Kind of strange. We were crunching towards the first playable version of The Urbz(tm), and I’d spent a couple pretty late nights last week making sure all of my stuff was gonna be done on time, with time to get all the bugs knocked down, etc. So, I’d been pretty stressed all last week, making sure everything would be ready, and such. So, it was. I’d actually succeeded in meeting all the deadlines I’d had, and I knocked down a fistful of bugs for other people, as well as kept my own bug count low.

The only stress I felt was weirdly different. Some people were staying late, working on their bugs, and features they hadn’t yet implemented. Some of them were really kicking ass, working on things much more complex, and finding problems because they relied on a lot of other people for features, and such. I’m not saying I was working harder than them – I’ve been really amazed at how dedicated everyone is – but the point was that I felt guilty for having my stuff done. I’d asked how I could help, but by and large, there wasn’t much people could give me to work on, given that they were most familiar with what they were doing, or it was something only one person could work on at a time.

So, I’ve gone home at a relatively normal hour the last couple days (making my workday 9:15-7, more or less), but I’ve had this strange guilty feeling – for what, for finishing on schedule? It’s strange.

Ei-Nyung bought me an iPod! It’s awesome! I’ve just finished DL’ing the 1300 songs I’ve got ripped (every single one legal, incidentally. Lots ‘o CD’s over the last what, fifteen years?). The inscription says “I’d buy you a monkey.”

It’s a reference to the night we got engaged – I was scrounging around for a song to play, since we’d felt a strange urge to dance. I doubt most people would be able to place the song without a couple extra lines. I think the next one is, “Haven’t you always wanted a monkey?”

It’s been six months to the day since we got engaged.

Finished The Chronicles of Riddick. It’s an amazing game in pretty much every respect. Phenomenal graphics (really, truly next generation stuff – I wouldn’t be surprised if this game’s graphics actually are better than Halo 2’s), great game design, and though there are a few relatively minor flaws, the overall game is absolutely stunning. If you’ve got an xbox, pick this one up, without hesitation. It comes out later in the year for the PC (I’m looking at you, K-M). Excellent stuff.

Eight hundred thousand dollars.

That’s what the house next door sold for.

Wowzers.

So, dang. My current job is easily the hardest job I’ve had yet. Why? The personal stakes are somewhat less than some of the previous jobs I’ve had. Working for my father, there’s obviously the stress of working for a relative, and there was a lot of money moving around on the decisions I made, at times. Working at Sega, I was basically one of three people that was responsible for the localization of Seaman, and since it was my first foray into the gaming industry, I really wanted to make a good impression. That, and I was working two other jobs at the time.

But working at Maxis is a combination of neverending deadlines, and sheer chaos. I think part of the issue is that I’ve never worked with so *many* people, and so much management. The management structure is really impressive, to be perfectly honest, and in a situation like this, entirely required to even marginally manage the number of things we have to do. But as a result of that, there’s something between eighty and a hundred and fifty or so people churning along at full speed all the time, and communications between the bunch leads to a *LOT* of action items. There are times where I think if I had three straight hours, of no meetings, and nobody coming by my cube and asking me to do something, I could easily complete everything that they *might* ask me to do. But everyone has to make time for the communication, as well, and that takes up a remarkable amount of time.

It’s not that I have too *much* work to do – to get right down to it, the problem is that I have too *many* things. I’m just not used to working in an environment where I’ll literally have twenty things queued up at a single time to do, and have people coming to me sporadically throughout the day with *more* stuff to finish. Even with a layer of production between me and the schedule, the assignments, and prioritizing/scheduling those for my own personal task list is more than I’ve ever had to deal with before. Definitely learning a lot, and keeping a LOT of balls in the air, which is good, but man, it can get *tiring*. By Friday, I’m usually dead tired, regardless of sleep, and … whew. It’s rough. But fulfilling, at the same time. Pretty neat to see something you basically coded from scratch doing something in-game. Be interesting to see how friends react to the game when it comes out. Yeah.

Dog found.

A kind gentleman from a house near my parents’ house called at 1am, and asked if we owned a white dog. Indeed, we do. Five minutes later, Mobius was home.

I burst into tears of relief and joy on the way there.

Glad to have him home.

The dog is missing. My mom left the door open when going out to do some gardening, and he got away. Since he was at my parents’ house, he’s not familiar with the neighborhood, and thus, had no reason to stick around. So off he went. That was at 1pm today. My mom was apparently too stupid to call me at work, so she left a message on my cell phone, which I didn’t get for five hours.

Five hours, running at a conservative 10 MPH, gives us oh, a 100 mile radius to potentially search? It’s likely less than that, let’s say, 1 mph in some direction. That’s on the order of ninety square miles that he could be in.

In about three hours this evening, I did my best to search 1/90th of that.

I suspect I will never see Mobius again.

Picked up The Black Eyed Peas’ Elephunk. Looking for some hip-hop that’s not negative, aggressive, misogynistic, etc. I like it well enough. Haven’t listened enough to get a real feel for it. Also got The Streets’ Original Pirate Material, and A Grand Don’t Come for Free. OPM is *way* better, in terms of just listening randomly, than A Grand… – the issue is that A Grand… is a concept album, where the songs tie together into a larger narrative. It’s neat, overall, but the music and lyrics aren’t nearly as creative as OPM’s.

w00t.

So, Ronald Reagan is dead. He’s pretty much the first president I remember, despite living through Carter, as well. Can’t remember much of my life before four, anyway. I remember him with some fondness – he had a way with words that few people have, and a disarming affability that made him seem like your friend. I was too young then to understand the difference between trickle-down economics and a progressive tax system, between conservatism and liberalism. I didn’t remember how he never talked about the AIDS epidemic, but I did remember how I felt about him after the Challenger disaster.

So I have mixed feelings about the man. I read a book my fiancee gave to me that was a compilation of Ronald’s love letters to Nancy Reagan, and they’re a window into the personal life of the man – a charming, relatively simple man who loved a woman with all his heart. It’s hard not to feel great sympathy for him, and for Nancy, given the condition of his later years. It’s more than hard – it would take a person with no heart at all.

But then, aside from his personal love to his wife, aside from the charisma and the charm, there’s the other things. Things like the Iran-Contra scandal, the Savings and Loan fiasco. His silence on the topic of AIDS, at a time when hundreds, thousands, maybe millions could have been saved had the United States acted faster, more boldly, and with greater vision. There’s the legacy of Trickle-down economics, of the modern conservative view that government is the problem, not part of the solution. All these things are his legacy – his policy, his personal life, and the lasting imprint he made on the country.

In some regard, I’m willing to cut him some slack – I believe perhaps he was naive, but sincere. He believed in what he was doing, even if I disagree with it. That alone, however, isn’t enough. Bush believes in what he’s doing, sincerely, but he is a truly, despicably evil man. Reagan at least had the head to temper his plans with a sense of pragmatism. He was never the radical extremist that Bush is, and he was never as divisive and hateful.

So, in some sense, I want to condemn the man for his political legacy. For this “modern conservatism” I find so fundamentally repugnant. I want to tell him to go to hell, and in text, I have, elsewhere. But part of me then feels sympathy for the man, for the life that Alzheimer’s took from him, and for the lost peace he might have had in his later years. Part of me feels grateful that he was able, despite his policies, and the actions of his administration, for the optimism that he brought to the leadership of the country. The leadership at least built on words of hope, rather than fear. Maybe I’m too young to remember the rhetoric of the Cold War, is all. I don’t know.

My feelings are mixed, I suppose – it would be too easy to simply label it as hatred for his legacy, but sympathy for the man. A public figure like the President leaves an indelible imprint on the nation, and with his passing, perhaps what you take from him is what his legacy ultimately is. I suppose then I would rather have hope, than hate – rather than the shortsighted evil of modern conservatism, the optimistic hope of an eloquent man, one who could bring the nation together, and make it believe the world could be a better place.

Weird. I’m here at my office desk, at 8:13. Been here since 10 this morning, and for some reason, I feel completely media-saturated. Not unlike the third day of E3. Just too much light, sound, etc. Maybe ’cause I was up late last night reading (The Rule of Four, a “historical literature thriller,” sort of in the vein of The DaVinci Code, but I don’t think the comparison is completely apt). I dunno, otherwise. Work’s been pretty stressful (deadline coming up Wed.), but I don’t think that’s it. I dunno. Still. Feel like there’s a disco in my head, or something, that I can only see the residual flashes of light from. Weird.