So, I made it over to the gym on my own for the first time in a good long while, and did 20 minutes on the recumbent exercise bikes, while playing & listening to Lumines. Ended up picking a relatively consistent, high-resistance routine, and now my legs are trembling. Whee! Still, it felt good to have the time, and the slack to actually go to the gym, instead of sitting at my desk all day, stressed out of my mind.

Yesterday, did some upper body on the Total Gym at home, so that’s another plus. Whee-ha.

Now, if only I could get a real, honest-to-goodness solid night of sleep. That would be something.

First, Altoids’ sour hard candy cases were perfect for holding PSP games. Now, Altoids’ gum cannisters are exactly the perfect size to hold eight DS games. Coincidence? I’m beginning to doubt it.

Good lord, the last few weeks have been *punishing* at work. Whether it’s having to stick around ’till the build’s finished, which has basically ensured constant 12-14 hour days, or the fact that bugs are streaming in *constantly* still due to a really, really late rampup on QA, every day has just been a nonstop barrage of information, questions, work, issues, whatever. It’s like the time before E3, when I was doing three people’s jobs, each of which was different, except now it’s all compressed, and every fix is critical.

After the checkin window closed this afternoon, I fixed another bug, then just lied down on the floor outside my cube. A coworker walked by and told me there were ice cream treats in the freezer, so I walked over to the kitchen, and had the best ice cream sandwich I’ve ever had.

I just need a morning to sleep in, or an afternoon outside in the sun. I feel like I’ve been physically beat up every day for the last week. This is … lessee… not counting the day the car broke down, and I spent the day answering e-mail from home on the 3rd, … yeah. I haven’t had a day off all month.

Some context:

Ei-Nyung & I were talking about a friend’s blog, where we were discussing the damage spoilers can do. In the comments to that thread, someone posted a spoiler. My contention was that this person was an asshole to do so, Ei-Nyung wouldn’t apply that label, because in her perception, there was potential for misunderstanding – “pulling the pigtails of the one you love,” as she said someone else had put it.

That led to a pretty long discussion of what “being an asshole” really meant. To me, the posting of a spoiler that was being explicitly discussed in the thread is the very definition of what being an asshole is. The awareness of the person of the damage that they were doing is essentially irrelevant. Anyone who was even marginally literate could read the preceding discussion, and any reasonable person would have made a correlation between their actions, and the content of the discussion they had just read.

I guess there’s an implicit contract between people in my mind, that it is the responsibility of each of us to “read the room,” as it were, and behave accordingly. Failing to do so is a failure to uphold your end of our social bargain, and it makes you a jerk.

This applies not only to one-time interactions, such as the asshole who posted the spoiler, but also to a situation where you walk into a room, say, full of mourning people, and tell a fart joke. If you couldn’t divine from the context that people weren’t in the mood for a fart joke, or a fart joke wasn’t appropriate at that time, then *you are an asshole,* regardless of your lack of intent to be one, or to explicitly cause harm.

This particularly applies to a coworker of mine, and even some friends of mine. In the case of the coworker, I just think he’s an egomanical asshole, but in the case of my friends, they’re still *good people* at heart, but they can be *assholes* at the same time. I’m an asshole a good portion of the time, sometimes completely accidentally, sometimes quite explicitly, and purposefully. Sometimes I just don’t realize the significance or the consequence of the action, which in Ei-Nyung’s interpretation, would actually preclude the label, but I simply don’t agree with that. I think the thing to do is acknowledge *when* you’re being an asshole, and either work to change it, or realize what the ramifications are. Or embrace them, whatever.

To sum up – in my definition of what an asshole is, there isn’t the need for conscious malice – your actions dictate your status, not the intent. In Ei-Nyung’s, if you don’t have the *intent* you’re not an asshole. To me, I can only divine intent from actions, or a collection of actions. I guess it’s not just that actions speak louder than words – I think it’s that in certain cases, the actions make the words completely irrelevant.

Nivi’s blog had a bit on the difference between generating content, and communicating. My perception of the difference between the two was that content has some sort of worth independent of the creator, whereas communication’s worth is largely dependent on the messenger and/or the context. I’m sure there are all sorts of holes in that position (it was pulled more or less straight from my butt), but I think stuff like the last post makes it pretty clear to me that this blog isn’t about creating “content,” but rather, almost entirely about communication. Keeping in touch with people I wouldn’t otherwise necessarily be able to keep in touch with, time-wise, or otherwise. Every so often someone will mention that they read my blog, and I’ll be surprised that they even knew it existed.

I suppose it’s not particularly hard to find.

Generally, when poeple pay me compliments, I find it very hard to internalize what they mean without being quite paranoid about context, or subtext, or whether there are ulterior motives involved, or how truthful the person’s being.

As a result, I often undercut the compliment, in my mind, by figuring that it’s not likely truly *sincere*, but rather, laced with … something else. Anything from a desire to simply be courteous, to buttering me up for something else, or trying to compensate for something else, or whatever. Depends on the situation, but I find it very, very rare that I completely internalize a compliment of any sort without first making it so laden with caveats that its significance is all but stripped away.

Today, though, I got one of the most meaningful compliments of my entire professional career. One of the other designers on the game came by my cube, unsolicited, and said he’d had fun with the food system in the game, and had been playing around with it last night. Said he found the “ultimate” combination, for him, and now never deviates from it, but even that illuminated that the system works, because even though the ingredient unlock mechanic’s broken, his “ultimate” combination requires the most expensive items in the game to unlock.

He’s also the kind of person who I feel gives out unsolicited compliments rarely, and that he took his time to come over to my cube and tell me he had fun with something I designed was really, truly excellent. I’ve said I’m proud of the food system design, but this was the first time I really *felt* it. Maybe it was insignificant to him, maybe … whatever – but the fact that he said it was enough for me to believe him, and it definitely boosted my spirits.

But it’s strange – I’ve had people who have much more *personal* significance, who know me much better than this guy does, who I care about much more meaningfully and deeply say things that are much more heartfelt and … significant, and mentally, I almost always simply discount what they’re saying. Which, of course, is strange, because when *I* tell people that they’re awesome, I expect them to understand that I’m being sincere, since I never, ever tell people who aren’t awesome that they are. But still, as much as I can intellectually say that I should accept a compliment from someone close to me on its face, I simply can’t. Not that I have a choice in the matter, either – I simply can’t make myself *believe* what they’re saying, even if I’d trust them with my life.

It’s more or less always been like this, I think. Criticism is always sincere, harsh words are always substantive and meaningful, even when intellectually, I *know* that they’re not. Positive things, feedback, nice words, thoughtfulness is *always* insincere, not meaningful, in the service of an ulterior motive, even when I *know* they’re not. It’s as though something in my brain forces me to think the worst of myself, even when intellectually, I know certain things are simply not true. I don’t mean to say that I should believe all positive things said about me, or that my desire is to be a sucker who believes everything that’s said about them. But I wish I could see things honestly, and sometimes let something nice simply pass through unfiltered, and internalize that I *am* good at certain things, and that I do have certain strengths.

My dad (who sometimes reads this blog) often says really, truly wonderful things about me. Some of which I know are true, some of which I find impossible to believe. He also has a very *realistic* view of what I can and can’t do, when he actually sits down to tell me about things, and I think that often, he’s correct. (Sometimes, he’s also completely crazy and wrong, but I’m generally pretty good at making that particular judgement.) The thing is, that even when he says nice, considered, considerate things about me, I find it hard to really internalize, even though I trust his judgement on *so many things*. Similarly, every once in a blue, blue, blue moon, my mom says something incredibly touching. I still have a note from her that says, “I’m proud of you,” in my box of little personal notes I’ve kept over the years from various people. When I first got it, I burst into uncontrollable tears.

I still don’t really necessarily *believe* it, deep down – there’s always a part of me that feels the times that my parents are disappointed in me are significant, and the times they’re proud of me aren’t. The times I make mistakes are the things that people remember, and the successes are the thigns that people forget. I think if I could internalize some of the nicer things, I could have a better mental image of what sorts of thigns I’m genuinely capable of, and as a result, actually have a stronger picture of what my weaknesses actually *are*. Right now, I think I tend towards such insecurity and paranoia that I have a really skewed internal image of what I can trust myself to do and what I can’t – where the edge of the envelope is, as it were.

I dunno. I suppose I’m just sort of rambling right now – I certainly don’t feel like I have any serious conclusions to draw – that I can trust a compliment paid by a coworker whose opinion I value highly, but who has relatively low personal significance to me (in the grand scheme of things), but I can’t trust a compliment paid by my own father, whose opinions I value highly, and who knows me better than almost anyone else alive? Or, even, by my fiancee?

It’s strange – the little weird mental barrier I’ve built up, almost with the sole purpose of keeping me feeling like shit about myself. Why not listen to the nice things, and take them with a grain of salt, but at least *take them* instead of cutting them down in my mind to the point where they reinforce the bad qualities, and negate the good? I dunno. Can I will myself to believe the nice things people say?

“We all need mirrors to remind ourselves who we are. I’m no different.” (Leonard Shelby, in Memento)

After reading this post, 10 points to whoever gets the reference from the title and why.

Crunch mode is upon us. I’ve been busting ass over the last two weeks, trying to get the bugs out of the game, and tweak the food system to work properly. Saturday and Sunday were work days, and I expect that at least part of this Saturday and Sunday will be work days, as well (with the exception of some time spent at Great America this Saturday with Ei-Nyung’s work). The hours haven’t been insanely long, though, in part due to the commute, and in part due to actually going in on the weekends to knock the bug count down.

Still, even without really long hours, it’s been incredibly *intense* work. I ended up working on two of the more complicated, intertwined systems in the game – social interactions and food. While social interactions are reasonably straightforward, there were a *lot* of changes between this year and last – audio, camera, animation… lots of problematic areas. All in all, it’s actually not been too terrible, but still, it’s a system, and the bugs need to get worked out.

Food, on the other hand, interacts with so much stuff in such myriad ways, it’s *absurd*. I’ve been chasing a bug for *months* now, about people stealing food from other people, which leads invariably to a crash, when the person who had their food stolen tries to run a function on the food that’s no longer in their hand. Painful stuff, but I think I managed to lick it today.

The problem, as it’s always been, isn’t so much the work itself as the deluge of requests for information, verification, questions, need to ask others questions, etc. – because I’ve dealt with essentially these two major, yet almost totally disparate systems, and am the only remaining object engineer from last year, a lot of people end up asking me questions, or I need to deal with a lot of issues at any one time. Not to say that others don’t – not by a longshot. But I’m talking about my personal experience, and don’t mean to make it sound like I’m doing everything – I’m most certainly not.

But the point that I’m trying to get at is that every day is an intense barrage of information, from the moment I walk in the door until the moment I scramble out of the office. Literally nonstop for anywhere between 9 and 12 hours, and by the time I leave, I’m so mentally and physically fatigued that it’s almost impossible to get motivated to do anything at all in the evenings aside from just collapse into a tired, exhausted heap.

It feels genuinely weird, just because I’m so beat, yet I didn’t work like, a 14 hour day. Even on the “short” days, I feel like I spent the entire day getting punched in the brain.

Anyway – at most, there’s gonna be another week of pure intensity, then it should wind down into relatively relaxed mode, punctuated by bouts of extreme chaos. Those don’t tend to be so bad, all in all. I’m looking forward to that – I’m looking forward to a few moments to breathe, and relax, and actually feel rested and ready to go, instead of feeling like I’m constantly just trying to keep from being buried in an avalanche.

Oh – the good news – this year, my credit will be “Game Designer.” It was originally going to be a hybrid credit – “Game Designer/Object Engineer” – I feel like the second would be both more accurate, and what I *deserve*, because I designed *and* implemented a whole mess of features this year, and simply the design credit leaves out more than half of the work that I did. Still, I can’t complain too much. “Game Designer” is pretty much my Holy Grail of job titles, and when I managed to get hired at Maxis, I figured it would be at least three years before I’d even have a *shot* at the title. Now, less than two years later, I’ve got it.

The only thing sort of “more coveted” to me is the “lead designer” position, but frankly, I’m just not ready for it, to be perfectly frank – I need more experience. I’m not going to be the game design genius that makes all the right decisions right now. I feel like I know what I need to learn to *be* capable of fulfilling that role, but with the chaos and the responsibility of holding up some of the object engineering side, I simply didn’t get to pay as much attention to the details as I would have liked. Gimme another year, and I think I’d be ready to give it a go, though.

Anyway… yeah. To sleep, perchance to dream, then tomorrow, back to work.

So, our transmission died on the way to work today. Something went “crunch,” the engine spun way up, and we started slowing down. The moment this happened, I realized what was happening, and took stock of our surroundings. We were at the top of a hill just south of Jack London Square on 880, and I didn’t know *exactly* where the next exit was, but had a pretty good idea.

Immediately, a number of questions popped into mind – could we make it to the exit? Was it where I thought it was? Would it be better to pull over to the side and stop here, at the top of the hill, where we’re very visible? How ’bout at the bottom of the hill, where the shoulder is almost wide enough for a single car? Even if the exit is where I think it is, can we make it all the way there? The gas literally does *nothing*. If we make it, can we make it *out* of the exit lane, which is extremely short, but also extremely narrow? If I switch into a different gear (even in the auto) would it make a difference? Blinkers on. Anyone behind us? No one in front, so we don’t have to slow down.

It became instantly a game of strategy – inertia vs. safety – each moment a question as to whether we had enough momentum to get us to somewhere safer, or whether we were going to pass up a relatively safer spot, and get stuck somewhere more dangerous.

Fortunately, the exit *was* there. We had enough momentum to get completely off the freeway, and even though we rolled through a stop sign, enough momentum to even get us to a parking lot across the street from the exit.

When I put the car into “Park,” the transmission literally “crunched.” I hopped out, opened the hood, and lookd under the car. There was a leak, and the transmission was steaming. Nothing say, *smoking,* but something looked quite horribly awry. Still, not much to be done but call AAA, so Ei-Nyung called (she has the Gold level service), and twenty minutes later, the tow truck showed up.

When the guy attached the car to his truck and lifted it up, the Civic immediately dumped all its transmission fluid onto the parking lot. With the vaguely reddish transmission fluid pouring out, it looked distinctly like the car had been stabbed, and was bleeding to death.

We brought it back to the shop it had been serviced at yesterday (needed new front axles and CV joint boots), where the owner of the shop was apologetic, and promised that he’d get the car fixed up right by the afternoon. He was good to his word, and even though we were a little peeved that his company had screwed things up the first time, at least it was repaired quickly, and didn’t end up costing us anything. Hopefully nothing else was damaged as a result.

Ended up taking the bulk of the day off work, due to the lack of a working car, but in the afternoon, I took my mom’s car, and brought Mobius to the beach. That was one happy dog. Because no one else was around, I took him off the leash, and kept throwing his giant stick (3.5 ft. long) into the bay, and he kept chasing after it. Because the particular area we went to is relatively shallow, he didn’t do much swimming, but after an hour or so of running like a crazed beast into the bay, and doing a little swimming to get the stick when I threw it a bit farther, he ended up quite throughly pooped.

The rest of the day was spent answering work e-mail, and napping. In the evening, Ei-Nyung & I went to an Indian restaurant we’d never been to before. We’d intended to go to Cuvae, an Asian/American fusion restaurant that we’d been to once before and enjoyed, but they were closed today for upgrades. Hopefully not in a Bonaparte’s kind of way.

Instead, we went to the Indian restaurant that was across the street. Place was bustling, so we figured that must be a good sign. Prices were on the high side for Indian, but since it was so busy, we figured it’d be worth a shot. Got a Lamb Briyani, which was quite tasty – spicy without being overbearing, and with reasonably tender, flavorful meat. The garlic naan was quite good – the garlic wasn’t burnt, and the bread was perfectly done. The mango shake I got was tasty, and Ei-Nyung’s hot chai had a pleasant note of cardamom. The only issue was Ei-Nyung’s chicken curry, which had only white meat, but was definitely overcooked. The meat was dry, and bland, and the sauce on the whole just was sort of limp and lifeless. The individual flavor wasn’t terrible, by any means, it was simply underwhelming in almost every respect, and the dry chicken really brought the whole dish down.

It looked like they specialized more in the tandoori dishes, but we didn’t really get that vibe until well into the meal. We ended up with gulab jamin, which are those dough balls in honey sauce. They were appropriately spongy, and reasonably good, except for a strange overpowering butter flavor. Sounds strange, I know – and they weren’t *greasy,* it was just that the really strong flavor of butter, which was almost savory, overwhelmed the sweetness of the honey. Not quite the right balance of flavor.

Personally, I prefer Kerry House, which is one of those Indian restuarant/Irish pubs, and they win on three counts. Bolder flavor, better pricing, and they deliver. Still, not a bad meal, and a pleasant way to spend the evening. Certainly better than our lunch at Noah’s. First they forgot my sandwich, then they burned Ei-Nyung’s bagel, then they forgot my potato salad, and then when they re-made Ei-Nyung’s sandwich, they didn’t toast the bagel to any appreciable degree at all. Still sort of the standard flavors, I suppose, but all in all, a really unpleasant, uncoordinated service.

Ah, back to work tomorrow. After having worked my way down to zero bugs, I’ve now built up another day’s worth of bugs to work through, then I’m supposed to go in on the weekend to test, and to deal with the flood of bugs that are coming in, because they’ve apparently doubled the number of testers on the team. We’ve gotten a *lot* of really poor bugs already, I can only imagine what it’s going to be like dealing with another 50 green testers. Fun fun.

I *LOVE* testers, just to be clear – I love what they do, and find them immensely valuable. Without them, we’d be absolutely sunk. But it’s *really* frustrating to get bugs that are literally unintelligible, or bugs that are “suggstions” that are based on essentially no experience with the system. I don’t mind those “suggestion” bugs coming from the experienced testers, but when someone’s saying that some minor detail should be changed, and they don’t have any idea what they’re talking about, it can get frustrating. Still, I hope this weekend will be productive. While personally, I think I won’t have any trouble keeping at zero bugs at EOD for the rest of the week, I’m not actually sure (with the influx of new testers coming in so late) that we’ll hit 0 for our predicted beta date. We’ll see.

So, all dogs can swim. Just the way it is. Maybe barring some of the very large or very small dogs, but basically, most dogs can swim, they just need to be “motivated” to do so. For a couple months, we’ve been taking Mobius to the beach in Emeryville, where kite surfers launce their boards, and coaxing him into the water with little sticks, or by running into the bay with him. At first he was scared, but he quickly took to running around in knee-deep water (for him, chest deep, but whatever). Still, he never took that crucial step, and actually *swam*.

A couple weeks ago, we realized that he likes chasing, and fetching, *large* sticks. Three, four feet long sticks. He’s not so keen on shorter sticks or balls, but he loves running after large sticks.

So, today, we found a nice three foot stick on the beach, and I tossed it into the water. It’s a bit steeper into the water at the place we were today than where we normally go, so even modest throws would put the stick in water that would come up to his back. One time, I accidentally threw it a bit too far, and instead of waiting for it to float closer, he paddled out to get it. Just happened to be at *just* the right distance to make him actually swim. After a few shallower throws to give him some time to recover, I chucked it out a little ways, and out he swam, completely enthusiastic and fearless.

Awesome.

So, I picked up a pair of Puma Auto Mostros the other day (in the post below), and now that I’ve worn ’em around for a day, I’d just like to say they are *fantastic*. They look a little weird, definitely – when you’re wearing long pants, it really looks like you’re almost just wearing some sort of weird socks.

But they do a really good job of cushioning the feet, but still letting you feel *everything*. The sole’s really thin, and I suspect it’ll wear out reasonably quickly, given that the majority of the surface are just little nubs. Only a pair of reasonably large pads, under the heel and the ball of the foot, provide the kind of major contact points that will absorb the bulk of the wear. So, we’ll see how they hold up in the long run. But overall, I’d *highly* recommend trying a pair on, and walking around in ’em for a while. If you’re looking for minimalist shoes, these are *definitely* worth a look.

Also, been playing RE4 on the Gamecube – it’s a beautiful, extremely atmospheric game. Gory as hell at times, and almost always extremely tense. This is the only RE game I’ve made it this far through (almost 4/5 of the way done), because I’ve *hated* the controls and save structure in previous iterations of the game. In this game, the controls are pretty decent (occasionally clunky, but responsive for the most part), and there are enough save points that I’m rarely “stuck” looking for one when something else comes up. But mostly, it’s a beautiful game, the atmosphere is tense, and immersive, and all in all, a great little experience – highly recommended.

Picked up Battlefield 2 the other day, and was playing some at work. It’s also an extraordinary game, largely because the environments are so insanely detailed. I’ve never seen a game where you could walk into a bombed out city, walk up almost any building, snipe from the roofs, and basically just use such a dense environment to your liking. I really hope they bring it out for the X360, just because I’d love to see it via Live, and with more consistent performance. My work computer’s pretty beefy, but even it chokes with the settings jacked up.