Jonathan Field - Maker of Random Stuff

So most of my life consists of my job which is, overall, pretty cool. I manage good people and have pretty much complete say in where my department goes. And I’m not just a pointy-haired-boss, I actually get to code a good deal as well. So my technical itch gets scratched and people respect me. Or at least they make pretend they do, which is really just about as good.

The company is growing super-fast (has been for years now) and so we’re making and spending lots of money. The upshot is that we’re on the radar of all these other companies who want to sell us stuff. Case in point: IBM. We spend a lot of money with IBM — for servers, desktops, and laptops. Early seven figures, I would imagine. This is apparently enough so that our vendor/rep comes out to Vegas every month or so to take the bigwigs (and for some reason, me) out to some swanky restaurant.

Tonight we went to Mix at the Mandalay Bay. Now I’m a simple suburban boy, just a haircut and a toothbrush above trailer trash, so I’m still a sucker for this kind of thing. The whole place is done up in some retro-future decor with all sorts of wacky lighting and big sculpted chairs. The view was amazing — 64 floors up with floor to ceiling windows all around. The food was actually quite good, too. Expensive, but hey, I wasn’t paying.

Okay, so I know that’s boring and maybe even sickening to you all. But I tell you this to lead up to the highlight of the night: the restroom. It was the finest restroom I’ve ever been in. It was so modern looking I could hardly figure out if it was a restroom … they left off the door in favor of gently sloping hallways that feel like the entrance to a space station maze. The sinks were so high-tech that the attendant had to explain how to use them. And the urinals… ah, the urinals. They were tiny, like little kids’ sinks, lined up in front of yet another floor to ceiling window on the far side of the room.

Let me tell you, it is a fine feeling indeed to piss while looking out on the lights of the Vegas strip.

Yes: I was a contender this past Saturday in The World Series of Speed Quarters. You may know the game by another name like “Beirut” or “Bozo”. Or you may not know it at all if you, like myself, somehow avoided stupid drinking games in college. Meaning I avoided college. But that ended up keeping me out of the stupid drinking games as well. I’m sure you’re licking your palms with curiosity so I’ll fill you in:

You have a table full of people (six to eight) and there are two empty shot glasses. The glasses start on opposite sides of the table. When the whistle blows the people with the shot glasses try to bounce a quarter off the table and into the glass. When they get it they pass the glass to their left. They can try as many times as they like, but if the second glass catches up to them before they make it, they have to drink a beer or take a shot.

Take that, multiply it by six tables full of players, a sports bar full of fans, announcers on the PA, and a film crew, and you’ve got an idea of my Saturday afternoon. Now, if you know me, this doesn’t sound like my usual scene. But since I’ve been isolated out here in Las Vegas without my usual surrounding of geeky friends, I’m doing what I seem to do best: adapt.

Should that worry me? It doesn’t. I’ll adapt back if I need to.

Anyways — it was just a weird event put on by a guy I work with. Quite a lot of people showed up and competed. He hired the film crew to make a show out of it. Allegedly there’s going to be a DVD and they’re going to try and sell it to Spike TV or something. I liked being surrounded by cameras and all that. Because I’m a closet attention whore. Is that an oxymoron?

Highlights:

1) A guy named “blowfish” who could wrap his entire mouth around a pint glass, tilt his head back and take down the beer like a water bubbler.

2) finding the “confessional” booth where you get to talk privately to the camera, walking in, and ranting in a lousy cockney accent how my dad lost his eye playing “speed shillings”

3) Me (yes me) downing an entire bottle of Fat Tire in about 8 seconds, on camera, while the room cheered me on.

4) A lovely lady who went by the name of “Brooklyn Cyclone” trying the same beer drinking move, and throwing up, also on camera, in front of a roomful of people she barely knew.

I chatted with the “Brooklyn Cyclone” later and she turned out to be very cool. She was a chef from Manhattan, and was a bit worried she’d lose her job if the shot of her puking made it on national TV. Once I had made as much fun of her most-embarrassing-moment as I possibly could, we talked about food and computers for a bit. We both seemed to be having a good time, then my sister and her husband show up, and I went too far by mentioning to them that she puked on TV within five seconds of introducing them.

I want so bad to be smooth but I’m really a dumbass sometimes.

and it’s not me, I swear. I can’t figure out what it is but I get a distinct whiff of it every minute or so. I’d rather not describe the smell.