My first impression of Austin: incredibly hot. It was 11:00 pm locally when we arrived, and it was about 80 degrees out. This is silly. I have no doubt I’m going to burst into flame immediately upon walking outside during the day.

My second impression of Austin: it’s made of awesome. This is based solely on the 62-year old French/Texan woman who drove our cab from the airport. She alternated between telling us jokes, talking about what a great driver she is, complaining about her useless husband, and talking about how she didn’t want to offend us for the entire trip, but mostly she told jokes.

First she asked if we were married. There were three of us in the car, and I indicated that the other two were married and that I was single. She said, in her ridiculously wonderful French/Texan accent (I’ll try to imitate it sometime if you remind me), “Alright, I have one joke for the married men, then one for the single.”

(Well, she propositioned me before offering to tell the joke, but immediately rescinded the offer, let us know that she was just joking and that she would never do anything like that and hoped we weren’t offended, and besides, I was too young for her.)

“First, for the marrieds: how is a man like a floor?”

“I can’t imagine,” I replied.

“Well, you lay it once, you lay it right, and then you walk all over it for the next thirty years.”

After our laughter subsided, she moved on to me.

“And for the single: how is a man like a parking lot?”

“I can’t imagine,” I replied a bit more hesitantly (it being my turn).

“All the good ones are taken, and the ones that aren’t are handicapped.”

I’d love to go into the rest of the ride (and hopefully will later), but I ought to try to sleep. It’s 1:00 am local time (that’s 11:00 pm back home, way before my bedtime), and I have to get up in the morning.

Also: it’s 70 degrees outside. At 1:00 in the morning. ARGH.

Zoë, pointing up at my head: Russ! Where hair?

Russ: Uhh, I don’t know, Zoë. I guess it’s all gone.

Zoë: Bald?

Russ, struggling to be heard over the laughter of those nearby: Yep, pretty much bald.

Turns out she had been playing The Sims with her dad, and had learned that babies (who have no hair) are called bald, and made the necessary association. We clarified through experimentation that she did in fact understand that her dad was not bald, and that I was bald. She then got quite a case of the giggles out of touching my primary bald spot when I bent my head down.

I know it doesn’t seem like it, but she’s adorable, really.

The subjects I drew were, awesomely enough, “abortion” and “Russ Andes”. I elected to combine the two and write a series of haiku in the traditional style, three lines of 5 syllables, 7 syllables, and 5 syllables, with a mention of or allusion to nature. My poems:

Rusty hangar probes
Scrambling Russ like breakfast eggs
Brown, dying leaves fall

This is not my life
Smelling fragrant summer grass
I was aborted

Lady beaver squats
Blood and life gush forth boldly
Russ was blood and death

Happy Tuesday!

• We (sorta) finished the last project I was working on. We’re currently waiting on translations, but in the meantime all work on our side has stopped aside from bug-fixing. Since no scripting bugs have been found, that means I’ve been able to take a bit of time off to rest and recoup from the final crunch. I haven’t gone to work at all this past week except for a bit on Thursday and Friday, and that was more for fun than for work. I’m hopeful that the translations will come in soon, we’ll get them implemented, and we’ll get this thing outta here.
• I had a thing going on with a girl for a time, but I don’t anymore. It’s fine… these things happen, y’know?
• I was asked on Thursday to help out with a project that’s just getting off the ground while I’m waiting for my team to be assigned our new project. The cool thing about it is that it’s a big Top Secret deal. Apparently studio-level NDAs don’t apply to this project, so I’m not even allowed to talk about it with most of my coworkers; one of those “I can tell you, but then I’d have to kill you” sorta things. It’s not a project that I’d really like to be on for the duration, but I’m excited to be working on it for this short time.
• For that matter, I’m excited just to have something to work on again. As much as I loved taking time off, I was really getting bored. I know it sounds strange to have a paid week off and WANT to go back to work instead, but that’s how it goes. I love my job, but it’ll also be nice to be working regular hours again (or at least as regular as my hours get ).

CIMG0046

Originally uploaded by Russish.

Tonight we’re submitting Beta on my current project. At this point I’ve got everything in that needs to be in for the build, and am doing the oh-so-glorious “hurry up and wait” that I love so much. It basically entails sitting around, playing the game, and waiting to hear back from Test when they find a bug or problem that needs to be fixed.

At this point I’m really worn out (see the picture at the beginning of this entry), but we’re definitely in the home stretch and I’m really looking forward to next week (for various reasons). I’m excited to finish this project and get it on shelves (which actually isn’t going to happen until the end of the year, I think), and I’m excited to take some time off, rest up, and begin afresh on the next project.

I’ll likely be on a DS project, which is exciting and a welcome step. It’ll be a lot of learning (there’s a new scripting tool to learn, plus I’ll probably have to learn Maya to be able to white box levels), and I’m eager to take the lessons I’ve learned from this current project, which was my first project as a solo designer.

The last several projects before this one were taken over from other designers, either because they quit or moved on to something else and I was the natural choice to fill that role. It’s been different being on a project from the beginning to the end, with a new team, with all that entails. I learned a lot from this particular game, and I can’t wait to go and put it into action.

But first we gotta get this thing out. And it sounds like the new build is done, which means I’m back to testing…

(See the PhotoShopped version of the picture that my coworker sent around to our Spam e-mail list in my studio after the cut.)

The film is called Plastic Fist, and it’s located here. You’ll need to create a login to vote. You can sign up here.

Thanks in advance!

(And I hope you enjoy the movie… I thought it was pretty darned funny, myself.)

Valentine

Originally uploaded by Russish.

I spent Valentine’s Day working. No big deal; there wasn’t anyone in the area TO spend it with, so why not? It actually turned out to be a fine day, with a not-unbearable amount of the usual “wish I was with that special someone”-ness.

So tonight, Friday night, we get dinner at work (as we’re working late yet again, the joys of being in the final stages of a project) and tonight we ordered from Chili’s. This is how the chicken I ordered came. I thought it was sweet, and it was good to get one Valentine this year, even if it did come two days late and from a restaurant instead of a lady.

Maybe Chili’s is a lady restaurant? I should call her…

Royal Russ

Originally uploaded by Russish.

I was (still am) working late tonight, and so as usual the company provided dinner. Tonight my producer decided to get Red Robin, so I got my usual: a Royal Red Robin Burger, extremely well done; if I can’t write on the table with it, it’s not done well enough.

(I’ve learned that if I ask for my hamburger to be well done, they usually leave it on the grill for about two seconds longer than they do a rare burger, and that’s not well done. I want it browned all the way through, no pink left. The only method I’ve found to make this even a remote possibility is the hyperbole I used above, and even then it’s a remote possibility that it’ll come out how I like it.)

When my producer came back with the food, they had marked my box appropriately, I thought.

Mostly, at this particular moment in time, it’s because I should be doing some work right now but hit a mental wall and needed to do something to clear my head and unbefuddle myself and came across this post on my brother Rik’s blog while browsing around, which inspired me to try to do something permanent each day. This is permanentish.

Now that I’ve spent a good half hour or so setting everything up here, finding a halfway decent theme (although it’ll probably change a bit over the next few days/weeks as I continue tweaking and personalizing everything), and posting a real post, I’m going back to work. Talk to you in the future.