Another Change in the Life

 The challenge of sharing personal information is that there is an internal pressure to continue to share personal information.

Back here, I mentioned that I had a new job. Now I feel a need to post that I have ANOTHER, ALL-DIFFERENT new job.

I left Amazon for a new position with a small independent operation. Which, to be polite, did not work out. Details of woe and intrigue are only available to those who buy me a beer at a convention. Well, 1d4+1 beers.

In any event, I have spent the past two months looking for a new job. And it was pretty straight-forward, and I found a lot of opportunities, before joining up with the fine folks at Zenimax, working as a senior writer/designer for Elder Scrolls Online (ESO). I am still working from the home-office in Panther Lake, but the bulk of my colleagues are on the East Coast. 

So what did I do in my "time off"? Well, first off, I hesitate to call it time off, since what really happened was that I suddenly gained a new job, which was securing a full-time position. I hit the metaphorical and electronic pavement, renewing old contacts and scanning the linked-in for related positions. I had lunches with a lot of former colleagues. I filled out a lot of forms. I read. I played a lot of games, in particular games for companies that I was interviewing for. For example, I FINALLY uncracked the copy of ESO a colleague (now boss) gave me a couple years back. And that was all good. 

 But also I stopped blogging for a little bit, taking a break from that part of my life as well, though not intentionally. A LOT of blogs have gone by the wayside over the years, and it sometimes feels like I one of those old guys who keeps a short-wave radio in the basement. Some bloggers have graduated into paid accounts, some have moved onto youtube and twitch, and some have just run out of things to say. And that's cool. I think I'm going to stay with it, for a little while, if for no other reason than to bore others with plays, books, and collectable quarters. And the Lovely Bride has heard all my stories. 

So, new deal is that I am working with a company on the East Coast and concentrating on writing. That's good for the moment. I can use some stability for the time being. And if things change again, I will post. Or maybe not this time.

More later, 

A Change in the Life

 So, long-term readers (both of you) may have noticed that I rarely talk about my personal life up here on Grubb Street. Yeah, I talk about the effects of the recent pandemic on our daily lives, and often talk about the weather, the seasons, and local wildlife. Sometimes I talk about food. Sometimes I talk about adventures with the Lovely Bride But mostly it is book reviews, theater reviews, collectible quarters, and the ongoing saga that is local politics. I know, boring stuff.

However, it this is a good place to mention a major change in my life. As of last Friday, I am no longer with Amazon Games. It was a good run, and really like the people I was working with and the projects I have contributed to. I have great hopes that the current project I left will be a smashing success. You want any gossip, the deal is you have to buy me a beer. Several beers. 

As of today, I have joined Tempo Games, and am working on The Bazaar, and new game they have under development. I remain a Senior Narrative Designer, responsible for sorting out the lore and minimizing the typos. My new team includes a lot of new folk, but also a lot of veterans I have worked with before at ArenaNet and Amazon Games. I'm looking forward to it, and not just because I spent the bulk of the afternoon playing the game intensely. I like it, and I think a lot of other people will like it as well.

I am also serving as a design consultant on a new RPG called Everyday Heroes. A descendent of D20 Modern brought up to date for the 5th Edition, I serve as the "old guy" walking around behind the others and giving various warnings about how we used to do things. I am not the primary designer - those roles are Sig Trent and Chris "Goober" Ramslay, and they're doing a bang-up job. But beyond that, I will say nothing (OK, there's a Kickstarter coming. There. You happy?)

And that's about it for right now. I didn't have a lot to say about what I was working on before, and probably will not have a lot to say about it right now. And a big part of it is that most of what I am working on is "in process", which means it can change, evolve, revise and otherwise mutate between now and when it seems like the light of day, and I don't want to say things on Monday I will have to correct on Friday.

Back in the old days, before everyone carried a recording device in their pocket, the TSR gang could go to GenCon and say any number of things to small rooms of people, confident that we would not be called upon to make corrections when things changed. And often, things WOULD change after we talked about them, because our bosses would ALSO be at those conventions and listen to a lot of fans about what THEY would want us to do. Such things are a part of the past, since we live in a real-time world these days, so I will wait until the cake is done and iced before inviting everyone in for a slice.

That's about it. It's a new adventure, and I am looking forward to it.

More later,

Life in the Time of the Virus: Finale

Dawn in Pennsylvania, Edward Hopper, 1942

 This is the last entry of this type. Not because COVID is defeated, but because we are moving into a (yet another) new phase. A new normal, with all the abnormalities we have seen in the previous new normals.

I am vaccinated. The Lovely Bride is as well (no side effects from the second Moderna, other than she took the day off anyway). Our housemates are vaccinated, as are the other members of our Pandemic Pod. We have resumed in-person gatherings of the Pod in the backyard as the weather has improved. We even held an in-person gaming afternoon over Memorial Day weekend and a dinner at a local restaurant (patio, but still). We have made plans to visit our families in Pittsburgh. And to make a trip to Disneyworld in the fall. 

So to claim that we are in quarantine, fighting the virus with distance and time, is no longer applicable. We will still be cautious, wearing masks for safety and courtesy. But things are changing. Like cicadas, we are now emerging from our long sleeps into a changed world. And like cicadas, there will be screaming.

At the time of writing, there are about 500 deaths/day in the US. For comparison purposes we are looking at approx 100 car deaths and a similar number of firearm deaths/day (all numbers per the CDC). So, good news by comparison, but still dangerous. The overwhelming amount of new cases are among the unvaccinated, and now we are vaxing teenagers, which makes sense. This past week, the Washington State Government has inaugurated a Vaccine Lottery that you are entered into when you get your shots. Vaccination sites are overrun again with those who have put it off. Man, I hate it when marketing works.

We are still talking about coming back to the office in the fall, and decisions are being made to what degree. I've been thinking about what I enjoy about working at home, and the list has been extensive:

• No commute.
• More flexible time to work, and I get to work earlier.
• No driving in the dark in the winter.
• I am available to run errands, go shopping, and do heavy lifting for the Lovely Bride.
• I am reading more.
• I am exercising more.
• I've been amazingly healthy. I've had a runny nose or a clogged head a few days, and I was exceedingly Meh after my shot, but I have not been taking sick days. 
• The cats like me to be around the house.
• Hummingbirds outside my window.
• Able to enjoy the rhododendrons and wisteria this spring more.
• Able to mow my lawn over lunch.
• End of the day alcohol on my back deck in summer.
• I can get comics at noon on Wednesday.
• No surprise snowstorms in winter.
• I've taken to singing show tunes while I work.
• I've walked more, but have not had to use a cane for about a year.
• I've lost a little weight over the past year. Yeah, be jealous. 

On the other hand coming back to office gives me .... um, hang on, give me a moment, I'll come up with something. Oh, here we go:

• It's good to talk with others.
• Closer to IT when your computer goes down.
• Someone might bring their dogs in.
• Odds of me pouring an entire bag of cat food out on the kitchen floor severely reduced.

So what this means in no more entries titled "Life in the Time of Virus" (I hope). Plague books go back to just being books. Life does not return to the way is was, but then again, it never does.

More later

Life in the Time of the Virus, Still Continued

I close out our third month of seclusion, and we are fine. A little tired of it all. A little worn out. A little grumpy. But fine.

In this period I helped ship a computer game. Call it my COVID project. Our entire team was working from home, and that in itself is amazing. But with shipping, even though there are about a bajillion things that still need to be done to support/evolve/fix the game, I feel that one of the great pressures on me has passed, and feel a little exhausted as a result.

Part of the recent tasks as we moved to release involved recording voices for future content. So I and my writers were all in our homes, my producer in HIS home in Southern California, our actors in THEIR homes, and our poor audio engineer in the studio in Burbank by himself pulling it all together. My audio guy says the result sounds pretty good. Yeah, I remain amazed that we managed it all.

In the larger medical world the curve is flattening, but our part of the state is not at Phase 2 yet (we are at a modified Phase 1.5, which is what happens when nerds do planning - we break things down into smaller and smaller components). We are getting there - new cases have dropped, death toll is down (but still with us). The whole point of flattening the curve has been not to avoid all risk of infection, but to not overload the medical system with everyone getting sick at once. We have succeeded, yet there remains more to do.

I hear reports that there is herd immunity. I'm not sure about that. COVID-19 is a corona virus, like the common cold. I haven't seen much in the way of herd immunity to that over the years. I am dubious.

I hear reports that the there are mutations that are making the disease weaker, primarily reports from Italy. While that appeals to me in a conclusion to The Andromeda Strain sort of way, I don't see enough movement to support the concept. I remain dubious.

And I have a nervousness that stems from the tendency to admit COVID-19 deaths only when they are absolutely sure that it was COVID-19. So a lot of deaths are now recorded as from pneumonia, with the result that we now have a PNEUMONIA epidemic as the yearly totals are now 3 and 4 times what they normally are. This echoes the AIDS epidemic of my youth, where a lot of deaths of young men were hidden under the guise of "pneumonia".

But we are finally getting the point of wide-spread testing, which is a good thing. We've been guessing for a while now, but of this I am not dubious about.

My plague beard has graduated from "scraggly" to "grizzled".

The robocalls are returning to their natural habitat. One woman keeps calling to tell me there is nothing wrong with my credit. That's nice.

The Lovely Bride and I have succumbed to baking. She has been trying to refine a Kaiser roll recipe that has been kinda of weird on her.  We are making pizza dough, the type that rises overnight, using a recipe from the newspaper. This recipe is clearly meant to just be read, but not implemented. The LB disagrees with about every step of the recipe, so discussion result. Fortunately, after it is all said and done, we get to eat the evidence (and, after all the prep, it really wasn't bad at all).

But people are tired of all this. I get it. I'm not particularly happy myself, and I've got it really easy. I still have my work and talk to my co-workers continually over the 'net. Shortages have been spotty (the latest - shower cleaner and mushroom soup). People have been distancing. Masks are more common than not, particularly at the farmers' markets that are slowly coming back. Less so at the Fred Meyers.

And yet I feel this low-level irritation and agitation. I have less patience on the road, going out for sundries, even though there is less traffic. I have less patience behind the inevitable person at the grocery store paying in loose change. And while I am sure no one has turned the traffic lights to red longer just to peeve me off, but peeve me off they do.

I feel a little bad feeling this way - as I say, I got it easy. No, I've got it REALLY easy. While I was in the basement recording voices long distance, workmen peeled off my back balcony and replaced it with a larger, wider, sturdier, non-rotting version (our other COVID project). Two weeks to get it to the present state, where a base coat is drying. We are delayed because the flooring guy disagrees with what the engineer had put down on his drawing for flashing, while the local municipality agrees but will only authorize doing it the contractor's way if the engineer buys off on it. So we are stalled for the moment. But seriously, this is the worst thing happening? We have it as dead easy.

We endure and we continue and we thrive.We row on.

More later,

Enterprise

So I spent a good part of May on a starship.

No, I was not shot into space, unlike the cooler game design legends. Instead, I was in another city on long-term business and living out of a modern American hotel. And after a few days, I realized that I was living on the Enterprise-D.

Now this is the Enterprise of the Next Generation. The original Enterprise of the Kirk/Spock era was a military cruiser operating in cold war era space, much like America of the era, facing hostile rivals (Klingons serving as Russians) and more highly advanced but flawed entities (Organians, Talosians, the Squire of Gothos, the Olympic gods, all filling in for old Europe). No, this was the Enterprise of Picard and Riker, which stressed more of the floating community of families on a long-term voyage than military men on a combination exploration/patrol mission.

The Enterprise hotel, then, was filled with a large multi-cultural staff of knowledgeable specialists (front desk, chefs, hotel personnel, security). My role was that of one of those visiting scientists who showed up every other week with some personal mission that may/may not endanger the ship. I and my away team (the other members of my company) would take a shuttlecraft (rental car with keyless ignition) down to the planet (to the job at hand) and return in the evening to find the starship still parked in orbit and running smoothly.

And like the Enterprise-D, the starship hotel is broken down into private quarters (that can be accessed if need be) and communal areas (bar, pool, restaurant, holodeck – hang on – that could be cable TV). There was a replicator with illusions of endless plenty (the breakfast buffet). While on the planet surface, mysterious individuals arrived and cleaned up the place, leaving it in pristine condition afterwards.

And like the Enterprise-D, there is an amateur/enthusiast approach to art and culture. Exporting culture was a big thing in Next Generation, and so too here. The lobby was filled with copies of famous bronzes (a lot of Remington), and the evenings in the bar had a blonde pianist rolling through classical numbers and showtunes. Nothing too deep, but enough to declare that culture is here (They did not need a pianist – there was a robo-piano (Data?) in the restaurant, and I started changing when I hit the breakfast buffet/replicator because if I heard Windham Hill’s Winter into Spring one more time, I would surely go mad).

Oh, and there were other teams on board, all working on their own missions. Country musicians. Brides. The President of Taiwan. I was used to being the scruffiest person in the room until the game design nerds started showing up for E3.

For my part, as a member of the visiting science team , and did nothing to engage with any of the mysterious folk RUNNING this starship. Had to rescue something from the lost and found another team member left behind (security), and get a new electronic keycard (front desk). Had to deal with alien technology (keyless remotes, strange wake-up call systems), alien foods (a set of springrolls that nuked both myself and another member of the team) and strange cultures (what is this thing about greeting you by name, anyway?)

Yet the mission ends, the data is gathered, and we are beamed back (via Alaska Air) to the home port, but the starship exists out there, for the next time we need it.

More later.

Returned

I've spent the past week in another land, far from this one, on business for my company. And I have to say I was a most insufficient, but low-maintenance, tourist.

I spent most of the week within a particular five-square-mile area, its borders defined by the airport, the hotel, and where I was working. My day consisted of awakening, preparing, breakfasting, commuting, working for four hours, lunching for an our, working for another four hours, returning to the hotel, dinner, then catching up on other work and finally crashing. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I placed a very light load on the tourist industry, and in appreciation it in turn made things easy for me to go about my business.

I did only the smallest smattering of sight-seeing, and while I was greatly pleased with the results of the week, and the people whom I was working with, it is the sort of thing that I can't talk about right now. The responsibility was such that, even though I had Internet access, I had nothing to say here, nor even the time to craft a coherent message. I did not even turn on the TV over the course of the week. The image that sticks in my mind is the evenings, watching the sun set over the valley beyond my hotel window in brilliant hues.

Nevertheless, I am home now, and even though everything went very well, I am very, very tired. I'm thinking of just sitting on the back porch today, replacing as much of my bodily fluids with alcohol as I dare, and just dialing everything back a notch. Or ten.

More later,

Monster

And this morning I ran over some baby ducks.

Yes, it was a accident. And yes, I'm completely broken up about it.

I think I've mentioned how my office is in a bottomland crisscrossed by channels and shallow bodies of water. And with spring we have an abundance of ducks, geese, and other waterfowl raising their young. We have signs up and everyone is very careful about driving around.

And then I ran over the baby ducks. Now I'm a monster.

I came around a curve into our parking lot. I never saw the ducklings, and saw the mother duck only when I was right on top of them. Looking in the rearview I saw one of their little bodies flapping around on the asphalt and realized what I had done. I parked and went back but by that time it was too late.

There were two of them. The one I saw flapping was dead by the time I got back, and I found the body of another one, crushed, nearby. I moved them off the parking lot into the low marsh nearby, to where the mother was squawking loudly at me with her surviving brood. I apologized to the mother and offered a quiet prayer. But I had blood on my hands.

There had been another driver, right behind me coming in, but it doesn't feel right to share the blame. Or to blame the ducks for picking that particular moment to cross a heavily-traveled lot. Or to remember all the times I stopped, or even got out of the car to shoo ducklings to relative safety. Or to seek comfort in the fact that there are survivors, and part of the entire idea of raising a lot of duckling is that some will not survive, taken down by predators or illness or accidents.

But in this case the accident was me. And I feel like the clumsy giant, the uncaring ogre, the bad neighbor, the savage fool. Killing without purpose, an engine of destruction.

The guilt will remain with me for a while, as it should. I still feel the karmic debt for running over a chipmunk in Lake Geneva almost 20 years back.

I'm going to be carrying those ducklings for a while.

More later,

Working At Home

Just because I grumble about how Seattlites are shocked, simply shocked, whenever we get snow, even I am aware of how tough the situation has gotten. The Puget Sound region has had either three or four (depending on how you're counting) "snow events" in the past two weeks, without any warming trends between them. The most recent of these events hit yesterday, and was supposed to be mostly rain in the lowlands. At the moment we have 8-10" up on Grubb Street, and so I am working from home today.

Yes, this would be considered "real snow" to anyone back east, Seattle. You are completely justified to be amazed and/or to complain about it. Go nuts.

Actually, we have it very nice here. Power is still on (touch wood again), we had sufficient supplies laid in (and shopping Sat. AM was filled not with panicking customers but with families preparing for Christmas dinner), and through the miracle of the Internet I can communicate with the home office (which sounds a bit sparse today - one fellow employee made it all the way to the office, only to get stuck five feet from our under-building parking - even if you can make it on the roads, the parking lots are horrible).

And we are much better off than many. A lot of folk don't have the luxury of a snow day or even working at home. The local merchants are struggling both with personnel that might not show up and customers who are aren't coming in. And the airport is a disaster that shames the Thanksgiving storm from a few years back. No one is going out, flights are being canceled, no one has de-icer (yeah, that's a surprise) and families are literally trapped at the airport for days.

So yeah, I'm pretty thankful to be where I am right now.

More later (and maybe something that doesn't involve weather next time),

Yellow Jacket

So I'm in a bit of a mood right now, since I was stung by a yellow jacket. While seated at my desk.

Normally I am cool with intrusions of wildlife into my daily life, even to the extent of the mosquitoes that got in over the weekend. But my first warning of this particular intrusion was a sharp pain at my elbow when I moved it to a place the yellow jacket did not care for, and it lashed out at me.

As a kid, I was always afraid of bees, but two weeks on Kangaroo Island in southern Australia, catching and painting honeybees, had apparently cured me those issues (but that, as they say, is another story). Nonetheless, I cast the yellow jacket down and stepped on it. A couple times, but after the second it was purely out of spite.

So there were some local folk wisdom as well as the Internet for what to do. Since I am not allergic and there was no obvious stinger harpooning my flesh, I iced down the area and took a couple aspirin. The Internet also recommends applying an onion or baking soda to the area, but we were fresh out.

The yellow jacket fared much worse than I, but as I said, it has left me in a mood.

More later,

WALL-E

So one of our founders took our design group out to see Wall-E, the new Pixar movie, this afternoon.

I really don't want to say much about it, just out of respect (the trailers have been fairly good at avoiding spoilers), and you really, really want to encounter it with a relatively unspoiled brain. It is sweet without being saccharine and so good that you regularly forget you're watching CGI.

Seriously, the tech has caught up and the writing is extremely good. Go see it.

More later,

Poplar Demand

So it has been cool but clear for the past week or so, and with the mild weather, great clouds of tree-fluff have been sailing on the wind past my workplace window. These are the seeds of the cottonwood and poplar trees along the Mercer Slough, which have been floating on the breeze and piling up every nook and cranny, looking for all the world like blond frost.

But from my office, watching them float on the gentle breeze, it is like working in a snow globe.

More later,

Back from Vacation

Back in Seattle after almost two weeks in the Eastern Part of this country. Only three days were spent in Washington DC (of which I have a few more, last posts), while the bulk of it was with family in Pittsburgh (and included 3 birthdays plus Mother's Day). The collected family (both mine and the Lovely Bride's) is doing well, thank you.

But this is about the trip back home, done on an infinitesimal amount of sleep, and getting up at 4 AM Pgh time (1 AM Seattle Time) to return. And though you might expect one of the traditional horror stories of missed connections and lost luggage, everything went as smooth as silk, even given tight connections in Cincinnati. We got to Seattle. Our luggage got to Seattle. And I have to say Delta did a darn fine job, even if they have been reduced to selling sandwiches on the plane.

Just as good, the cabbie we took turns out to live the next block over, so he understood what the Lovely Bride meant when she said "Take the windy road up the hill". The Cabbie mentioned that he often saw a county trooper's car in our driveway. We explained that the trooper was a friend who would come over for dinner before starting his shift. He was amused by that.

But the nicest thing was that, since I was back before noon, I went to work, and was greeted like Norm from Cheers. I had only been gone ten days, and there were enough things that I needed to catch up on, but everyone was genuinely happy to see me back (before asking a host of questions).

And that met me feel particularly happy. I work with a great team.

I have a few more Washington stories, but they will wait for later. I really should go to sleep, now.

More later,

Benched

And then I pitched backwards, head over heels, and landed in the wet grass. I took it as a sign.

OK, let me back up. At the office, our personal phones are our desk phones. So we have a lot more mobility, and when we get a personal call, most of us walk out of the design room. And since it was a nice day, when I got this particular personal call, I walked out into the business park itself.

I've mentioned this place before. We're just south of Bellevue, in the lowlands between the town and Mercer Slough. We have a lot of wildlife, and the waterways were particularly high today as a result of some heavy rains that swept through in the morning. So I walked and talked and eventually came to the bench behind one of the buildings.

It's an old bench, the elements have stripped the wood to its bare varnish and the cast iron supports held together by black paint and memory. Still, its in a nice area, and I sat down. And as I talked, I leaned back. Did I mention that we had heavy rains that morning?

Near as I can figure, the ground was soft beneath the bench, so when I leaned back, I just kept on going, sprawling backwards and in the process sheering off one of the cast-iron legs (It was orange with rust all the way through - I think that's bad). I apparently made an interesting noise as I tumbled over, according to the person I was speaking with.

So the question is - why is the phrase "Head over Heels", anyway? You head is always over your heels. In this case, it was Heels over Head.

Anyway, the ground was soft, and there was little damage done except for personal embarrassment and wet elbows and knees as I pulled myself up. And I went back to my office and had them informed that a) the bench was broken, and b) I had done the breaking. So nothing more on that front.

And now, late in the evening, I've got a bit of a twinge, probably from the tumble. But a hot tub should be able to fix that. Oddly, this was the highpoint of the day.

More later.

UPDATE So STAN! provided me with a link in which a breathy, busty, Russian supermodel explains english words and phrases. Safe for Work, but then, I work at a place where they've been playing GTA IV on the big flatscreen all day (and speaking professionally, I am SO jealous of their opening credits).

Wild, Wild, Life

So for the past few Saturdays, when the Lovely Bride has been going into town for her Tai Chi classes, I've been taking hikes down along the old Black River to see the heronry there. I've talked about these dinosaur birds before, and I wanted to check on them before the cottonwood trees came in too thick.

They're still there, and I counted about fifty nests, though some of these may be abandoned from previous years. The colony itself was less raucous than I've seen in other years, but that may just be the time of the day. There is a lot of nesting and still some nestbuilding. The eagles are back as well, across the way, near the still-empty office buildings they put in a few years ago. But the remains of the Black River were dominated with geese, ducks, and other waterfowl.

There are herons up at my workplace as well, as we border on the Mercer Slough, and some of them may be making a similar commute to my own from the south during the day. We also had a mink show up at the office's front door last week. Definitely smaller than an otter (we have those too), and with finer, less shiny fur, the small creature nosed about the front door before the mass of people watching spooked it and it loped off.

If it had hung around another five minutes we would have given it a programming test and see if it could work in an office environment.

More later,

All Fools Plus One

So yesterday was April Fool's Day, and there were mild pranks. Guild Wars turned everyone on the server into stick figures, while WoW announced its new character class, the Bard, which uses a Guitar Hero interface. One friend got me entirely by announcing she was leaving for Africa, and since she is usually such a level-headed individual but we haven't talked for a while, I bit on that one totally.

And I discovered Rickrolling.

OK, I'm going to spoil the joke right off the bat - it is a long-standing Internet tradition to send your buddies a link with disturbing information, or a picture of a duck. Over the past few months, this has evolved into sending people links to Rick Astley's one-shot hit Never Going To Give You Up.

So yesterday, the meme went completely viral, and everyone sent links about it. My first warning was when the wall to the art department started vibrating with the song. They loved it, and every time they got a link, they cranked it. But the best one caught me, labeled Hilarious Muppet Bloopers made me laugh.

Future generations will look back to this era and wonder how any work was actually accomplished in those carefree days before the robots took over.

More later,

A Week of Teh Suck™

Wow. As good as my vacation week was, with all of its travel karma falling perfectly into place, the week following turned into a pustulant, oozing boil of suckiness. Nothing horrible, but just putting me into that "One more thing goes wrong and I scream" sort of mode.

Some of it is work related - a potential project failed to come to fruition, a rearrangement of positions at the office, a project that was done and approved is suddenly not approved, something I was going to promote here suddenly CAN'T be promoted until things get sewn up.

And some of it is the rest of the world - GenCon is sued by Lucasfilm. GenCon declares bankruptcy. The Tolkien estate is suing New Line, who despite the success of the Lord of the Rings movies, hasn't paid Tolkien's people royalties. Paul Randles' last game is seeing publication, which should be a good thing, but it is a reminder that Paul, a great game designer, isn't with us anymore.

And it seems that a large crop of my friends are suffering from personal illness, family troubles, work disasters, or a combination of all three.

And my wrist still aches from a slide down a hillside in Hawaii, and I've got a nasty zit. Acne, at my age. Blech!

The thing is, nothing is absolutely, life-re-examiningly horrible - its just that it has all hit at the same time, a triple-high-point in the biorhthyms of Suck. I'm just going to stand and marvel at its strange timing, its ruthless precision. I feel simultaneously cranky and a little ashamed of being so cranky about such a plethora of small matters.

So I think I'll go to an art exhibit of Bob Crumb's work, just so I can see what real crankiness is all about.

More later,

Jeff Grubb Day

Well, this is just ducky.

Just as I'm clearing out the deadwood in my rant files, confident that no one is really reading this stuff, old friend Steven Schend goes and recommends me to a host of strangers over at Jim Hines blog So now I feel obligated to provide, you know, CONTENT.

So how about the story of Jeff Grubb Day, which he mentions in his post?

In a nutshell, Jeff Grubb Day is about identity theft, in the same way that Christmas is about breaking and entering (Well, what do YOU call it when a fat guy gains access to your living room via the chimney?). Here's the story:

Many years ago, at TSR, we got a phone call from a gaming convention in Texas. A young lady was trying to convince the con that she (and her husband) were Jeff Grubb. No, really. They told the convention committee that Jeff Grubb was house name that TSR had created, and that there have been a number of Jeff Grubbs, and she and her husband were the PREVIOUS Jeff Grubb. There was NEW Jeff Grubb, so they couldn't say what Jeff Grubb was working on, but they were an OLD Jeff Grubb. And apparently they were pretty convincing to the con committee.

The front desk thought this was amusing, and sent the call up to me, and I patiently explained that I was Jeff Grubb, that I have always BEEN Jeff Grubb, and that there were no previous Jeff Grubbs writing for the company (though I can see the point, since I really enjoyed working on a number of games and worlds, and was generating a lot of text in those days). The convention thanked me very much, told me they would talk to the woman and tell her not to pretend to be me, and that was the end of it.

Well, not quite. Anne Brown, one of our editors over the cube wall, heard all this, and decided that it would be fun if EVERYONE was Jeff Grubb. So the next Monday, everyone had name tags that said "Hi, I'm JEFF GRUBB". Everyone greeted each other as Jeff Grubb. The meeting notes for the day said "Attending: Jeff Grubb, Jeff Grubb, Jeff Grubb, and Jeff Grubb. Jeff Grubb suggested a new product line for the Forgotten Realms, but was hooted down by Jeff Grubb, who said that it was one of Jeff Grubb's worst ideas ever." Even TSR's vice presidents got into the act, wearing name tags on the undersides of their ties and flashing people in the halls (yeah, our vice presidents had a sense of humor).

It was all in fun, but the reason it is burned in Steven Schend's memory forever, was that this was Steven's first day of work at TSR. And EVERYONE he was introduced to was named Jeff Grubb. Worse yet, he just moved to Lake Geneva, and discovered that his next-door neighbor was ... the real Jeff Grubb! Its a wonder he came back to work the next day.

And that's the tale of Jeff Grubb day - a bit of corporate foolishness, when my minions, for one brief, shining moment, became legion.

Oh, and my name tag on Jeff Grubb day? I read "Hi, I'm Roger Moore." But that's a tale for another day.

More later,

Moving Day

I don't think I've mentioned this before, but my office hates offices.

No, really. The founders of my company eschew the entire office-with-a-door, private-line, cube-farm-with-concrete-colored-walls mindset. We work at tables, our personal cells are our office lines, our rooms are large (and sometimes loud) and we communicate really, really well. And the founders? They tend to work in the hallways, on tables, with their cells as their office lines, near the hubs of the projects. It really works.

I mention this because we've recently expanded into the rest of our building, and are in the process of breaking down MORE walls and eliminating MORE private offices. And at one point, the founders bought a set of cubes - low-walled, open cubes, roomy, but cubes nonetheless. I think they didn't like the decision, because it came time to expand out the operations, it was determined that These Cubes Must Go.

Simultaneously with this decision, the Lovely Bride has returned to tax preparation. She's spent the past few years working for a Big National Tax firm franchise, and as the years have passed they have been stressing their financial schemes as opposed to the art of preparing taxes. So she retired, only to join up a year later with a really small firm that is strong on tax ethics but is still getting its operation together, which includes needing good furniture for its offices.

So I mention the upcoming Death of the Cube Farm to the Lovely Bride, and she says yes, we could really use some of the stuff. And I ask the bosses, and they're cool, as long as everyone who wants to get some furnishings for private use gets first dibs. Friday morning the furniture team that had installed the cubes ripped everything down. And two of the artists took full cubes and one of the writers some desktops for his kids, along with two more of the artists. The rest had to go, and go before Monday, else it would end up in the dumpster.

So it fell to today to get a lot of cube furniture out of the office. With a weather forecast of snow. So at the crack of dawn we set out to borrow a truck from the Lovely Bride's Boss's brother, drive to Carpintino's to pick up her office accountant, office accountant's truck, office accountant's daughter, and office accountant's friend, and headed to my company to rescues the cube farm.

And a cube farm dismantled is a LOT bigger than you would think. Luckily I was able to dragoon two other guys at the company to help (I owe them pizzas, now), and the office accountant's husband and son were at the tax office to help us unload, which made a MASSIVE project just barely doable. Still we had to make a second run to pick up everything we could not fit in the first batch. So it took three pickup truck loads to move our chunk of the dead cubefarm to its new location.

All the while, all involved had to listen to me say that I neither knew nor cared what happened to it after it reached its destination. I had told the bosses it would be gone by Monday, and I wanted to keep that promise even if I had to grind the cubes to a fine powder and make it part of my complete breakfast.

So we offload the second collection, get everything squared away, and headed back to the house in midafternoon, after about 7 hours of hard work. I collapse in front of the tube, watching a History Channel special on ancient Egyptian weaponry. And as I am watching, I looked outside and saw that big, heavy flakes of snow awee starting to come down, only an hour after we had finished everything.

And I feel pretty darn good about myself, despite the aches and pains.

More later,