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Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
Okay! So I’m taking a trip to Michigan. (Still don’t know when; the Stardock folk are probably still recovering from PAX.) It is traditional upon taking such a trip to bring along a laptop so that you can a) stay in touch, b) cram it full of your demos to show your interviewers and c) play World of Warcraft in your hotel room.
But I can’t seem to find one I like. My friend Ryan Clark (who I’ve mentioned before) gave me an old (VERY old) laptop of his called a Panasonic Let’s Note CF-T4. As you might can guess from the website, he imported it from the ancient shores of Nippon.
Now, to me, this was nearly the perfect laptop. I liked the form factor (10.5 inches by 8 inches). I liked that the screen was big (12.1 inches diagonal), was 4:3 ratio and was a standard resolution (1024×768). I liked the fact that it did not have an internal CD or DVD drive, since those things only get used occasionally while they add weight, generate heat and suck up power all the time. I liked how light it was (about three pounds) and how long the battery lasted (about five hours). I liked that it was more than capable of development – indeed, this is the machine that CrazyBump was written on.
The only, ONLY thing I didn’t like was that its 733 megahertz processor meant that it was just a little too slow to play WoW.
So basically I want a laptop just like Ryan’s, only with a slightly faster processor and maybe more RAM. And since Ryan’s is five years old, I shouldn’t have to pay too much for one, right? Right?
Well, in this case, they don’t make ‘em like they used to.
Laptops at this point have diverged into two paths: either expensive, big, heavy, full-featured “desktop replacement” models, or cheap, adorable, super-light, super-small “netbook” models. Neither fits my bill. A netbook of any type would be perfect…if it were just a little bigger! I can’t be constantly backspacing to fix errors due to tiny keys and I cannot peer into one of those things’ tiny screens.
I’ve looked ’round the internet a fair bit to try to find a suitable one, but companies tend to drop older models of laptops like hot bricks once the new ones come out. I wouldn’t mind a used one as long as I could make sure everything worked…but I’d really like a new one (or rather, an unused one). At this point I’m tempted to start cruising pawn shops.
Anyone have any ideas?
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Tuesday, September 1st, 2009
So. Back on July 16th I wrote a post on my professional blog about Brad Wardell and the history of Stardock. Dave Shramek, a friend of mine, pointed out that Stardock was actually hiring a bunch of developers. So I sent in a resume.
Then, on August 3, I started working for Warped Productions. I thought my job search was over, and I’d won.
And then about two weeks ago, I got a phone call from…uh…Brad Wardell. He was doing a 15-minute pre-screen on candidates and, despite the fact that my voice was shot (possibly from yelling at chilluns) I guess I passed.
Because today I got a phone call from Cari Begle and Jesse Brindle. Cari was the lead developer on Galactic Civilizations II and Jesse Brindle was the 3D programmer responsible for creating the battle sequences. They grilled me on my past projects, what games I like to play and some technical issues.
And now apparently I’m going to take a trip to Michigan to see them in person. Stardock is interested in me. Glee!
Needless to say, my bosses at Warped already know about all this. I’ll continue to work hard for them for as long as they employ me, and since Stardock has a huge number of excellent candidates, there’s a darn good chance I won’t make the cut and I’ll continue to make iPhone games for Warped (which, frankly, is not a bad thing at all).
Still, we’re in “it’s an honor just to be nominated” territory, and it will leave me with a very tough decision should Stardock say yes.
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Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
You know, I’ve got some hope in the fact that eventually I’m going to run out of things that don’t work.
Despite the fact that I thought I gave a great interview, I got an email less than an hour later turning me down. When I asked, they said they were looking for someone “more senior”.
I’m going to have to change the name of this blog soon.
I’ve got a phone interview today…my first in three months. Wish me luck!
Once again, it’s April 1, also known as “Don’t Believe Anything You Read On The Internet Day”.
I swear to God, this has been the worst year of my life.
Yesterday at four PM we were all called in for a company-wide meeting. Now, such a meeting typically does not bode well, and true to form we were told that the slow economy meant that that there would be a round of layoffs at Aspyr.
Then they sent us all home. Without telling us who would be laid off.
Today I arrived at my scheduled meeting to discover that yes, I was being let go.
I guess my plan is to get Planitia looking more professional and see if I can use the fact that I wrote a networked real-time strategy game in my spare time to land me another job.
Okay, let’s get back to normal with an episode of Name That Game!
I really wanted to like this game. It was a first-person fantasy RPG at a time when there weren’t that many of them and it was billed as the spiritual successor to a defunct line of famous first-person RPGs. But I couldn’t like it because the control scheme was awful and unfixable.
Name and developer, please! Bonus points if you can tell me what RPG series this game was supposed to be the followup to.
Okay. Here’s what happened.
If you’ll recall, back in February my cardiologists implanted a defibrillator in me because they ascertained that I was susceptible to tachycardia (fast heartbeat) in my heart. They also implanted a stent into an artery that looked like it wasn’t getting sufficient blood.
On Thursday, October 16th, just after I arrived at work I started to feel lightheaded and cold. A couple of waves of this passed over me.
Then my defibrillator went off.
When I’d had it put in, I’d been told that being shocked by it was similar to being kicked by a mule. This is pretty accurate. The worst part was that for a second I didn’t know what had happened. All I knew was that I’d involuntarily yelled an obscenity and the mouse that had been in my hand was now on the floor.
Then it hit me two more times and I quickly asked my poor traumatized office mates to call an ambulance for me.
The paramedics determined that my defibrillator hadn’t actually managed to get my heartbeat back to normal – it was still going very fast. They finally had to give me medication to get me “converted” back to normal heartbeat.
So now I was back in the hospital. The doctors monitored me closely for two days and nothing happened, so they ended up prescribing me a new medication that would regulate my heart and released me on Sunday, October 19th.
Less than six hours later I got in the car to go pick up my prescription. The defibrillator went off again while I was driving. It shocked me four times. Fortunately I was still in my apartment complex, so I was able to stop the car and yell for help, and my neighbors called for the paramedics.
But the paramedics didn’t actually get me converted back to normal heartbeat in the ambulance, and after I arrived at the hospital it shocked me about seven more times.
This time the doctors decided to perform a procedure called an ablation, where they burn part of the heart that they believe is responsible for the faulty signal that creates the tachycardia. They performed the procedure, kept me about three more days, then released me.
Less than twenty-four hours later, it went off again – despite the fact that I’d been “taking it easy”. I’d just gotten out of the bathroom when I felt lightheaded, etc…I could tell it was coming, though I hoped it wouldn’t. But it did anyway.
Back to the hospital.
This time the doctors decided to look at what might have changed in my heart to cause this, and discovered that my heart muscles (which are unusually thick) had pushed the stent they implanted back in February partially closed. They went back in and opened it up, as well as put me on some stronger medication. Then they released me.
Needless to say, I took it very, very easy for the first two days – hardly getting out of bed. But eventually I had to. Since then I’ve become more active, almost back up to my normal level…and nothing has happened.
Part of me wants to believe that I’m okay now. But as you might can guess, part of me is still a bit traumatized about what happened.
As some of you may have surmised, I’ve been back in the hospital for heart problems. I’m not in the mood to tell the story because I don’t know if it’s over yet. But I did want to let you guys know that I’m okay right now.
