real goal is to earn enough votes to become governor. But it seems the best way to impress your constituents is by doing something grotesquely stupid and dangerous, like blasting them into space. It’s one false step for Mankind, one giant leap for you.”

If that isn’t a brilliant game, I don’t know what is.

It should be known that our team “Wolfpack” used a war-cry to boost morale, and that war-cry was “Not Last!” As you can see, we are not last, and we’re proud as a result.

Pos Team Name Total Score
1 Whitehat 11245
2 Donbehatin 7550
3 Open Kiosk 6960
4 Wolfpack 6275
5 Ishan Shade 6080
6 Wujing 5850
7 0×90 5560
8 Nebuchadnezzar 5115
9 Shrek 4115
10 Generic Tigers 3965
11 jmp esp 3125
12 UTexas 2680
13 Argus 2170

The competition was weird, there were many surprises, and I was quite ill at the time; however it was a great experience overall and I am looking forward to next year’s. This was our first year doing anything like this, and I think of it as kind of a “test run.” We should be much more well-prepared next year.

Update: here is the official scoreboard.

Via skippy, a Morgan Stanley analysis of the job recovery. Basically it talks about how slowly the market is recovering and how much of the “growth” is in temporary staffing.

Wouldn’t you agree, he’s unelectable?

See Crooked Timber, too.

I’m feeling much better.

We went out to Kabab’s Indian restaurant on Monday, for my birthday. It was radical.

We’re moving downtown, and it’s difficult to find a good time to get our stuff from Raleigh. All the weekends get booked before we can make a firm plan to rent a truck and bring stuff from Raleigh.

I promise the digital camera’s coming to you, Natalie, whenever I unearth it! I don’t even know where the desktop *computer* is at this point.

I’m also anxiously awaiting the results of Wilson’s competition.

My old GPG key is scheduled to expire on January 10th, 2004, or something like that. I generated a new one, which I’m starting to use.

Today’s my birthday.

I’m feeling better, too! Not 100%, but much better. I ended up missing all last week.