We did not win the Microsoft contest. This does not surprise me as much as the identity of the winning teams, most of which had lackluster entrants. The first place winner was a distributed rendering program which, in the words of Graphics professor Cindy Grimm, has "no real application". Apparently in real life nobody distributes their graphical rendering to different computers, but in Microsoft-land this is an incredibly useful application worthy of $15,000 in prize money. After examining the 2nd-place entry, I still have no idea what it does. The third place winner looked the coolest of all, as it had voice recognition via a touch-tone phone and other neat features like that. It is the only one I consider better than our entry. The runner up was the worst of all. It is basically Blogger, or Greymatter, or one of countless other weblog programs. Identical to them, in fact, with no added features of functionality. I am embarassed that our entry lost to this worthless program. Damn you, Microsoft corportation. Someday my (as yet nonexistant) company with crush you into oblivion after stealing your ideas, like you have done to so many other business entities.

In other news, I am going to see Zwan in concert next week on Sunday and Monday and hopefully videotape both shows. Zwan is Billy Corgan's new band after he dissolved the Smashing Pumpkins. I have been downloading Zwan shows in .shn and burning them to CD so that I am at least familiar with their old songs, although they have played only 8 shows so far and debuted vastly different setlists at them. I like what I hear so far, kind of like a more emo-ish Pumpkins sound. Michael's girlfriend Rachel is going to see them in Columbia and possibly interview Mr. Corgan, which should be a great experience that I am insanely jealous of.