Memory Day: Fifteen Years Ago

Fifteen years ago today, on January 21, 2000, I was in my fourth year at Virginia Tech, at the end of the first week of the semester.

Because the high school Honor Band was being hosted at Virginia Tech, all of my music classes had been cancelled for the day. Of course, it also snowed heavily the night before, and Honor Band ended up getting cancelled. It was also too early in the semester for my Physics lab, so the only class I had to worry about was Computer Graphics: an entire semester spent drawing 3D shapes with OpenGL and answering arcane word problems about cameras and viewports.

I took a quick trip down to Squires to see the results of my various auditions in the morning. That year, I was 1st chair in the Symphony Band and 4th chair in the Brass Ensemble (which probably meant I had to show up to every rehearsal in order to play on one song). I probably auditioned for Jazz Ensemble too, but I think this was the semester that Peter got in over me and I lost hope in humanity, never to audition again.

I spent the rest of my day holed up in my dorm room (shared with Kelley Corbett), eating Ramen noodles cooked in a hot plate, and trading emails with Jack and Filippo to set up an interview for my first internship at FGM. Later, I decided to dust off one of my incomplete projects, a text adventure game that I'd started back in 1998 but never gotten around to finishing. This time, I was more successful and released it into the world a short two months later.