As some of you know, for the last six weeks, I've been working night and day on my PAX Keynote, which I deliver in 176 hours. It's been a long and sometimes agonizing road but after intensely bouncing drafts back and forth with Andrew this week, I have a draft that I can begin polishing.
This means that, today, I'll be reading it aloud in my office so I can time it out, find places where I can move words around, maybe add a phrase, and maybe take something out if it doesn't sound quite right (for example, I changed a "didn't" to "did not", because the words around it obscured the n't just enough that it could confuse people who didn't – I mean, did not – hear it clearly; stuff like that.)
I don't own a stopwatch, so I grabbed my iPod Touch (I mean my iPad mini! HA! HA! HA!) and fired up the little stopwatch thingy that comes with it. Here's what I saw:
(Please forgive the crappy Blackberry photo; I don't have my "real" camera handy.)
I guess I started it about 5710 hours ago, and forgot to press stop. Now I don't want to reset it, because it would be 237 days before it happened again. Also, this is probably only funny to me.
In other news: OMG my keynote speech for PAX East is so close to being finished!
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This is quite superb.
Now what I want to know is why you started it 5710 hours ago. But I’m weird that way.
It would be a better story if I could remember.
hmmm … I need to start thinking of funneh stuff now.
That’s when he started working on the PAX keynote!
I don’t have a calculator handy, and my brain doesn’t perform higher functions. This is like 10 months ago, right?
I bet you set it for something you thought was important at the time , but then you got distracted by life and the idea associated with it fell off the edge of your mind into the land of winds and ghosts.
These are the kinds of things I crack up telling my friends and inevitably get the blank stare of death…
It looks like a stardate to me.
The second lap is gonna be a bitch.
Of course now I have to try to catch up. (Does anybody know of any processor speed hacks for the Touch?)
If my calendar is correct and I haven’t run out of fingers, you must have started that back in July. Was there any funneh stuff happening in July?
7/23/09, to be precise.
Perhaps an episode of Futurecast or RFB?
Or maybe how long there’s been a bulldozer next door?
Or maybe how long it’s been since the aliens replaced Wil Wheaton with a replicated Wil Wheaton they can use to create earthquakes in Los Angeles at four in the morning?
The mind boggles with possibilities!
Man, check your oven because the muffins you were making. They’re done.
Wasn’t it around then that you put this post on twitter?
“OMG I Just found the stopwatch feature on my ipod touch. This is going to be SO useful, I’m going to use it all the time!”
just a techie-nerd tip from an iPhone junkie, you can actually take a Screenshot on an ipod/iphones showing the current screen by pressing the lock button on the top and the “Home” button together. takes a very nice screen shot
🙂
Ha! I thought I was the only one that did this! I went to use my stopwatch about a month ago and realized it was already running on my iPhone. I too, did not want to stop it and it’s currently sitting at 13802:00 and change.
I feel like a better geek now because I can say “Hey, Wil Wheaton did it too!” – thanks for sharing this.
I am so super extra ultra excited to see you deliver your keynote next week!
At first, I thought that the timer represented your preliminary run-through of the address, and I was perplexed. I thought, “Either Wil has a LOT of editing to do, or I can’t figure out the units of measure on that there timer.”
Good luck on the editing and Boston is psyched to welcome you to our city!
July 23rd eh? Something tells me it was alcohol related: http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2009/07/reminder-book-and-a-beer-tonight.html
It’s about the time of the original series episode “Wink of an Eye”, which was stardate 5710.5.
Started the clock to time a reading, help pace yourself, and forgot to turn it off…?
If I read the fuzzy time at the top, it says “12:37”, which means the stopwatch was started around 11:22pm on July 23rd – a few hours after the reading.
I second the vote for “alcohol related”.
Numbers and times are important! I had a friend who moved his Linux system across town with the UPS attached because he didn’t want to ruin his uptime of several years.
Additionally, I just sent myself a reminder to put a sticky note on my dashboard to reset my trip odometer at 65280, so when my main odometer rolls over to 65536 the trip will be exactly 256—assuring that I have at least entertained myself and the 1s of people who look at my Twitpics.
Dude, I choked on my water just now, because that made me laugh so hard. You win.
It is distinctly possible that I was rehearsing and timing out the awesome hour at PAX Prime, actually.
Holy crap! I didn't know that. That is awesome. Thank you!
According to your very own blog – July 23 is the day of the “book and a beer” event – which ran from 6-8pm, so one can only assume you hung out afterward to enjoy some beers and – HEY YOU GUYS MY IPOD TOUCH HAS A TIMER LOOKEE!!!
I third the vote for alcohol related.
Nope. Nevermind. My math was off. Unless I screwed up again, the clock was actually started in the afternoon (2:23pm) of July 23rd.
Or, if it’s only got a four-digit display, then perhaps the evening of June 1, 2008.
By the way, why am I doing this and not working?
Ohhhhh … I bet I was timing out Book and a Beer and forgot to stop the timer.
Well, shit. That's not *nearly* as interesting as I thought it would be.
Mine is currently at: 6472:06:30 and counting…
Cheers, Wil. Glad I could finally return the favor.
Ya’ll are just *too* funny! Thanks for the smiles!!
And Wil, CONGRATS on reaching this benchmark on your PAX Keynote speech. Only wish I could be there to hear it in person. 🙂
One of my students showed his Touch “stopwatch” to me and the math actually worked out about 10 years of time… which led me to believe that a) much like Mr. Wheaton, he was a Time Lord, or b) there’s something potentially glitchy with the timers (perhaps when they’ve been running for a long time).
Not saying that your iPad Mini’s lying to you, I just thought I’d let you know that’s it’s possible.
Additionally, if it ever tells you that it was just “working late” the last three Fridays… you might as well start warming up a new case…
If only you had an app to fly like an eagle.
Much needed smiles and laughs today, thanks! Break a leg, Wil! Wish I could be there to hear it.
C’mon! With the right alignment of 2 mirrors you could have shot a pic of your iphone with your iphone! Btw. you could have also held the iphone in front of your build in mac web cam 😉
You have unlocked SPACE COWBOY!
Add Space Cowboy to your party? Y/N
I love it! Only on *this* blog would you a) find this post, and b) find comments that did the math to figure out exactly when the timer started.
Nerds are made of win.
“Y”
“OH NO! SPACE COWBOY has mutated into GANGSTER OF LOVE!”
crap…
I am in total agreement, just got home from watching the 5 and 2 year old nieces and this was such a great read to end the day.
I love this blog, the link is on my homepage now so that I can catch the new posts as soon as they happen.
Thanks Mr Hambone – that was great!!!
Who else immediately pulled out their iPod and took a screenshot?
While I was about 10 minutes late to post the link to solve the mystery this afternoon (I did the math, but when I went to point out the beer post, it had just been linked already), I did decide to mess with myself. I started my own stopwatch on my iPhone for no reason in particular. Since my memory sucks these days, I’m sure I’ll forget why it was running whenever I decide to use it next.
Practical jokes on future me, FTW!
Not the only one, I did it too!
Me! Me! **hand raised, jumping up and down**.. oh, wait, that was a rhetorical question, sorry….
Have you considered your own app? You could do a Burrito app…. or a mini RPG app (if that is ridiculous, I apologize, I’m not experienced with the RPG’s-but at least I know what RPG means, that’s a start, right?)??
Just a thought.
*raises hand*
Dude you might wanna clean that mac keyboard 😉
BTW i LOVED the latest Radio Free Burrito!
Hi Wil, sorry for the off-topic…ness of this remark but I thought this would be the least intrusive way of contacting you. I was just listening to RFB 24 and have to say that I was overjoyed that you took some time in the podcast to talk about your 40k experience. It is a world that has inspired me for 17 years now and the world within which I choose to write/paint when I get excited and make things.
What really made me smile was that the reasons and motivations you described matched my own. I also love the stories and my game play is dictated by those stories…this often results in someone handing me my own ass in games but as long as I stay true to the world and the stories that drive it forward I care not a jot.
You’re awesome and thanks for the podcasts. They too are awesome.
LOL. But if you don’t stop it, how will you practice for PAX or use it for anything else? BTW, My hubby and I are extremely excited to hear you speak at PAX. We’re pretty psyched to see the Penny Arcade guys too. Only a week to go!
rocket-propelled grenade, right?
WOLVERINES!