NPD Fanboy Awards - November.

NPD sales are out for November. For those who want a sane analysis, I'll share the summary.

PS3 sold really well. This is really good for our industry.
360 sold even "really weller." This is really good for our industry.
Wii sold well. End sentence.

NPD time is like fanboy catnip, though, so it is time for me to troll the internet looking for how the die-hard, single console "lifers" interpret the information. Here we go!

All posts from N4G.com...the single greatest depository of inane fanboyism on the internet. Be warned, logic is not a pre-requisite to get an account:

Orakga wins the "Conspiracy Theory" Award:

"1.19 - Come on guys... 600,000-ish 360 banned during the week of MW2's launch.

Let's say half of them bought new 360s (and chances are more than half bought a new machine); that's 300,000 360s they re-sold to existing 360 users. Subtract that 300k from the 360 number and you have 500k for 360 vs 700k for PS3.

I suspect Microsoft was saving this trick up its sleeve this whole year, knowing that it'd give a massive sales boost to its hardware..."

Sparta76 gets the runner up prize for "Conspiracy":

"1.37 - Hey guys u forgetting

60g 360 for 199
600,000+ banned from live( that alone shot the arcade to #1 on amazon)
and bestbuy was selling refurb arcade for 99
sooooo don't expect the same out come next month....
Not that any of these things are bad, m-soft knew they where in trouble and did what they had to do. "

Sikbeta wins my spelling award with:

.47 - ...

You guys are SO funny, you see only what you want to see

·You see a M$ victory here, but you can't see the wii still selling better than the others, so where is the victory?

·You see that xbox sold better and it never come to your mind that "maybe" is because is more CHEAP than the PS3, people that want gaming but don't have enough money, still have more choices, yes guys, in the REAL WORLD people aren't damned fanboys that only want ONE console, they can choose

·You don't see MW2 (aka the best seller game of the year) bundle not helped in teh sales, look what is your best seller game and you'll see the answer by yourselves

·You don't see that +600000 xbox owners were banned and they could buy another one, they don't going to quit for a banned console

You just don't see... "

Armogangsta wins my "denial" award:

9 - so this doesnt count amazon at walmart.....

judging the success ps3 had on amazon and when i went to walmart during black friday and ps3's were flying out the shelves.... i feel like these numbers would be a tad bit different.....

How about Osirrus and his "gloom for MS" award:

"25 - MS better sale more if its gonna win this christmas. 100k in the US Won't cut it World Wide! Price cut maybe?"

"On that" note, the "bu.bu.bu.wait until next month" award goes to Jigga69 (classy):

"7 - Funny how 360 fanboys

never knows how it works. If you think that PS3 won't outshine 360 this december, a bad surprise is coming.
Modern Warfare effect NOV. "

I don't talk Europe and Japan of course we know 360 lose

Finally, my award for "best spin" goes to:

5.1 - I believe microsoft said that the effect of the PS3 price drop wouldn't last

They completely blew that call since the PS3 is still selling way above last year and haven't slowed down at all, not including the first week price drop blow out sales, no way to keep that kind of sales pace :) On the other hand the XBox price cut only managed to give them numbers around the same as last year.

Thanks everyone...until next month!

Random images from ATG...

So many stories to tell about the good'ol "Advanced Technology Group." And tonight I will share none of them. Instead, here's a few (horrible quality) shots of some random times from a company that no longer exists.

Ever wonder what happens when there is one, and only one impossible system-level audio bug that is keeping a multi-million dollar game from submitting? The answer is in this picture, where the one programmer with the expertise works tirelessly at his computer, while half a dozen high-powered engineers and production staff literally sit behind him to make him feel uncomfortable.

Not another one, you say! Actually, this is sort of the "good" antithesis of the previous image, where one senior engineer is giving a lesson to some new guys on the intricacies of profiling on 360 versus PS3.

A shot of the "dock", our open-air programmer workplace "funtacular." For those wondering, those pictures of teen sensation "Cody" and the gang are mine...I inherited them from our previous tech director. I, of course, actually pasted those on his wall back when that was his desk...which I later inherited. Karma.


Tip to future interns: Don't go on vacation for a week, or else this will be what your desk will look like when you return.

Finally, a random picture from a work lunch, where the gang discovered the World's largest piece of Indian food.

The December Ritual...

December marks the time for my yearly ritual known as "re-install Windows." Why, you ask, do I have to reinstall my operating system every year? The answer, if you will calm down for a moment and let me finish, is simple. Remember that new fancy computer your built? Remember how blazing fast it was for the first hour? OK, now think of all the programs you've installed and uninstalled, all the registry changes, the millions of temporary files that have come and gone, the hundreds of pieces of spyware you downloaded and purged, the gigabytes of files you've moved around, fragmenting your hard drive to bits, and the various installations that have failed, leaving a trace memory of themselves in the form of "random crashes". These things destroy that poor computer.

Sure, like the rest of you, I do my best (in the beginning) to maintain my computer. A regiment of defragging, anti-virus, file organization, anti-spyware, firewalls and the like stave off problems for a few days. A week in, however, you notice that your WOW fps has dropped from 60 to 58...then to 52...then 47....then 26...then 11. The reason for this is simple:

• The Windows internal defrag tool works by moving your files around in an orderly pattern. It then randomly deletes 15 entries from your file partition and replaces them with viruses..."just for funs."
• Press ctrl+alt+del and you will notice that "system idle" is eating up a ton of your processer time. While some might lead you to believe this is because the computer is doing nothing and thus there is "idle" time, in truth I believe this is an app that is constantly running a countdown which informs Windows to permanently suck up 1% of your processor time every 3 days. This means that on day 1 your 2Gigaherz processor is running at 2Gigaherz, and by day 300 it is running at 0 Gigaherz. This cannot be recovered until Windows is re-installed.
• Upon every bootup, windows inserts 4 programs, randomly selected from it's internal "most inefficient code ever written" database, and permanently adds them to your startup files.
• Upon startup, windows executes the following block of code:

if (userLogin == LoginNameForAuthorOfJabroniReport) setWindowsSpeed = UltraSlow;

I ran a time test of Photoshop on my current dual-core machine (yes, just a dual core), versus my control machine, a Commodore 64 with the 1541 floppy drive. It turns out, in terms of image editing, it is faster for me to program a C64 version of Photoshop, from scratch, on a platform that is physically incapable of running Photoshop, then run the progam off of 10s of thousands of disks than it is for me to boot the program on my Windows machine.

The process of a fresh OS install takes me weeks. I have to comb half a dozen hard drives to find the "good" files, back them up, then double check to make sure I didn't lose something vital. I then need to find and document all the programs I own...many of which I don't even remember needing until it is that ONE time a year I need it (hello FlashFXP). Then I have to format and install Windows. Then the process of installing all my programs, some of which, such as Visual Studio, will literally take until next December to finish installing. Finally, I need to setup all my shares to work with Xbox Media Center...which I'm convinced is a process that can only be achieved by using a combination of luck, skill, and a form of Caribbean Voodooism that hasn't been practiced since Colonial times.

Let the fun begin!

Time talk about "that" other blog...

I was putting together my Christmas list, and I remembered a toy from my youth I wanted called "The Revenger." So I stuck the name in Google and x-entertainment came up with the link.

The Revenger

This leads to the deep dark secret of this Blog...the author of X-Entertainment is my Doppelganger. He is my long lost brother. He is my nemesis. He wanted everything I ever wanted, tries everything I want to try, and in general is my much cooler Blog brother and BlogMate. I've been avoiding throwing you the link because, deep down, I know I'll never see you again. I've also been hoping to plagiarize his stuff when I'm out of content. But since that cat is out of the bag, I highly recommend checking out his link of awesomeness. Please, don't give up on me, though, because someday I will have something cool to share and damn it, at that point, you'll feel pretty darned bad you left.

This link to x-entertainment pretty much speaks to my soul in a way nothing else ever has...and it consumes me that he is on the cutting-edge of journalism while I stand in his shadows.

What I want to do with my life

Seriously, be honest folks, for those who know me, doesn't the following sound like me...but just somehow better.

"Collecting old cans and bottles of soda, preferably full, is one of the things about me that I try to hide from those closest. It's a shameful hobby, I admit, but it's not my fault God wired me in such a way that I cannot live without two sealed cans of Surge serving as bookends for six or seven really light books. Because sodas obviously grow rare when they're discontinued, they aren't exactly the cheapest thing to collect. So, let's try to squeeze an article out of them to justify the fact that I can't afford new soda because I bought too much ten-year-old soda."

Present Time Again...

It is Thanksgiving, which as we all know, means it is time to sit down and clean out the Amazon wishlist to ensure that people have the opportunity to shower me with the gifts I demand. As such, I present my Christmas List 2009. If you know me, you'll be able to search for my wishlist by my personal email address, if you don't, here's some highlights. I'm including this just to give my readers some insight into my awesomeness-level. Not featured are a new desktop, a tablet-pc for better note taking at work, a pony, and a million other things.

Items not featured are what I call the "hall of lost dreams presents", where the presents of my crushed childhood fantasies live. On that list, in addition to the Robot featured elsewhere in my blog, is my N.E.S. featuring ROB, my Millenium falcon and AT/AT walker, my Jabba the Hut playset, and a host of other 80's fantasies that leave a hole in my heart.

Please note, if you are purchasing gifts for me, please remember that my happiness depends entirely on receiving every single item on my wishlist, in addition to a number of thoughtful gifts you have purchased on your own.

Also, we should do a secret Santa at work.

Also, also...it is late, and I don't feel like formatting this list. Deal with it.

• Return to Treasure Island [PAL] - Miniseries of my youth.
• No, I don't own it yet.
• e-cigarrete starter kit. I like new things. Also, smoking is cool, but Katie yells at me. This solves all my problems in the world.
  
• Electronic football
• The worlds great fair DVD
• The Atlantis Blueprint
• Does anyone REALLY believe I'll make it all the way to Christmas on this one? Anyone?
  
• Drood: A novel
• A cook's tour...See my Tony post.
• Mall Madness...because Katie made me take "Dream Date" off my list.
• Game Engine Architecture...from the fine folks at Naughty Dog.
• Warmly Inscribed...A meta-book about books
  
• City of the Dead.
  
• Beck: Common Sense
  
• Madded NFL 10 (SO late this year)
• Xbox 360 12 month Live Gold Card...because I'm curious about this "online" thing.
• An Inconvenient Book: Real Solutions to the World's Biggest Problems
  
• Arkham Horror
• Borderlands
• Just checking if you are still reading...or am I...(I am)
  
• The Road...for I feel I should own at least one Oprah book.
• Not sure how I missed this one.
  
• Pygmy, by Chuck Palahniuk

And it goes political again...

"Feds Mull Rules, Fees to Spur Net Acces"

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125850641299752981.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsSecond

I have written and deleted about 10 pages worth of text/rant on this subject...but to avoid pushing my views on impressionable young readers, I opted to simply post the link and allow you to reach your own conclusions.

Literally the last thing I would want to do is "put myself out there" by advocating for a political-economic viewpoint that may be...less than popular...in an industry dominated by 20-somethingers. As such, I will do what I always do and keep my opinions to myself.

Unrelated image I found on the internet:

On critiquing someone else's blog...

I stumbled across the article on the information superhighway entitled "Fanboys: 8 reasons why they deserve some respect."

http://www.gamesradar.com/f/fanboys-8-reasons-why-they-deserve-some-respect/a-2009111712333308004

For my less savvy reasons, a "fanboy" is defined (at least by me), as an internet poster who blindly defends his or her (his) console of choice with complete disregard for any and all common sense.

A PS3 fanboy would respond to the article "Call of Duty sells 2 million units on 360 and 1 million units on PS3" by saying "Well, D'uh...we're so busy playing PS3 exclusives we don't have time for 'crappy' multiplatform games like Call of Duty." They would then respond to the article "Activision shows PS3 leading Q1 profits over 360" by saying, "just goes to show that PS3 gamers love a quality multiplatform release like Call of Duty 2."

This is a horrible example...but I find the whole concept maddening. Note, this does not apply to the other definition of "fanboys", who rabidly and unconditionally love a product and buy everything the creators produce...I LOVE those fanboys. Love.

So...I'd like to put together a thoughtful and reasoned debate to the headings for the blog post I mentioned earlier in this post. Enjoy, dear reader, my detailed counter arguments to the 9 reasons why fanboys deserve respect:

Article Point 1: They're passionate about something they love and since when was that a bad thing?

Rebuttal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks

Article Point 2: The internet would be 62% less entertaining without them

Rebuttal: 62% of 0 is...anyone?

Article Point 3:They persistently make noise about actual, real issues that are important

Rebuttal: No. No they don't.

Article Point 4:Without them, there would be no one else to keep the spirit of old, long dead consoles burning so brightly

Rebuttal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Jaguar

Article Point 5: They pay attention to all the boring slides at E3 press conferences

Rebuttal: I like slides.

Article Point 6: Game communities would fade away faster without fanboys

Rebuttal: I disagree.

Article Point 7: Fanboys love it hardcore

Rebuttal: I don't know what this means, nor did I read the actual text of this article. Therefore, the argument is null and void.

Article Point 8: Let's face it - there's a little bit of fanboy in all of us

Rebuttal: On the other hand, did you think of the fact that we don't? Also, no.

As you can see, I have definitively proven my case, although with my superior argumentative skills and mastery of the language, it was hardly a fair fight.

On playing Wow with your co-workers

I was reminiscing with Ivan this evening on the awesome "early days" where we created a WOW guild made entirely of co-workers. It was my intention to blog some stories about those wonderful days of co-operation filled with promises (broken), dreams (shattered), and Bizdeath (the first to leave). That said, I seem to have lost my screenshots from our first guild, so I'm going to have to settle for a later time when some of us all joined a larger guild together. I chose this shot because it shows a) how fun and awesome we are as a team and b) how my DPS was the highest...having nothing to do with the fact that I was the only caster in the "work crowd" on a fight built for casters.


So, pictured in this pre-Ulduar Kel Thuzad 25 man attempt are:

• Shadowbaron: Your trusted author, a warlock.
• MPAA: Ivan, the ret pally, programmer extraordinaire on such excellent pieces of tech such as SPUticles.
• Negraluz: Ramon, the priest, programmer extraordinaire on such excellent pieces of tech such as "I shipped Blitz when I was just an intern."
• Thorhald: Josh, the Death Knight, and a cinematic artist tour de force.
  
• Not pictured: Other guild members/co-workers who hated hard core raiding: Tom, Kyle, Dan, Eric, Gavin, James.

Note to my colleagues: FIND ME PICTURES from Shush Bugs!

On hurtful things...

This evening I was going over my career plans with Katie, which for those who haven't heard the story, are as follows:

• Release 4 more video games, each with a Metacritic score in the mid to high 90s.
  
• Make my fortune in one of my side schemes in a manner that would allow the media to refer to me as the baron. For instance, crepebaron or robotpinwheelbaron.
• On the day of my retirement, be recruited in the CIA as Deputy Director. I'm not really interested in much below the rank of deputy director, which is why I assume I was recruited for this position, having no discernible skills that would qualify me for this role.
• Rise to directorship of the largest clandestine organization in the history of the world within six months.
• In a freak attack that wipes out most of Washington and the entire line of succession to the presidency, be sworn in as President of the United States.
  
• After completing my two terms plus in what is considered by historians to be "a deft mix of accomplishments greater than Julius Ceaser, Alexander the Great, all the founding fathers and the musical styling of The Who", convince Congress not to change the constitution to make me the permanent leader of the country.

Out of this, Katie informs me that she isn't sure why the CIA recruits me, because "I'm not exactly in the NFL." This hurts me on several fronts:

• After becoming president I was planning on becoming the QB and left tackle for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
• Apparently this was the flaw in my career plan.
• Also apparently, this has some sort of a hidden message on my physical fitness.

Unrelated: Running starts tomorrow.
Unrelated 2: Watch Patriot Games tonight.

A friendship forms from the unlikeliest of beginnings...

I'm a member of the select "Chicago Theater Insider Club", which gives me super-secret early access to tickets at the venue. We will conveniently ignore the fact that my membership in this exclusive inner-circle of the arts was secured when I clicked a link on their website for a moment while I gush over the offer I received.

Anthony Bourdain, the patron saint of men who love food, will be coming to Chicago April 24 to regail me, personally, with stories.

"Chef, author of Kitchen Confidential and host of The Travel Channel's "No Reservations," Anthony Bourdain has been dubbed "the bad boy of cuisine" for his rock star look and blunt observations about the world of restaurants, chefs and cooking. He will bring his stories to the stage of the Chicago Theatre for special one night engagement Saturday, April 24 2010."

While that is all the detail I have at the moment, I can safely assume that the event will go as follows:

• The crows arrives at the Chicago theater.
• Tony says something witty.
• Tony selects me and Katie from the audience, then ends the show.
• We go back to my apartment, where we prepare a meal together. He notes that my dishes are, and I quote "the single best thing he has ever tasted in his life."
  
• Tony and I fast become best friends.

And the day has come...

It was a running joke about a decade ago when Blogs were actually popular that everyone had a political blog to espouse their crack-pot views on American Politics. As you remember, when I created this Blog, I did so with a charter I called "Contract With My Readers", wherein I promised to never include any sort of political commentary. Today, in true political form, I break that contract to draw some key lessons from software project management and attempt to apply them to the political process.

Budgeting:

Video games are enormous projects fraught with pitfalls and unknowns. Similarly, government plans are enormous projects fraught with pitfalls and unknowns. At the start of any new game, or piece of of legislation, one of the primary questions a team has to ask is "how much is this thing going to cost." Both governments (or the CBO) and game producers then dig into their team's collective experience and try to come up with an estimate for the cost.

The difference? Any game producer with a modicum of sanity is going to utilize a conservative (in the fiscal, not party sense) estimate, more in line with the "worst case." The goal is to come up with a realistic expectation that errs on the side of caution. Going over budget is (or at least should be) career suicide for a producer, or at the very least proof-positive that the producer failed and was not conservative enough in their estimate.

The government side? Not so much. Looking at historic accounting for virtually every major government program has shown massive under-forecasting of the costs. Of course, even with the non-partisan nature of the CBO, it has been shown that their "accepted practice" is not to give "worst case" estimates, but to try and hit the nail right on the head under expected conditions, something that never happens in the real world.

Common Sense Producers Solution: ALL bills should be required to have a "worst case" cost estimate along with the current estimate from the CBO. This estimate will cover what happens when everything bad that can go wrong does...because any experienced producer can tell you...it does. The problem with this is that the CBO is going to come back with worst case scenarios that will "scare" Americans away from supporting legislation, and no politician who likes his or her job could sign. Guess what? That's good! Because it'll then force the politicians to write legislation that actually takes into account the worst-case scenarios.

Risks:

In a similar fashion to the above budgeting issues, all good producers are constantly maintaining a list of the "top risks" both before and during a project. These are fairly simple in format; They contain a description of the risk (Not enough Online Programmers), as well as a couple of ways that the team will mitigate the risk (Start hiring process, begin training an internal candidate, cut online features, etc...).

Common Sense Producers Solution: EVERY bill the government creates should have this section. It not only shows that the authors have thought about the risks and considered them, but have also created contingency plans and trigger points when the risks explode (which, again, they always do).

Reporting:

Ahhh, the bane of every producer's existence. We spend a lot of time writing reports. A lot. Why then, if they are the bane of our collective existence, do we keep doing them? Because, frankly, they are important. Amongst other benefits, they provide a summary of problems and progress to the people who need to know. A studio head doesn't have time to wade through the minutia of status updates from hundreds of employees...they just need an overview of the progress and any risks or issues they need to be on top of.

Status rep0rts also force us to take the time to translate the technical mumbo jumbo in each discipline into language normal human beings can understand. When a programmer tells an artist that "he's ported the asynchronous animation blending code to the SPUs" it is most likely of little value to the artist. When a status report comes across his desk that says "Gavin's SPU animation system now means you can include 10 times as many animated characters in a scene", suddenly the value is immense. Can you imagine if all our bills had plain-language status reports, not only telling us what is in the bill, but "how it is going" now that it is enacted?

Common Sense Producers Solution: I have to do damn status reports EVERY WEEK OF MY LIFE. The least our government representatives can do is take some of the money that I give them and pay a junior staffer to do the same thing ONCE A QUARTER.

That's it. Nothing funny. Next week, amidst the usual banter, please check out my proposal to fix Social Security. For reals. Seriously...the last thing the internet should have done is given me a blog.

An H1N1 guide for employees

I've spent most of my weekend researching this thing they call "H1N1", which is the re-branded "swine flu" in what may be the worst name change in the history of advertising. Swine flu sounds menacing, and dirty, as the name implies, while H1N1 sounds more like some sort of a tax credit I might be interested in pursuing. If Washington wants to figure out why people seem less concerned about getting the vaccine than they'd like, I'd recommend they talk to the guy who thought the name change was a good idea. Call it the "Black Death" and watch people run to their doctor, hundred dollar bills in hands.

That said, while the media hype might be a little extreme, there are definitely some good ideas of ways to keep yourself healthy with this "black death" floating around (see how that worked). I went to the CDC website and captured the highlights from "caring for those with H1N1" and re-pasted them here for people to review.

• Stay home. A good rule of thumb is that if you so much as think that your temperature might not be _exactly_ 98.6 degrees, you are probably about to die of H1N1.
• But how long should I stay home? Well, it has been shown that it is "safe" to return to work 24 hours "after a fever has subsided." My own research shows that "subsided" means "no longer been present for at least 10 days." Go ahead and do one of those Sesame Street gags where they slowly put two segments of a word together and you'll get the joke.
• There are only four approved movies on the "caring for those with H1N1" list; Iron Eagle, Red Dawn, Point Break and Escape from Los Angeles. Ensure that these films are all on repeat at all times.
• Playing WOW is not advised, since you will most likely be left out of your 10 man hard mode attempt because some other freakin' warlock does like 10 more dps than you, even though he will most likely step in the red/blue/green slime EVERY single time and cause the healers way more stress than you ever would. (This may be a little off topic).
  
• The sick person should, under no circumstances, ever be required to leave the couch. You shouldn't need to ask them what they want, it is vital that you anticipate what they may want. Is it getting to be lunch time? If so, go to the sick person's favorite restaurants and order all the food that they may like from each of them so they have a selection to pick from.
• Speaking of food, the CDC notes the following items as the only approved food for those with swine flu; Things that are fried and contain pork, food in sandwich form, alcoholic or highly caffeinated beverages, and food that consists of three or more foods integrated into one...a beer-battered pork sandwich seems to be the safest bet to fulfilling all the requirements. I know this may seem unhealthy, but this is what the scientists at the CDC say, and who are we to argue with science?
• While the person is sick, please use this as an opportunity to take care of whatever stresses you may think they have in their lives. Stress has been shown to slow the healing process, so while you are caring with a person with H1N1, you should make a list of whatever may be bothering the sick person and take care of those things. Pay the taxes of this person. Do they have tests coming up for school or a big project at work? Finish it for them. Pay off their car/home mortgages. Do whatever it takes. Their life could depend upon it.
• Anyone who gets H1N1 is probably going to die, so go ahead and start on their legacy. At the first sign of a cough, you should make sure their living will is ready and that their affairs are in order. Ask them to pick out their favorite cemetery if they haven't already, because they will most likely be there in a matter of hours.
  

Interns...what'cha really want.

In these trying economic times, organizations might be inclined to cut-back on the less-experienced members of their workforce. In particular, interns might seem like a good area for cost-savings. The purpose if this post is to give you an idea of some of the added value you can get from having interns above and beyond the day-to-day traditional responsibilities.

• Arrange desks to form a “pit” from which no intern can escape. Place a crisp ten dollar bill in the middle of the “pit”, along with two blunt weapons of combat.
• Have interns farm WOW gold for you at night. The cost-savings of keeping senior staff from doing this during the day can be monumental.
• Do you read this blog? Which seems more realistic to you, that I actually sit down and think of these posts or that I have an army of interns write this amazing content each day?
• As strange as it may sound, we don’t actually keep a traditional battering ram at the office to deal with the times that someone locks themselves out of their offices. Sure, we could go ask for a copy of the key, I guess, or we could grab four strong guys and an intern.
• Sometimes the copy machine breaks, or it is really far away. During these times, I ask the interns to handwrite 50 copies of a document using a quill and ink. I also typically have them create a fresh batch of vellum for each copy.
• Fire interns unless they start tax-exempt charities with which to funnel fake employee donations to reduce tax liability, then call the IRS to inform them of what they are doing.
• Not everyone knows this, but we perform blood test before hiring our interns to ensure they provide suitable donor matches in the event we need organs. I’ve already taken a liver and two kidneys from Skittles.
• Hate meetings? We don’t, because we send interns as proxys. When we were our former company, the board of directors literally hadn’t seen each other in six years because everyone kept sending intern proxies. You can then fire the interns when the company goes bankrupt and thus save the golden parachute for the people who truly deserve it.
• Speaking of proxys, we also send interns as proxy dates to all romantic comedies with our significant others. Skittles, for instance, went to go see “The Proposal” with Katie while I sat in another theater enjoying “The Hangover.” The intern will then be forced to go have coffee with our loved ones and talk about “feelings” for several hours, and we sweep back in at the end of the night, getting full credit for being the perfect man.
• Interns taste all of our food before we eat it on the off-chance it is poisoned. We also introduce some poison in the bites they taste to ensure none of them are cheating and not eating the food they are supposed to.

+10 DKP to Chicago

My love for any given city is always directly proportional to the sandwiches available to the populace. Chicago was definitely growing in stature thanks to Mark's discovery of the Cemitas (see future blog), but the Sandwich truest to my heart, the sandwich of my childhood, belongs to Pittsburgh's Primanti Brothers:

http://www.primantibrothers.com/

It is a Pittsburgh staple...a sandwich piled with hot, grilled Capicola, melted provolone, seasoned (read: not mayo) cole slaw and french fries. I make trips to Pittsburgh for this sandwich (I really do).

Shaun then informs me that there is a virtual carbon-copy of this sandwich available at Luckys on Clark street. This sandwich turns out to be a mere three blocks from my house. THREE BLOCKS. I called Katie to inform her that this will be the only place we will be eating at for the remainder of our time in Chicago...no matter how many years we live here.

I will say that I need to have a talk with the proprieters to discuss their fries->slaw ratio, which should be 1 part to 3 and is instead reversed, but once that minor setback is resolved it will be a near perfect facscimile of the greatest sandwich ever made, and enough reason for my to press-on through the harsh Chicanadian winter that is coming.

The best card ever...

Those who know me know me as "a man who loves things with googly eyes." As such, you can imagine my glee over the following birthday card:

The $21 Sandwich

After discovering the existence of a $19 lobster club sandwich at Fox and Obel I've become a little obsessed with it. First, I love shell fish. Second, I love sandwiches. Third, I love overpriced things that I shouldn't have. As such, Katie allowed me to indulge my fantasy and eat this mythical creation.

Fox & Obel

Downtown Chicago has a little gourmet grocery store called "Fox and Obel." I love this place so much I had to put it on my birthday agenda. Pictures for your enjoyment (note, there is nothing funny in this post...deal with it).

"Boutique Drinks", my reason for living.

Dinosaurs and Pirates...

So, for my Birthday, I discovered that Chicago's Field Museum has exhibits on both Dinosaurs AND Pirates. I'm not kidding. Dinosaurs. Pirates. Same Museum. As such, we went to explore this perfect blending of two things that I've loved since before they were cool. I took a dinosaur class as a child, and I, to this day, plan to spend my retirement purchasing a rowboat and searching for pirate treasure.

So...Chicago does this really cool things with its Museums where they have a "free day", where admission is...you guessed it...free. Here's a tip, don't try to go to the Pirate exhibition on a free day. Much like the penguin exhibit that will ALWAYS be closed at the zoo the day I go...the Pirates exhibit was sold out.

That said, the museum is downright amazing. It is housed in the last surviving building from the World's Fair and it is enormous and awesome. See pictures for flavor (and DINOSAURS).

A real-life Dinosaur. I hope to have one of these in my library someday (seriously, I do).

Another candidate for my library.

A trip to Egypt.

A wall of ducks! I love ducks!

This penguin exhibit never closes. Because they are dead.

Your author "hanging" at some sort of replica Tahitian market stand.A Tahitian market...indoors!

Proof that Egyptians used Alien technology. Not sure how the curators missed this.

A shot from the interior of a section of my to-be-built library