My boss told an interesting story today. I'd heard bits of it before, but today it really came together.

Back in the early 90s, a colleague of hers announced that at some conference, he would be giving her and some fellow researchers a video tape. This tape would be of someone interacting with a computer, and the challenge was for the researchers to model the task shown on the tape. The task itself was a mystery.

It turned out to be a video of a kid playing through the first 30 seconds of Super Mario Bros. 3.

This challenge was particularly, well, challenging, as the game had not yet been released in the U.S., so nobody could find a copy to further research the task. My boss's colleague had imported the game from Japan.

Is this sounding familiar?

As far as I'm concerned, any day where your job reminds you of a Fred Savage/Christian Slater movie from the 80s is a good day.