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.