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

HR Foils Me Again!

So...HR sends out a nice little email each week for all the people in our company that have birthdays. It is one of those cute things that HR does that the rest of us never think of until it is our Birthday. This is why I excitedly "tore open" my email today to check out the company-wide HR birthday email for my birthday week! What do I see?

This...



That's right, ladies and gentlemen...blank. Usually all that white space is filled with the names and birthdays of people...this week...this important week...nothing. Seriously. Not Photoshopped. Blank. Sigh.

On Childhood Failure...

Those of us who grew up in the 80s have a shared culture of disappointment surrounding those toys that were so outlandishly expensive that we never had a shot of getting them. Given that my Birthday is upcoming, I have been reflecting a lot on those basic necessities, such as the Star Wars AT-AT walker, that I wasn't allowed to have as a child and thus still long to fill my life with. I'm solidly convinced that if I had a "Silver Spoons" childhood, my girl wouldn't now have to put up with the massive influx of juvenile plastic "junk" that tends to pop up around our otherwise adult-looking home.

This, ladies and gentlemen, brings us to one of the holy grails of all 80s children...the damn "butler robot." I thought my life was going pretty great, actually, until I remembered this little gem...now I have a gaping hole in my heart that can only be filled with my new best friend:

Create-A-Post!

Ever lie awake at night dreaming of what it would be like to contribute to the number one blog on the internet with the words "Jabroni Report" in the title? Do you ever write blog posts in notepad, then resize them on your screen to make it look like you were one of our staff? Are you stalking me either professionally (Hi Jon) or personally (Hi Jon) and want to move out of my bushes (Hi Jon) and into my blog? Do you want to live the dream of being a random stranger on the internet who types garbage that no one wants to read?

Here's your chance!

Give me a topic, any topic, and I will select one and write about it. Want to know what a producer does? Want to know what a programmer eats? Want to know what the inside of our bathrooms look like? Want to know why Ivan wears "dress shorts?" Ask and I shall answer!

An Ode to Interns

I can't believe it has taken me this long to write a post about interns, but I'm here to tell you that they are, quite literally, the single greatest creation since Nolan Bushnell combined pizza with animatronics to introduce us to one "Chuck E. Cheese."

We've hired a lot of our former interns as full time programmers, and they are exceptional, so I could write some sort of rambling piece on the process and value of interns. Instead, I'll probably write some sort of a jokey piece about "fun things to do with interns." Before we get there, though, let me tell you the single most important aspect of creating a successful intern...the "nickname."

We currently have two interns. The first one, who I shall call Chris because his name is Chris, came in to work on his first day and Ivan immediately dubbed him "T-Bone." Why? Who knows...but his name is T-Bone. We honestly haven't called him anything but "T-Bone" since that moment.

The other intern, who we shall call Tony, because his name is Tony, is a much more sordid nicknaming affair. So, in lieu of the article I should write about "fun things to do with interns", this stream of consciousness blog post shall now present a history of Tony's nickname.

1. Tony joined us after T-Bone. As such, Ivan (of naming T-Bone fame) decided upon a "theme" for our interns, and decided to dub him "Koko", in honor of the Seinfeld nicknaming episode.
2. Unfortunately, as a nickname, "Koko" is both rather derivative and somewhat demoralizing.
3. We then decided upon "Special-k", courtesy of Alan, mostly "because it made sense." Alan contends that "T-Bone and Special K" would be a kickin' rap group, so we tried it out.
4. Since we had changed "Special-ks" nickname once before, we then decided to create the "ATG Nicknaming Subcommittee", with the stated purpose of changing his nickname every single week. The first week the committee went with "Kaiser", followed by a brief stint as "K-Money", as well as a few other not so inspired names that petered out quickly.
5. The problem with creating a new nickname every week is that it is frankly too much work on those of us that have to remember the name. Sure, it seems fun at first, but sooner or later you end up saying "Hey...umm...whatever...come here."
6. Then it happened. We play basketball a couple of times a week with whichever co-workers can make it. Tony, the intern in question, is a regular. During his first game, we noted that while us "29 year olds" were panting and wheezing, the intern, due to his youth, was flying all over the place. If the ball went out of the court, we traditionally used to just call the game. Not with our intern! That kid would fly over and run after the ball! He'd zoom around the court in a fashion that I have dubbed "Wiley." It is true...he is quite Wiley.
7. We noticed that he was bubbly and full of energy, not unlike a pack of Skittles. Lightning struck! Since that day, Tony's name has been Skittles.

The fun of this, of course, is that we refer to our lovable interns solely by their nicknames, T-Bone and Skittles. At meetings, even "big boy meetings", it isn't uncommon to hear the names "T-Bone" and "Skittles" pop-up. One of the names that the group pushed for our new studios was, in fact, "T-Bone studios." It may sound horrible to have people only know you by your nickname, but it is surprisingly effective. There are people in the company who I have meetings with every single week who I am convinced have literally no idea what my name is, but if they hear "Skittles", who they have never met, they can recite a long list of achievements and accomplishments.

For those of you who have noticed by reading to this point, I'm feeling "blogged out" this week. :)

14 Nerds enter...only one shall leave...

I cannot express the behind-the-back torment I gave to kids who played "Magic the Gathering" when I was in High School. Thus, the irony that I found myself and 13 co-workers playing a Magic draft tournament after work 12 years later. (Note for those paying attention...I'll be turning 29 yet again...29 minus 17 (when I graduated High School) = 12).

You can find tons of stuff online as to what Magic is and how to play it, so I'll give my strategy here.

• During the draft, when people pick cards for a winning "deck", select a random assortment of cards based upon the following criteria:
• Criteria 1: Does the card name make you giggle? If it has "Ox" or "Goat" in the title, the card is a must pick.
• Criteria 2: Does the card contain some sort of a way to intentionally make you kill yourself? If so, into the hand it goes.
• Criteria 3: Is the card literally unusable? Does the card require red mana to play but you have no red mana? Get it!
  
• Ok, once you have selected your cards, you must then realize that no matter how much you cheat (and that is literally all I do), you cannot win. Even if you purchased a $1000 deck and snuck it in...you'd still lose.

A draft works as follows. Everyone gets in a circle, opens a pack, selects a single card, and passes the rest of the cards to the person next to them. The process repeats until all the packs (3 per person) are gone. Obviously, the important bit is selecting the best possible cards. Highlight of the evening? When instead of picking up Ramon's "discard" cards for me to select a card from, I picked up the stack of cards he had carefully been selecting the entire draft. These then got passed around the table as others enjoyed the fruits of Ramon's labor.

I did do fairly well, though, and it had nothing to do with the fact that due to the number of people I got two "byes" that I automatically won.

In summation...cheat!


The pizza is from Pequods...and is awesome.

And this pretty much explains it all...

Oh Midway...

For those of you without a business background, allow write out what I shall dub "the equation for a successful company."

Successful Company: Income - Costs > 0

The once proud Midway games apparently had an error in the equation and for a decade or so had accidentally replaced the ">" sign with a "<" sign...thus bankruptcy. As such, you can imagine the company-wide hilarity that ensues when someone discovers a stash of these:
That's right, ladies and gentlemen...Midway had apparently assigned the role of "profit manager" to an inanimate calculator. (Insert joke about how this would still be better than most account managers at major banking institutions in the US here).

"Fame" Inspires the team...

Game developers are an eclectic bunch, so finding something they all have in common can be a challenge. We did discover that there is one thing that binds everyone together and inspires our daily existence...the love of dance:

Jason explores his inner Robot, in an interpretive piece we call "Jason explores his inner Robot."

Skittles proves once again that being younger allows him to do things our bodies are no longer capable of doing. Also, Batman makes an appearance.

On the importance of sending good video...

Ahh the "video link thread." This is the bane of modern corporate existence. I get, joke-free, on the magnitude of 500 emails on a light day. The ability to sift through emails is one of those untaught corporate skills that, if never grasped, can sink a career. At a glance you need to know which emails are important, which can be ignored, which need to be dealt with immediately, and which can quietly go down the stack until other issues are dealt with. Which is why, faithful readers, I seriously hate youtube links. True, your mom might think a video of two newborn kittens is utterly precious, but as far as I'm concerned, you've just wasted four of my precious seconds while I read the body of your email and moved the message to the recycle bin.

Until, that is, I received an IM at home the other evening from my friend Casey, who I haven't spoken to in years. This IM, with no other text, contained nothing but a link to the video you are about to see. This video, with its deep subtext, short length and inspiring message truly made me a believer in the power of Youtube videos to unite us all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8SLTvA39xI

Speechless? I thought so.

Aside: Someone teach me how to embed a Youtube video like the cool kids do.

Coco - 30 years later...

Here's the deal...I have a huge following on this blog with the "tween" crowd, and when I said that I was excited to see the remake of Alan Parker's 1980 "Fame", they laughed and laughed. You see, to them, they think "Fame" was in the same vane as "Save the Last Dance" and the flood of other dance movies of the modern era. I'm here to tell you, kids, the original fame was raw. I mean raw. That film was a hardcore drama. Between the illiteracy, the homelessness, the difficulties of interracial relationships, coming to terms with homosexuality, the "Coco scene", the pregnancy and abortions...you name it...Fame had it. It was raw. But it was also a genuinely great film. The TV show and movie had a huge impact on all of us generation whatever-ers...so it was with reserved excitement that I went with my lady to see the remake.

If someone wanted a poster quote of this new movie from me, here's what I would give:

"Take everything that made Fame great, dilute with 99% water, release it as a film with the same name, and that is this movie!"

The "Coco" scene in the original Fame haunts me to this day. It is raw. I'll have a breakdown if I describe it...so suffice to say, Coco really, really wants to be famous. Coco's tears in that scene were dwarfed only by my tears watching that scene.

The modern version? Coco 2.0 walks into the "bad man's" trailer, and he is a little too aggressive trying to, literally, make out with her. When she resists, he lets her leave. My God that is powerful stuff! I'm sure had I stayed through the credits there would have been a scene where the "bad man" writes her a letter of apology and they become the best of friends. The original Coco is still crying...still waiting for her letter. It will never come.

In summation, the modern remake of the theme song is pretty sweet.

Zombieland - A Microreview

Some thoughts on Zombieland. Overall, it was a fun little flick, but I don't feel like being verbose this evening, so here's the bullets.

• There is someone in this movie who you don't know is in this movie, and if you did know that this person was in the movie, you would have seen it the first showing on opening night. I won't spoil it for you, but if you put this person in a movie with Burt Reynolds, you would seriously have the two greatest actors of this, or any, generation in the same movie. Quite frankly, the fact that this person is in this movie means I have to give it a perfect review score regardless of the content of the movie or the individual in questions performance. Seriously, see this movie to see this person.
• I don't know how many times I have to get into this debate, but zombies don't run. They don't. I know you kids with your fancy new "zombie movies" think that anything that eats human flesh and is dead counts as a zombie, but it doesn't, and the fact that you are arguing this with me is filling me with rage. Zombies lumber. In fact, as far as I or any other connoisseur of the genre is concerned, zombie films should have stopped with the original George Romero Dawn of the Dead. Now those were zombies that lumbered.
• I'm going to be serious for one paragraph. I feel that movie theaters should issue customers a stun gun when they buy their ticket, and we should be allowed to stun any patrons that piss us off during a movie. This stun gun should have only two charges to keep things from getting out of hand. I love film (not that movies are shown on film anymore) and I used to love going to the theater, but the collective mannerisms of society have depleted to the point that I feel I get a better experience watching a cam copy of a movie on a black and white 13 inch movie while a TNA wrestler kicks me repeatedly in the testicles. How are any of us supposed to actually like going to the movies when we are constantly bombarded with the jerkhats who actually take phone calls and then speak loudly in some Eastern European dialect, overweight women who laugh maniacally at inappropriate points, the general chatter of a hundred people who feel that dramatic scenes are boring and thus they should use that opportunity to talk to their loved ones, cell phones ringing, people checking there email on their iPhones...I take that back...we need more than two charges....

A note on applying to jobs in the video game industry...

Literally every day of my life I'm stopped in the street by some college kid looking for tips on how to "break in" to gaming. Usually, I just hand them the squeegee and spray bottle I carry with me and have them clean my car before I answer, but today is 10/02, so I'm going to share my wisdom of nuggets with you without requiring the manual labor.

A lot of resumes cross my desk and a lot of candidates come in for interviews...here's some good tips that will get you hired every time:

• Always apply for whatever position is available. Just graduated from school with an English degree? Go ahead and apply for that senior online programmer with 10 years of experience position.
  
• Always go ahead and let us know that what you really want to do is design games, regardless of whether or not we are hiring for a designer position. Designer jobs are easy to come by...every game company has openings for people who we want to pay huge salaries to sit around and think of a "cool idea" for a game. There is no shortage of skilled people to fill hard roles like programming and art...finding someone who can say "wouldn't it be cool to make a game like World of Warcraft" is virtually impossible.
• Always write your resume in a non-standard font. Please. If I don't have to go to Adobe.com and pay $40 to download your font I probably won't read your resume.
• Never dress appropriately for the interview. We're a bunch of game developers...we wear jeans and t-shirts all day long. The last thing I want to know is that you care so much about getting this job that you are willing to iron your one dress shirt to make a good impression. You are a special rock-star, better than our best, and you should let us know this by rolling out of bed in whatever you slept in the night before and stumbling into my office.
• Never let on that you actually want the job. Nothing will hurt your negotiating position more that letting us know that you actually want the job you are applying for. Please make sure you seem disinterested the entire interview. Don't make eye contact. Don't talk about games. Don't seem passionate.
• Always answer the question "what do you do for fun" by stating that you do whatever job you are applying for in your free time. So, if you are applying to a programming position, say that you only program in your free time. The last thing I'm looking for when I ask this question is any insight into what you might be like as a human being and what it might be like to...I don't know...spend 40+ hours a week in constant interaction with you.
  
• Whenever I ask the question "Do you have any questions", always respond with "no." I'm definitely looking for employees who aren't inquisitive about the position or the company.
• Always liberally insert anti-Semitic or anti-American comments throughout the day.
• Never show up on time. You don't want to appear needy. A good rule of thumb is that if you are scheduled for a 10:00am interview, don't show up until around lunchtime. REFUSE to address the fact that you are late.
• Whenever you are asked to solve a problem on the board, instead decide to draw a cute picture of your private parts or a graffiti tag with lots of "swears" in it. Also, please take a long time to actually draw the aforementioned item, because the last thing I want is to see that you are able to think quickly on your feet. After I ask the question, go to the restroom, read the paper, grab some coffee, and only then should you draw your "junk" on the white board.
• Always comment about how much the games we have made in the past "suck." Please point out your detailed knowledge of every glitch, bug or poor implementation of gameplay we've ever done. DEMAND that we fire everyone involved with the last title because they were clearly raised by illiterate, diseased primates.

Using these tips you should land your dream job in no time! Good luck and hope to see you soon.

Happy Jimday – 10/01/2009

October is upon us!


For those of you who are unaware, 10/01 is the historic holiday known as "JimDay." You see, there is a guy on our team who I'll call Jim, because his name is Jim. In honor of this (and the fact that Jim does awesome work), we have declared today to be Jimday and threw him a party to celebrate. No, it was not Jim's birthday, nor was there any special reason to hold JimDay today...other than the fact that it was October First, which totally made sense. Please, please, please write your Congressperson and ask, nay demand, that this be a federally recognized holiday.

First, as is traditional on "JimDay", here is the JimDay card:

JimDay Card


















Of course, people literally lined up to sign the card for this historic Jimday:

Feel the love! (Last name deleted)












Sure, a card is nice...but what about serious party decorations?

Amazing!















Let's look at the detail-work on the banner, shall we?
















Since you haven't written your state representative yet, we couldn't find any "Happy JimDay" banners at the store, and had to go with "Happy Birthday." Luckily, with our amazing programmer art skills, we managed to seamlessly cover this fact...

How about refreshments? It isn't JimDay without food is it? Of course not! We decided to go with an assortment of cheesecake, which as served on amazing zoopals plates. These plates are shaped like animal heads. This was paired with Zoopal animal-shaped utensils and Zoopal sippy cups. Please go buy a gross of Zoopal goods at your local store now, because now that I know they exist, the idea of a Zoopal-less world leaves me feeling empty inside.


JimDay Cake! Notice the "frog" Zoopal plate in the upper left hand corner.













In honor of JimDay, we presented Jim with crucial gift certificates redeemable from his co-workers to help him get through the day:


And finally, what you've all been waiting for...a blurry IPhone picture of a small sub-portion of the festivities!
















In summation, Jim is a guy, and therefore we had JimDay. Also, Cake.