The meetup was a bust- I was feeling unwell and when no one showed up by the 8pm meet time, I told Andrew let's get out of here. I did see 1 chap who looked familiar; I'm pretty sure he was the one I met at the last meetup I tried to go to about 6 months ago. If so, he was a classic inarticulate, female-phobic, internet sort whose interests in SF & F were diametrically opposite to mine. He was a fan of TV/Film derivative series books. 'Nuff said.

I did have a pleasant time with Andrew in the afternoon at least. We had something reasonable to eat at Cosi and he brought me the Life of Brian dvd. We went to Virgin Magastore and they had a $10 DVD sale - so I bought 4 new DVDs and handed them over to Andrew. Two Eddie Murphy films, Trading Places and Coming to America, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and I'll be damned if I can remember the name of the 4th film. I was shocked to discover that Blues Brothers is out of print. I can buy a new copy of the DVD from the resale market at a massively inflated price but the thought annoys me.

Today the new phone line was installed so I finally have reliable access to the internet again.

Alan's really progressing with the rewrite of his online game, Federation. While retaining the charm and attractions of the old, original game, the new one has it's own slightly different but increased charm. It has a great deal more attraction with loads of nifty new features and Alan's only up to working on Trader level. The added years of game design experience show in the more elegant storyline, system development and gameplay design. Yes, I'm prejudiced. I think its a fantastic game. I think Alan's brilliant. Brilliant but modest. Well, ok, brilliant.

Had an interesting chat with the Verizon tech who installed the phone line. He said within 5 years ALL phone lines in NYC will be fundamentaly DSL and all calls carried over the internet (fiber-optic lines). So when someone wants local service or DSL it'll all be the same, they'll just get supplied with a filter for the DSL. Clever.