I know, I know... I haven't posted anything here in forever. I've been furiously writing code to get FishTwits up and running (well, either that or enjoying the Swedish summer), which has kept me distracted from blogging. But a story came up in conversation yesterday which I figured I could briefly share here, if only for the sake of posting something.

It was a summer in the early 90s and I was working a temp job in some NSP¹ offices in downtown Minneapolis, behind the Basilica. They were running rebate programs for converting conventional incandescent lighting to compact fluorescent bulbs or LED exit signs. Most of my work involved entering rebate data into spreadsheets. As time permitted, I also rewrote the spreadsheets' calculations to streamline the process; my improvements were accepted enough that I was never told to stop doing it, but not accepted enough for me to be allowed to pass my changes on to anyone else.

On June 6, 1984, one of the most widely-addictive video games ever was released upon the world: Tetris.

It was a while before I tried the original arcade version and it didn't particularly impress me until I got a copy of the home game, which brings us to today's story.