Sitting here, on the eve of Inauguration Day, it strikes me how different things were eight long years ago. Most of the stuff that affects us all, we already know about. 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, economic collapse, blah blah blah. Still – some things seem like they were SO far away.

In 2001, I’d buy a house, Ei-Nyung and I would move in together. I was working for my dad, in Livermore. I had a Mitsubishi 3000 GT. No Mobius yet. Heck, Mobius wasn’t even alive yet! Didn’t get along all that well with my mom. Was just about the time I started hanging out with Klay and Lindsi – strangely, it took a while after I stopped working at Sega to actually hang out with some of the peeps from the company. Joe T. had moved in. Maybe Brandon in 2001, as well? Renovations on the house started late in 2001, if I recall correctly. We had different neighbors to our right. The neighbors to our left were in better health. The neighbors behind us have switched twice since then. Sonja (my family’s first dog) was still alive, and in Canada. It’d been a really long time since I’d seen any of the Canadian peeps, and would be another year or two since I would.

I wasn’t particularly politically aware/active then. I could see, clearly, that Bush was a buffoon, and I was tremendously disappointed when Gore didn’t fight for the win he deserved. But I would never, ever have guessed how badly things would go off the rails – how disastrous a period in American history this would be, and how much it’s likely to affect my life for decades to come.

Good riddance to bad rubbish! Finally, it’s over. May we, as a country, hold him and his ilk accountable for their actions, and may we move forward, on to a better future!

Things that are currently not working like they should:

• The front of the house still leaks – gotta call someone, but don’t really know who
• The water heater’s borked. Looks like it could be a dirty sensor of some sort, but it’ll require some troubleshooting tomorrow. Not looking forward to it.
• The internet sucks. SBC has been screwing with us for the last month, and our internet connection’s been all over the place.

I know it’s only a few things, but it feels like everything’s busted, and it’s annoying. SBC in particular is pissing me off at the moment, but it’s really feeling like stuff is just falling apart. I figure repairing the front of the house at this point is simple, but recently also found some other potential leaks in one of the corners (front living room area) which I’m gonna have to start watching really carefully. Gah. Never f’ing ends.

Well. That was quite a year.

Lessee – what happened? The election, I think, is easily the biggest thing, and the thing that holds the most promise for 2009.

For us, the new kitchen and stairs are a huge change for the better. A couple unexpected twists and turns along the way (permits, anyone?), but overall, the changes have been enormous and positive.

Career-wise, things were really good for the most part – lots of moves in the right direction. I got a really great chance to build some useful skills – working with a wide variety of people on a wide variety of projects, got to look at design from a high, system-oriented level. I got a good chance to make a lot of positive change on those projects. Who knows, despite getting laid off, there’s some chance some of those projects will eventually see the light of day. We’ll see.

At the end of the year, even, I got a chance to do some consulting, which is something I’ve wanted to see if I could do, and so far, it’s turning out pretty well (I think). I think it’ll grow into a good opportunity in 2009.

The next year, we’re going to almost certainly finish up the big things on the house – do the drywall, and get a lot of the cosmetic things done.

Let’s see… for the next year:

* I will win a >6-figure prize in the lottery (this is sort of an interesting “resolution” – I have this weird record of knocking down some absurd “resolutions,” and so I figure this year, let’s shoot the moon!)

* I will find a “Creative Director” level design job or continue working as a design consultant

* I will drop to <210lbs by April That’s it!
Here’s to a 2009 that wipes the floor with 2008. 🙂

If anyone’s interested in seeing the writeup I did for the Game Design class I did (referenced a couple posts down), send me an e-mail address (helava@alum.mit.edu), and I’ll send you a link to the Google Docs thing. It’s missing a couple sections, ’cause I had to remove proprietary stuff, but it’s still almost complete.

So… I got a job doing some contract design with Ei-Nyung’s company. It’s a weird time, because I’ve got some really distinct work to do at a time where NOBODY – and I mean NOBODY is hiring. So that’s pretty awesome. It’s definitely weird, though, because I feel suddenly un-confident. Like the last five years of experience don’t matter, or my opinion is really meaningless and weird.

I think one of the weird thing is that in games, game design is a skill that gets built up, and it depends on a lot of nuance that is really meaningful to people who are really familiar with games. Without the nuance, everything is really … obvious, and apparently simple. So it’ll be weird to see whether I can communicate the nuance to non-gamers in a non-console-game medium. It’ll be a nice challenge. We’ll see how well it goes.

Still, the thing that’s weird is that I’d gotten myself psyched up for some free time, where I could work on the house and write the book I was working on – where now, I’ve been running a lot of errands and now working, and I don’t have any time for any of the other stuff. So it’s weird. Makes me a little restless, ’cause I wanted some time off, now it’s gone. But employment is good – in this market, it’s stellar. If I had to work through Christmas and New Years, that’s totally fine.

Got some details to clarify with the company over the next few days, so that I’m a little clearer on the direction I should be taking, but otherwise, it’s good. Things are good. Life is good. Got no complaints.

Well, the weather sucks. 😉

On a different note, 1.) our net connection is a mess, currently. 2.) The new PS3’s actually pretty sweet. Haven’t watched anything on Blu-Ray yet, but Ratchet and Clank is awesome, Resistance 2 is prettty nice, and Valkyria Chronicles is stunning. The lack of consistency across games sucks, since Sony didn’t institute clear standards before releasing their hardware. Definitely a reminder of what MS did *really well* over the 360’s lifespan. Live and the 360’s exclusives wipe the floor with the PS3, though – Sony’s going to have to release a LOT of insanely good exclusive content if they want to have any hope of recovering from a distant 3rd place in this generation…

Before anyone asks, since rumors are going to be out there:

Yeah, I’m unemployed. Yeah, we’re alright. Yeah, I’m looking. If you’ve got any advice/leads, they’d be much appreciated.

In the meantime, I’ll be writing, and fixing up the house.

Fun.

Gave my “Intro to Game Design” presentation today. Only about 10 people showed up, but given our current circumstances, I was glad that many people were interested. Response was really good – as good as I could have hoped for. People were positive, they were surprised, and I think it gave them a better insight into how designers think. Or should think, at any rate.

The image at the top is basically the summary of the whole thing. At the size it’s at, I don’t expect that it actually is legible, but I’d be happy to run anyone through the presentation if they’ve got the 45 minutes it takes. 🙂

On a totally different note, despite finally buckling down on the financial side of things and seriously looking at restricting our spending, Ei-Nyung got us the Omega Pedal – a Pearl drum pedal modified to work with Rock Band. It’s AWESOME. Just like the ION kit is a totally different experience than the standard kit, the Omega pedal is as sizable step up from the ION pedal as the ION drums are from the standard pads.

Crazy stuff.

Also – played online with my cousin for the first time ever (hey, cuz) via the Wii & Mario Kart. God, that game drives me batshit crazy sometimes, but it was fun to see him zoom past at the beginning of the race… after which I’d never see him again…

Really does emphasize how good a job Microsoft did with Xbox Live. Nothing else comes even remotely close. The Wii implementation is so geared toward paranoid safety that it strips away 90% of the fun. And I don’t mean just the racism and rampant homophobia. Still, great to see him online. Here’s to more!

re: the talk – I’m contemplating trying to submit a proposal to GDC for 2009. I dunno if it’s too late or not, or honestly, if I’d even have the stones to do it. I am, however, writing a book about it. 😀

So… I was really nervous today there’d be massive layoffs, and there weren’t. But there was essentially worse news – that if deals aren’t signed by the 15th, the whole company dissolves. As a result, basically, they said people should start looking for new work. The end result, while honest and forthright, and renewed my respect for Julian, had the effect of basically everyong going into, “Well, it’s over,” mode. Which is probably the right thing to happen, but it’s depressing all the same…

Guess it’s time to start looking. One interesting possibility is that a handful of other laid off workers, if it comes to that, might scramble to build a quick XBLA game. Which could be pretty awesome, though… who knows. It’s just a bit depressing.

A couple things have contributed to the lack of recent blog posts. For one, Google Reader has made almost any, “Hey, have you seen this?” posts irrelevant, and for two, nothing much has really been going on.

I’ve been trying to do NaNoWriMo this year, and for a second year in a row, I don’t think I’m going to finish. I got to about 17K words so far, and I hope to hit 25K by the end of the weekend, but that feels… unlikely at this point. Part of it was that in the first week of November, I had a sudden, unexpected writing project at work which took up a lot of mental space, and part of it is that I think I made a mistake in starting with a story, and not with a character. I definitely write best when I think I have a general idea of who the character is, and I stick them in a variety of odd situations.

Because this particular thing, a novelization of a pitch concept from work, started with a story arc, I thought by exploring different segments of the arc, I could get a better idea for who the character is. Apparently, my brain doesn’t really work that way. It also may be that the character/setting just isn’t hitting the right notes, and inspiration isn’t really strikiing. Who knows?

In other news, I haven’t gotten paid since I got paid late at the beginning of November. Seems the company’s simply not bringing in money right now, and the bank account’s run dry. It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the next month or two. Half of me is hoping I get laid off, can collect unemployment, and take a stab at writing a game pitch, or help out a friend who’s doing some indie game development. The other half of me is sort of frightened at the prospect of not having a job in this economy, but oh, well. I dunno. It’s hard to say, honestly. I like the job, overall, but the things about it that are frustrating are particularly frustrating because a.) it doesn’t feel like I can change them, no matter how hard I work, and b.) I feel like maybe I’m starting to learn some bad habits as a result.

Been playing a fistful of great games – Mirror’s Edge is audacious and new, and Gears of War 2 is about as insane a blockbuster-style game as you could imagine. Hard to say what’s up next – C&C3: Red Alert, Fable 2, Far Cry 2, Endwar, Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway? Who knows.

Tomorrow, we go to babysit for D for the first time. Maybe I’ll get some writing in then.

Gears of War 2: Horde mode = big fun. Can’t wait for Left 4 Dead. Campaign is longer, graphics are much more impressive, and all in all, exactly what I wanted from Gears 2. Hopefully the multiplayer will have legs, but currently, the matchmaking system is SLOW. 360 RROD’d on Friday, so I borrowed a console from work over the weekend. Still, means I’ll be console-less for Mirror’s Edge, which comes out Tuesday. *sigh*

Belgian Liege Waffles with Maple & Bacon: I made Liege waffles a while back, with sugar blobs that would melt and caramelize in the waffle itself. I thought, “Man, these would make awesome bacon waffles,” and made some maple candy from syrup last night, busted it up this morning, cooked up 10 strips of bacon, and made the yeast dough. All told, the process was about an hour and some (plus rising time for the dough), but the end results were pretty awesome. The bacon was subtle, the syrup was not, but the combination was pretty excellent. Froze the leftovers for breakfast during the week. They’ll probably make TERRIBLE toaster waffles, though, ’cause the syrup will leak out and get all over everything. TOTALLY worth it. 😀

Anti-Prop-8 rally in Sacramento: We drove up to the protest in Sac, and it was worthwhile, and a good time. Lots of people, everyone really positive and hopeful despite a shitty situation, and while I dunno what sort of effect, if any, it’d have (I suspect basically none), it felt good to be out there with a lot of other people who wanted justice, freedom, and equality. Couldn’t be a bad crowd.

That said, the organization was sort of lame – schedule said 1-4. There were basically 3 hours of mostly unintelligible speeches, and their PA system was garbage. Some good speakers, when you could hear ’em.

We ended up getting lunch, and *almost* missed the actual march. Still, a great way to spend a day, and one I’ll remember for a long time.

NaNoWriMo: Good grief, I’m behind. Between the elections last week, and a surprise ton of writing work for work, I’ve only managed about 7,800 words so far. That’s where I was on day TWO the last time I did this successfully. Still, I’m not giving up. I finished the writing work for work last Friday, and since the 360 died, I’ll have more time in the evenings. I didn’t get a whole lot written this weekend (1K), but I was pretty happy with it, so I suppose that’s alright. Gotta remember to basically write whatever I’m interested in at the time, rather than trying to maintain any sort of continuity – that method worked the first two times, but it was more out of luck than anything else.