Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays!

I am still enjoying the time off catching up on sleep and much-needed rest. I am however prepping now for a short 2 hr web design workshop at TechBoston tomorrow morning. I hope the snowfall overnight is light so I and the kids can get there on time!

Just before the holidays, I found out I won a Facing History and Ourselves Grant of $800 to support a film festival at my school next spring, and the BPS called Friday to tell me that my research proposal has been approved! The masters is actually feeling within reach now.

In addition to these great gifts, I received some lovely presents from family and friends, including a surprise gift from “Charlie Weis”, in the hopes that next year will be better for Notre Dame football - there’s pretty much nowhere to go but up after this dismal season - I got my very own Notre Dame tailgating chair. I hope my faith will be rewarded. Sigh.

What I have been sucked into the last 24 hours, however, is no, not Guitar Hero (I wish though!), but the 1984-1994 7 game adventure series by Sierra Online that captured my heart and my imagination 20 years ago : King’s Quest. All 7 games on 1 CD for $25, used to cost us $50 per trip to Egghead Software and require at least 7 floppy disks to switch between during the game! I remember upgrading to SoundBlaster and better video cards as the series continued, and being mesmerized by the improved graphics and soundtrack with each game. Text command prompts and riddles eventually gave way to mouse clicks and battle scenes. The adventures are still classic though : knight goes on quest for crown, king goes on quest for queen…battles sorcerers, encounters fairytale creatures, and scores points by choosing wit and peaceful tactics over violence or theft. But the tale that captured my fascination the most was KQ4 : the Perils of Rosella, when for the first time, I was not only the hero, but the hero was me - a girl! I thought creator & programmer Roberta Williams was the smartest woman in the world and I wanted to be just like her.

I hope you too got some new and old toys this Christmas!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 26th, 2007 at 2:09 pm and is filed under news & commentary, reflections. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.