I work in the Fantasy Games group at ESPN--we provide the world with web-based applications that help sports geeks run their fantasy baseball / football / basketball / hockey / etc. leagues.

For the hard-core fantasy gamers, we also have a competition called "Uber", which rates a player on his (fantasy gamers are almost always guys) proficiency across all sports and types of games. So the more you play, and the better you are, the higher your "Uber" ranking is.

It's quite interesting to see who the hard-core Uber guys are--I talked to 6 or 7 of them for some user-centered researched I conducted recently, and they come from all walks of life. On that note, here is an Uber story that passed through my inbox recently.

"Clark O. (Uber runner-up from last year) and currently in 2nd overall - designed the robot positioning system for the Mars Rovers that just landed over the past week. To hear him describe it - he had to create a system where the lander could know where it was on the surface of Mars without having to look around with a camera, take a day to get info back to Earth, then have scientists plot out how to move which wheel in what direction and by how much and then take a day to send the information back to the Rover for it to do, then send back, etc... so he created a mathematical formula for the robot to have a map of the geopgraphy of Mars in it's computer banks at all times and by knowing exactly where it is on that map it knows what it has to do to move around. Fascinating... and he still reports that winning Uber is more challenging ;)"

Then there is "Paradise by the Computer Monitor's light," as my co-worker Jim put it: Removed 5.25.04.

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