Eating alone sucks...

I never thought I'd miss having someone else shove their rejected, half-eaten food onto my plate...but sure enough I did. I've only been at the new job for two days -- for the most part the job has done a good job of keeping me busy...but the evenings pretty much suck, no wife, no kids, no fun.

On the plus side -- with no impressionable children watching me eat, and with a $27 per diem dinner stipend, there was nothing stopping me from going to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner and ordering a slice of cheesecake as my entrée with a greek salad on the side. Oh yeah, cheesecake for dinner!

Also got to see Star Trek: Into Darkness, which was quite the fun ride...though perhaps less so if you haven't seen Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, since they are basically the same movie. Watching Kirk die in the warp core instead of Spock was especially amusing.

Yeah...it's been out long enough, if you don't like spoilers, don't read this.

Anyways, clearly I can't count on cheesecake for dinner and Star Trek on the big screen to distract me every week...

The COO of my new company invited me to a regular Wednesday night Magic draft...I'm not sure if my wallet can stand me getting re-addicted to magic though.

So, I need to find a game up here...

If anyone in the Columbia, MD area reads this and wants to play some D&D, let me know.

A Business Idea...Sort Of

So, I'm starting a new life today...new job, new location, new travel complications...and figured I might as well re-purpose this blog and see if I can keep it going for any reasonable amount of time...

So, to start off, I have a strange business idea for any schemers out there with too much time on their hands:

The Requirements:

1. You must be good at interviewing.
2. You need to be able to speak geek (even better if you can actually code).
3. You must be very good at maintaining a false identity (but not for too long) and staying in character.
4. You need to be good at compartmentalizing and multi-tasking.
5. You need to be mobile.

The Premise:

I started a new job today, at a software start-up. Their HR people followed the normal forms (requiring back-ground checks, drug tests, NDA, etc.), BUT rather than having all this pre-interview, they said "we'll deal with that on day 1". 

So, I showed up on "day 1" and was handed a laptop.

Software startups tend to keep a tight grip on their cash, but not when it comes to hardware. New employees at a software company tend to get very nice computers, and usually very quickly (they want you to jump in).

At this point, I am typing on a very nice new laptop, and have not yet signed or peed in anything (except my employment agreement -- the former, not the latter). They don't have anything with my SSN, Drivers License #, or any other identity-verifying documentation on it. And they've already bought me a couple meals and a free hotel stay (as part of the interview process).

The Idea:

If I were a minor con-man, I could, at this point, just walk out of here with a decent laptop (a $1200 value, but would need to be re-imaged), a new case (still has the tags on it), and as many portable office supplies (and free food/drinks -- this is a software company after all) as can fit in the bag.

Assuming you were able to bill yourself as having marketable skills and could find 3-4 such companies per month looking for a quick hire, you could make a decent living selling used/black-market hardware.

Obviously, I'm just happy to have a job...and don't really have the entrepreneurial spirit for this...but if there is anyone out there looking for a new con...I'm sure there are plenty of willing targets.

Alternatively:

As someone who has had to run both business interviewing and swindler/con-man scenarios in an RPG, this could make for a pretty interesting setup for a one-off modern RPG campaign.