the return of the king of pop

in the viz lab is a fridge.  two, actually, but i've never looked in the smaller one, so i can't comment on it.  there are also two microwaves, but this post will make no further mention of them, either.
the fridge is used to store things: food, mostly leftovers from grad students' attempts at saving money by bringing their own lunch or mid-day excursions to freebird's burritos or that gumbo shack.  sometimes there's photo paper in there, too, but it mostly functions as a normal fridge.

during the hot (blazingly hot) fall days of 2010, i thought i had heard or read somewhere on the department website that there were cans of pop available in there for a reasonable 50¢.  but on the few times that i would nervous venture over there to see if i could get something to drink other than the sulfurous a&m water, there would be nothing of the sort in there and i would have to try and think of some reason why i had open the fridge door so that the second years wouldn't wonder why this new kid seemed to have an impulse to open fridge doors.

soon my semester became consumed with animating a little kid and his teddy bear (i still owe you that post, i realized) and the drink fridge's mysteriously absent drinks became less of a concern in my mind.
one day as i was looking in the totally wrong spot on the department wiki for course descriptions in preparation for registration (not that it mattered, since i didn't choose my schedule until sometime in mid-january) i came across a history of the drink fridge.

it began in 2006, maintained by the drink pope.  soon the responsibility was bequeathed upon christine, who did not assume a moniker.  her reign was subsequently followed by a drink gopher, a period of privatization, then a cdo (chief drink officer), and a drink commander-in-chief.
after that, the trail went cold and the fridge had deteriorated into the wasteland of nasty old tupperware containers.

something had to be done and in times of anarchy, a king will inevitably rise to bring order to the chaos and light our darkest hour.  the most recent entry on the drink history speaks of rumors circulating about jeff gustafson rising as the new king of pop.

a few weeks ago i grabbed a friend and, after fhe, met up with him and bought a whole trunk full of pop.  in utah, diet coke and mountain dew would have been the staples.  texas, however, is dr pepper country. still, i grabbed a whole variety and stocked that fridge to the brim.  i then sent out a department email proclaiming my self-coronation and the new world order that was now in effect.
the next morning, i was a hero. (which is good, because a few days later i suggested that the weekly department party be non-alcholic for a night and was nearly lynched.)

i've learned that dr pepper is a pretty popular choice, diet dr pepper isn't as popular as i'd been told, ginger ale was surprisingly popular, and coke and it's associated variants (vanilla coke and cherry coke) are extremely popular.
i'm thinking of grabbing a few boxes of candy bars at sam's club and slapping a 50¢ tag on them, too, because the lab needs chocolate, dang it.
in short, that's the news from the viz lab.
now, back to programming....

(i got on ebay and bought myself a white sequined glove, too)