Friday, May 26, 2006

STARLIGHT STARBRIGHT

Who da thought you could have so much fun with so many nerds, or is that geeks? As it turns out lots, though the wine helped.
Last night riding on the coat tails of my brainiac Rob and the company he works for, went to the IT StarLight and Giant Steps fund raising do at the Hilton in the city.
Last year we went to the first one, about 200 people from various Sydney IT firms, this year there was 61 tables of ten people, you do the math.
How did you get so many geeks in such small room?

Starlight was getting cash for thier Fun Centres, which were invented here and only in Australian hospitals at the moment. They are wheely purple adjustable bubbles with games, movies and music in them, so bedridden kiddlins can amuse themselves. Got to see one first hand last month when visited young Hal after he broke his arm. If nothing else it kept SnowPea quiet and entertained durning it all.

Warcraft, esky and bed.....a boys dream

There was a silent auction, I got all excited and bid $500 for a hot air ballon ride, but got outbid (whew). Since it was worth $590, i figured we we really wanted to go we just could. For $20 a pop got a lucky dip of prizes worth at least $20. I got 3 for $50 and won a bottle of wine, a cooler bag and a $70 1 hour Lympathic Drainage Massage from a qualified aromatherapist, reflexologist and reiki master.
I'm not sure if i should go, i probably come out of it more annoyed than i went in and if she mentions anything about being South Africa's 1994 Herb Woman of the Year, i may give her a very calming punch in the neck.
I tried to find out what LDM actually is, but all i could find was from the actual practioners. So not sure if its a useful thing or not. Lots of " remove toxins", "balance the body" and feel good words which don't mean a thing but makes you want to hug a dolphin while wearing a oversized black t-shirt with a wolf howling at the moon on it.

The future of trivia

The trivia was compared by Adam Spencer again, he is very good at that kind of thing. The days before he was all famous and stuff he did trivia at the Friend In Hand, Glebe and was probably the best pub trivia dude around, and we were the loudest, drunkest, winning team around.
You would be mistaken if you thought that i was sucessfully trying to work stuff out.

The trivia was all very high tech, the questions up on screens and each table got a touch pad to enter the answers, and a graph came up showing who answered what. The questions were supplied by Mensa and were all puzzles, word games, maths and codes, none of this 'who was voted out last in Big Brother?' or ' What is Britney's kid's name' for this crowd.

Counting AND spelling...two of my uber talents

After the first round we where in the top 10 but then we slipped back. I think it was all very close at the end.
Thats us

The big question at the end was a codebreaker, and extra clues were sold off. The company bought the second clue for our table but it wasn't used that much. The nerds geeks had it sorted.Feel the brain power

Cheap at half the price

Second clue...we don't need no stinkin' second clue..

Second clue

We were right...of course

I'm not sure how much cashola they ended up making but 'many lots' springs to mind.

Update-About $250 000 many lots

don't bother to click here, i really should get rid of this fuggin thing..