… that seems to be more or less my job description the last few days. Very small amounts of critical action, but otherwise, simply waiting for the time when that action is needed.

I need to figure out something to do, or I’m going to start to get very, very bored.

EA is doing 2:1 matching on all employee donations to relief efforts along the gulf coast. I can’t even begin to comprehend what it must be like, there, even after reading all sorts of horror stories. I’ve donated for most of the major disasters in the last few years, but this… as horrible as 9/11 was, and as shocking as it was because it was consciously inflicted, this disaster is orders of magnitude worse for the country, and its repercussions will be felt for years, if not decades, to come.

I wish I could say that I had confidence that our government were up to the task, but they’re clearly not. FEMA is completely directionless, and the Bush administration has once again completely fallen on its face. I hope Red Cross and other humanitarian groups, as well as volunteers can pick up the slack, and that there’s a full accounting of all the things that went completely wrong.

Not much I can say, other than I hope any money that I donate helps, thanks to EA for generously amplifying our contributions, and my thoughts and hopes are with the victims of this disaster.

So, I was reading some articles today about how funding was cut for the levees in New Orleans due to the massive expense of the war in Iraq, and it got me thinking about 9/11, and how essentially, there is a massive fault in our collective feedback loop.

For *this* President to care about something, it has to affect him personally, either by hurting his allies, or hurting him politically. The problem is that in essence, the President *gains* from massive tragedy – after 9/11, his poll results went through the roof. He’ll undoubtedly be able to leverage this tragedy for political gain as well.

The problem is that essentially, the general public doesn’t care that preventative measures weren’t take, because as a whole, individuals find it hard to believe that these were known potential threats. Since *I* couldn’t have predicted 9/11, it took some time to internalize that our *government* as an organization *did*. Similarly, though the President has said that he didn’t think anyone could have anticipated the levees not holding up, many people did.

The issue, though, is that people seem content to hold the President and his administration to the same standards as some random idiot off the street.

This creates a problematic feedback loop, because essentially, the President is *praised* for massive governmental failures by increased polling numbers, while incurring *no punishment* for massive failures that *led* to the occurrence in question. Not only that, but had he *not* cut the budget for the levees, he’d have incurred *penalties* for overspending (well, even more overspending). In essence, had he taken action to prevent tragedy, he’d have lost in two ways. By taking no action, he wins. This, of course, discounts the tremendous human suffering involved, but I expect that in Bush’s calculations, that doesn’t factor in at all.

I’m not saying that this is a conscious conspiracy – I’m saying that we’re missing a feedback loop to govern this particular behaviour. It’s like training a dog. You praise it when it’s good, you punish it when it’s bad, and it learns to be good through positive feedback.

We’re giving the President positive feedback every time tragedy occurs. There’s simply no incentive for him to do anything to prevent it.

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.