Congratulations Kings fans, and as for Wil's dad's Dodgers (go Dodgers!), someone from that organization called in to a radio show with Bob Miller on to offer his congratulations. You might say he's pretty high up in the Church of Dodgers: http://espn.go.com/espnradio/losangeles/play?id=8044545

No doubt. I think their "outside tech firm" will find the only technical issues are of the PEBCAK variety.

Ah, I see they've trotted out the ever popular "we wuz hacked" card. One of the partners in the firm says they're working with an "outside tech firm". Those hackers, they get into everything! If Brand Link were truly hacked by a lulzsec type of group, the intarwebs would soon be pointed to a bittorrent link where you'd be able to download Brand Link's client contact list, as well as a dump of their password database for your cracking pleasure. Oh and a nice archive of all emails. Sure, maybe for lulz, Jose's twitter account would be abused, but it wouldn't be tweeting non-apologetic apologies. It would be tweeting the contents of his credit report instead. And maybe Brand Link Communications' website would just be a redirect to fail blog. The point is, yes, your twitter/facebook can be 0wned, but isn't always so convenient that it gets "hacked" right when you're having a PR fail? And there are much, much more interesting things for hackers to embarrass you with. Like all the other times Jose managed to find the right button to hit to compose another one of his great emails and for which he received kudos from his bosses. See: HBGary vs Anonymous. The only hacks here are the ones working for Brand Link.

There are so many different "LA"s, apart from the one Everyone From Somewhere Else Is a Certified Expert On (ie: the stereotypical one, what we who live in SoCal call "the Westside"): There's the corrupt political/business LA (Cities of Bell and Vernon, every damn Mayor and City Councilman of LA proper), reminding us that noir isn't just in the past. There are all the various LAs that are enclaves of Places Really Far Away Where English Isn't Spoken. Related to that, there is the foodie LA, where Jonathan Gold is the prophet and real (as in beat up and old) taco trucks are a better bet than the inedible bullshit that's served up in almost every trendy restaurant in the city. Knowing the best donuts are out in Glendora, the best bakery in Glendale, and the best pastrami is across from MacArthur Park. Also: In-n-Out or Tommy's, choose your side. There are many more LAs that rarely surface above the glare of the all encompassing spotlight on "Hollywood". The LA that takes the goods that show up on store shelves throughout this continent from ships and onto trucks and trains (and supports more local jobs and generates more local tax revenue than the entertainment industry). The LA that's up at 3 AM to sell fresh produce to restaurants and stores throughout the region. The LA that provides me with actual trains on railroads to take me to and from work everyday (yes, they exist). The LA that is home to part of the vast Military-Industrial Complex that gave birth to a lot of classified stuff (e.g. Stealth Fighter (flew out of Burbank airport at night according to legend)), the Space Shuttle and satellite TV (JPL's Open House is this weekend, folks). I can go on. "LA" is a kaleidoscopic urban environment/myth. Give it a shake or tilt and you'll see something new. If you want to see an LA beyond the hipster sidewalk cafes crowded with people who "want to direct someday", check out the Militant Angeleno's blog.

Wait, what is this "story" you speak of? You played long and hard for something other than leveling and loot? And not exploiting saved games? What the.. Just kidding. Are games, as an interactive medium, really best suited to the kind of narrative storytelling that film (at its best) and novels excel at? Is it because we just haven't gotten the caliber of writing in games that those media have gotten for years? Or is it something structural about the medium? (An aside: It seems in video game RPGs we put up with a lot more railroading than in pen/paper RPGs. Is it because we can't throw our beer at the DM in the former case?) In short, when we will see something like a Great Film (insert your list here, I'll throw in "The Big Lebowski" just for dissonance)? Or will the Great Video Game be something else entirely, that uses the strengths of the medium in completely new ways? Time will only tell, eh? I'm of the opinion that the game industry as a whole (with notable exceptions) has for too long strained to be more "cinematic" in an empty way, pursuing technology to make things look and sound "real" or more like a movie. And they've succeeded in making George Lucas look like he can barely write a character sheet. But come on, he's hardly the standard for great cinema. I look forward to the time where games and movies are compared like books and movies are today. Where instead of games striving to be more "movie-like" we accept that it's a different medium, capable of doing completely different things than a movie.

Clearly, the basket was designed for lame "beers" lacking the heft of actual flavor. Maybe you can post a photo of this infamous basket to see if some handy geeks can offer a hack to fix it. Also, when you retrieve the next bottle of beer, you can apply the Drunken Master modifier, which is either +1 or -1 depending on a coin/bottlecap flip. Double the modifier if you take on the classic Drunken Master pose: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeHA-19UT6I

Doesn't a steady dose of Molson Canadian keep your flammability down?

Wil, an idea for next year's auction, is maybe you should auction off a proclamation from the Secretary of Geek Affairs...

We actually get snow in California. We just keep it on what we call "mountains". We occasionally see glimpses of this snow on these mountains on days where the air is what most people would call "fit to breathe". Unless you're lucky enough to live up in those mountains: http://z.about.com/d/gocalifornia/1/0/i/1/3/IMG_1302-a.jpg

All students studying quantum mechanics fall into the instrumentalist interpretation camp while they are studying it. It does have a catchy slogan: "Shut up and calculate"

I didn't realize that Wesley was actually voiced by Keanu Reeves in TNG ;)

Wil, as a holder of a completely disused physics degree, I have to say that you didn't do so badly as you think. You did better than those hosers that got caught with their pants down during the infamous Sokal affair. At any rate, there's a limit to describing physics without the awful math. Richard Feynman once said (paraphrasing here) that math is the language of nature, and that scientists have little choice but to use math to "converse" as it were. (He also allegedly said that, "to understand physics, all one needs to do is understand the simple harmonic oscillator", a refrain I repeatedly heard throughout my college education) But that's if you want to work as a scientist (or engineer). For laypeople a conceptual understanding is great, and it's something that most people don't even possess. Quantum mechanics is voodoo crazy talk to most people and usually gets used to peddle pseudo-scientific scams. So are both of Einstein's big theories, which get twisted into bad philosophies and bad science fiction. And t-shirts and coffee mugs with "E=mc2". I think Wil gets a +5 to his Math skill when he's playing D&D. I mean, ok, quantum mechanics is tough, sure, sure, but try calculating THAC0 or deciphering grappling rules.

For some twisted reason, I'm seeing Wil doing commercials for maid cafes in Akihabara. I'm sure Wil will say, "Whoa, I'm not that kind of geek--wait, was she wearing cat ears?" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maid_cafe

re: 3! (three factorial) Whoa, Wil is visiting my alma mater. You should see if an undergrad will let you stay for dinner at one of the student houses for an entertaining experience. Unless of course, you're being feted at the Athenaeum. BTW, I'd encourage you to get someone to play a popular Wagner piece. It's our, uh, fight song. Not sure how much time you have apart from doing your awesome for NASA, but for fun, you can also ask the students for some old final exams from their, umm, "favorite" classes. You can take them home (as caltech students do) and sit there asking "WTF? (as most of us did) when you look at the exam questions.

For some reason, right as you ended the excerpt, I almost felt it was going to be another episode of Car Talk (because of the music). I don't feel like I've wasted another perfectly good 26 minutes though. Although, a spoof of Car Talk set in the Star Trek universe might be fun to listen to.

You mentioned shaving off the beard, but trust me, as an alumnus of the local nerd university, beards are ok. We might quibble about the choice of calculators though (HPs, man, those were da bomb).

Did the dragon roll a few ones in a row?

Is the #2 FAQ, "OMG plz gibs us teh video"? Jerry F***ing Holkins over at PA mentioned running a D&D game at Emerald City Con, how did that go?

That's most unfortunate. Have you been to Donut Man in Glendora? I think their donuts, esp the legendary Fresh Strawberry Donuts are well worth post-donut binge bodily discomfort. Outside of strawberry season (spring), you can't go wrong with most of their donuts, including my favorite, the tiger tail (chocolate + regular donut twisted together).