Ryan
Chasing greatness

I was laid off.

Now before anyone does something silly like try to tell me how sorry they are, please read what I have to say first.

I’m not upset, and I haven’t stopped working for the company. Here are some highlights of my 11 months of being employed: I went to SOE and worked with their engineers for a week, I’ve been on tech calls with senior developers at 3 different MMO companies, I’ve spent the day with some of Valve’s team and got all of their games for free (Though I still need a computer to run them).

Crazy right? Here’s the deal. We knew for a while now that our company was out of money. We kept going because we thought we were going to get a break. Unfortunately we didn’t get the break before it was impossible to make payroll again. So we were all laid off.

That isn’t the end of the world because we knew it was coming. Also, not two days prior we had a meeting where we talked about, “If you had to swing one time for the fences, what would you do?” I had previously voiced my ideas, and they were tolerated but not accepted. However, someone else had a really good idea that we just had to give a fighting chance.

I’m not going to talk about what that idea is, but since getting laid off a few weeks ago we have come a long way in getting it done.

Enough talk of that though, because I have had a second interview with a pretty cool company and I think I’ll be able to get a job with them. Then everything will be gravy again.

I started an iPhone game a few weeks ago, something I’d tinker with on the weekends. It’s been coming together at an alarming rate and I hope that as soon as I get some art for it it will be a quick turn around to get it on the app store. Though the cruel reality is that I’ll just abandon it like many of my other projects.

Since nobody reads this, I feel fine writing about it here.

I have nearly finished a little experiment on player immersion. I got the idea when I was listening to Robert Rice‘s talk on video game immersion at TGC. He broke down elements of immersion and helped draw connections between technology and it’s impact on player’s experience.

Anyway, I still have 3 things to do. I’m going to be getting art from Ciara Livingston, someone I work with at the bookstore, whose style is perfect for this, edit all of the text for better style and impact, and finally get the final voice recording for the closing.

I can’t count. The fourth thing I need to so is create a Google form to collect information on the experiment so I can get an idea of how good it is or how much of a waste of time it is.

Anyway, here’s the link.

So I’m making white chicken stock for the first time.  I guess it isn’t technically hard to do, but then again neither is boiling an egg, but most people can’t do that right either.  So we’ll see how this turns out.

After being inspired at the Triangle Game Conference, I decided to open up some projects.  First, I’m writing a simple little experiment that will hopefully prove some ideas I have on immersing players in a story.  I’ve already done the technical work, so I just have to create content.  Thankfully I made it a point to do this rather low tech, so it wont’ require much, but I have got an artist to help.  Her name is Ciara Livingston and I think her artwork will only make this better.  I’ve also convinced my wife to do a voice recording.  Exciting stuff!

In the job world, I’ve started a project that involves actual software development.  Web development specifically.  I’m creating a web tool that will modify apache configurations live.  I don’t think anyone has done this before, mostly because it isn’t something you want a lot of people to go around doing.  Either way, it’s an exciting change of pace from my normal system administration work.

On Sunday my wife and I will have been married two years.  Holy shit.

It’s almost Thanksgiving, which means it is almost Christmas. I don’t know if I’ve ever had a year where my first response to the holidays have been, “God, I’m busy.”

In my job right now I’m working on doing a live server migration. Just because I like a challenge though, I’m also trying to set up mySQL replication and NFS clustering. Don’t know what that stuff means? Well, if I pull it off I will officially tack on, “Awesome” to my job title. If I fail, the company I do this for will cease to exist until I fix the problem.

(more…)

“So how is everyone enjoying those free drinks,” Amanda started.  Her carefully planned ice-breaker had only earned a few apathetic claps and a roaring, “Hell yes love,” from that obnoxious dipshit comedian from England.

Amanda didn’t care for him.

Though now that her opening had failed, she had to continue with the presentation, hopefully bailing out her own ship of sinking self-esteem.

“The captain has told me that we will arrive at, ‘Atlantis,’ by 9 o’clock tomorrow morning, and before that I was going to go over some exciting information about this exciting new hotel.”

Amanda had given countless presentations like this before, but never to her idols, fantasies, and favorite tabloid fodder.  She was having a terrible time rconciling the fact that she had just read that Britney was having an emergency c-section for twins, but still sitting less than 100 feet away.  She knew that Jennifer Aniston had sworn death threats against “Brangelina,” but they were all siting together.  They even made small talk during Amanda’s presentation.

Amanda felt like she was going to throw up.

Twenty minutes later, after four failed jokes, sixteen minutes of dull information, and no less than nine-thousand interruptions from that dipshit from England, Amanda did throw up.

Even though she had always carried a tooth-brush and toothpaste for these occasions, the thought of having to go make small talk with the celebrities after vomiting made her sinking self-esteem ship  capsize.

Amanda would be drinking tonight.

When she was hired for this job, she thought she had won a golden ticket.  In fact, she had gotten a golden ticket.  It was part of the gimmick.  The company who hired her had built this outrageous hotel in the south pacific ocean.  It was a luxury oil platform.  They had swimming pools, bowling alleys, 5-star restaurants for whatever type of cuisine you wanted, casinos, shows, walks on the sea floor, and an underwater bar.  They had sent golden tickets to some of the highest profile people in the world.  It was an all-expenses-paid vacation to the hottest thing in the world.  Her company had even rented a cruise ship just for the trip there and back.

Amanada woke up at 8:30 in the morning the feeling that she had shoved a brick through her head.

Then she realized it was 8:30 and they would be disembarking in 30 minutes.

Then she realized she had passed out on the floor, and the proof was on her face.

She tried to reassure herself that all she had to do was be there to welcome everyone to Atlantis and after that the staff would take over, but she was going to look like a burlap sack doing it.

Somehow, while her self-esteem ship was sinking to the dark depths, it exploded.