Now, as I sit here typing at Argo, Jaeger and Gem have departed hours ago (I've decided to follow Jaeger's convention and refer to her by her real name instead of handle; the reasing being the confusion caused by the fact that her notebook computer is also named "Kiesa"). In front of me, and a couple meters to the right, bouncing sits busily playing SimCity 3000. The "Press any button (Sony)" screensaver logo hops around randomly on the NTSC viewing screen.

Last night, we fested late, and we fested well. (Look up verb entry for the word "fest" in the dictionary sometime. What?!? You mean the verb fest doesn't exist in the dictionary? Well! ... It will someday soon. ;)

We each played around with our various pet projects -- Jaeger on Java Tetris, Gem on some sort of mysterious JavaScript stuff, bouncing on SimCity (I swear the definition of programming gets looser and looser by the day), and me? To call the kettle black, I spent most of my night in Gimp, attempting to come up with something better for the Collective's status bar. It took me until later in the day Friday to come up with something I was moderately satisfied with. (The menu idea with babblefish-generated Chinese characters turned out to look... well, really dumb. Oh well. It was a thought, at least. And yes, I was high.)

After all that, and the usual round of idiotic so-called "debates" regarding the (lack of) usability and usefulness in each others' personal sites, bouncing was the first to take his leave and zonk.

The remaining three of us continued to fest, and as it got later, watched a few Madonna videos via the medium of DVD. Gem was next to go out, crashing on one of the couches.

A few minutes later, I decided I was at my end, and returned to my quarters (also known as The Lair), leaving Jaeger to program in solitude, with both Yukon and Kiesa at his disposal (again, just so we don't confuse anybody; "Kiesa" in this context is Gem's computer, however, in other previous contexts, it is also her handle).

After having slept for several hours, I awoke with that unique "it's just been a fest" feeling shortly after 0900. Returned to Argo, and found Gem again awake, while Jaeger was very much asleep.

Fiddled in Gimp for a couple hours on ideas for the Collective's navbar, until I finally arrived at something I felt comfortable uploading. After putting it on Rage, and a bit of testing, I decided it was time for food. Of course, since the kitchen is in the middle of remodeling, the options were limited. (A Delicious Dish being a definite NOT, unfortunately, given that the place where the stove normally goes was totally empty.)

I had an idea, but I needed to make sure the one necessary ingredient would be available. I ventured into the garage and dug through several boxes until I found what I was searching for. Haha! The toaster! The plan would indeed be doable.

I informed Gem of the plan, she indicated approval, and I proceeded to begin executing it. Just as I was about to go out the door, she asked if she could accompany me. After about 5 milliseconds of debating with myself over the advisibility of what could theoretically be a perceived slight (wandering out with another guy's g/f while he was still asleep), I decided that now was neither the time nor the place to be acting like a neurotic idiot, and agreed.

A few minutes later, we returned to the Compound, with...

Bagels! English muffins! Cream cheese! Oh, Heaven!

Jaeger was again up and awake, and we proceeded to feast on toasted bagels while Jaeger showed me his nearly complete implementation of tetris written in Java. (Just don't call it JavaTetris, or I can already smell the lawyers...)

After a couple more hours of random hacking, we watched the great epic known as Princess Mononoke.

By the time that was over, it was fairly late in the afternoon. Jaeger and Gem proceeded to pack up their belongings (significantly less hassle when no desktop systems are involved, only notebooks), and departed. The conclusion of another great fest.

I decided to go back down for a couple more hours of rest, and now here I am. Fest over, room a hideous mess (I think it might be slightly easier to do a thorough cleaning job with Argo and all my a/v stuff out here), and the time that we generally refer to as the "weekend" has just begun.

Alrighty then.