While making non-narcissistic use of the Wayback Machine, I couldn’t resist finding out what it had to say about go2net, an Internet company for which I must admittedly take a certain responsibility. They go as far back as December 1996, the proverbial damned long time ago.

How we managed to go from jabbering about a wacky idea in a brew pub in San Diego to fully operational Internet site with five major products in little more than five months still boggles my mind — though it does lend credence to my bitching about working “18 hours a day, 7 days a week”.

The notion of getting on a train outside my house and continuing to switch lines until reaching the end of the line in southern South America is one that I find very appealing, given my love of trains. Moreover, Theroux is a traveler after my own heart, keeping his eyes open and his mouth shut and poking around in the places most people aren’t interested in visiting when they’re away from home. It was also interesting to get a small snapshot of various Central and South American countries from the seventies.

Blah, blah, blah. An uninspired, standard-story film with a bunch of uninspired jokes and a trite uninspired plot that was trying so hard to get a “good” message across that they had to make fun of themselves for doing it. At least Robin Williams was in the sidekick role and doing a fine job of it, not surprising since he pioneered the damned role in Aladdin and practically every animated film since has done a poor job of me tooing it. Oh yeah, the animation was good.

I surived another GDC. Daniel and I gave a presentation on Puzzle Pirates, the slides for which are available for perusal. There are lots of pretty pictures and graphs in there, but the words alas disappeared into the ether after we spoke them. The Burning Down the House talk was inspiring, but it didn’t usurp my all-time favorite GDC talk, Professor Moriarty’s Secret of Psalm 46, given back in 2001.

The proverbial side project has emerged to see the light of day: http://www.gamegardens.com/.

This little stroll down the fine line between passion and obsession manifests more on-screen chemistry in two hours than the last two decades of Hollywood film. Not for the faint of heart.