Lesson Learned

This is what happens when you upset the waitress at IHOP by telling her you don't like their strawberries and would like extra blueberries on the red white and blue pancake special instead.
Yes of course I ate it.

Holy Hell

It’s nice to know that Utah can still surprise me. I mean in a pleasant way.

Today was Day one of the Geex Convention. A con I did not wish to go to and predicted would have less than 1000 people attending. I was so blasé over the event, I completely forgot to bring an extension cord and power strip for my demo setup. After finding out that a rental for both would be $98, (and mind you this is for RENTING a 15 foot extension cord and power strip that they actually wanted it back in working order) I decided to make the trek that unbeknownst to me would take an hour and have me walking for miles, I went off in search of a mall that supposedly housed an Office Depot.

The mall I found was pretty incredible. It reminded me of the outdoor mall my friend Phil lives in but better, because this one had an IMAX theatre, was way cleaner, with blocks of fountains, and prices for apartments above the mall that I could someday soon afford. The only thing that could have made it better was if it had shops I actually wanted to patronize or restaurants I would eat at.

Then there was the time yesterday when I was driving fairly quickly, trying to get out of the seedier part of town when I caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye that made me spin around giving myself whiplash screaming HOLY HELL WTF WAS THAT. Some guy had set up rows of metal animal sculptures all over an empty parking lot. It was rather terrifying and intriguing at the same time.

You better not cry, you better not pout, Rudolph the rain dear is coming and he's gona eat ya.
Phil this one's for you. You need a new Monkey.

Convention Season

The convention season is now in full swing. I am getting ready to do a little bit of traveling to promote our company and flagship game.

My first stop is just 40 miles north of the office in Salt Lake City, the last bastion of normalcy in Utah. The GEEX convention promises 5,000 local players. I think the event management is ambitious to think they will attract that many players from Utah who play with these electronic tools of the devil. 10 hour per day exhibit hall hours only add to my excitement over this event.

Not taking advantage of my position at all, I have arranged to leave clean up to someone else and depart the convention Saturday night to fly to San Diego. The Second Convention on my stop is Comic Con. I have not been able to locate solid numbers of attendees for this convention except that on the preview day before it opens up to the real crowd, 30,000 people paid extra to visit the exhibit hall. I expect over 70,000 people will be there over the fun filled 5 days, which incidentally is the longest of the conventions.

I am not staying on Heathers Yacht, eating sushi every night on the company’s dime while in town. Oh wait, yes I am. This is a Google Map from Heathers Yacht to the Convention.
Her Yacht is 9 slips out from the gazebo to the right of the pool if anyone cares. Google satellite view would scare me if it wasn’t so freeken cool.

I actually get to come home and see if my cat still lives before flying to Indianapolis for Gen Con. This convention is for D&D and Collectible card game players. They are probably the strangest of the bunch, and resemble me the most. This convention typically gets around 30,000 over a fun filled 4 days. Unlike the other 2 out of town conventions however, I will have 2 guys from management with me to help exhibit. This is also the only one of the “large” conventions where we have our own booth. We are part of much larger booths at Comic Con and Dragon Con that we were invited to join.

I get to spend a few more days in Utah before flying out to Dragon Con in Atlanta for another fun filled week. I may insist on working from NJ between Gen Con and Dragon Con.

Since my contract ran out, I’ve been able to renegotiate. Part of the new terms state that I only have to be in the office 2 weeks a month, however management is insisting that technically the conventions count as out of the office time. We’ll see about that.

In the mean time I am spending plenty of time out of the office to get my creative juices flowing. I am doing a lot of writing for promotions these days, and redesigning certain parts of our game. Here is a picture of my current work environment. While it changes daily, this place is one of my favorites.

Back from the Con

I’ll post a more detailed account of this week’s events later but since I can’t sleep on this plane I figure I’d write up a summary of the last few days.

While I type I find myself wondering, what is justifiable homicide? Surely the kid sitting next to me for the first leg of my flight trying to figure out exactly how long he can keep a very large coin spinning would fall into that category. I also wonder if I can get arrested for taking pictures of little boys. The convention was actually not as difficult as I first imagined. While I felt like I would lose my voice at some point on Friday, contracting the worst case of diarrhea that I have ever had in my life, totally took my mind off my throat. Half a bottle of Pepto Bismol seemed to have fixed both problems by Saturday morning.

Our booth was right behind the Pokemon pavilion and I quickly got into the spirit. Although luckily enough only one kid under 18 insisted on talking to me the entire convention, he later returned and purchased $100 worth of product.

The night life was a welcome change from Utah. Even though the average person looked like this the weirder ones stayed away from the bars.

We had a lot of our Saga players stop by to say hello, maybe because they give me money or maybe because of the drinks they bought for me I am going to say they are decent folk.

I suspect they thought that if I got drunk enough I would divulge some secrets about the upcoming expansion, but I am a professional.

Off To The Games

It has been 7 years since I manned a booth at a game convention. The memory of the pain and terror is dull now, and I believe I have what it takes to tackle the task again. I recently attended the GAMA convention in Vegas with 500 hobby store owners from across America with 3 of my team members. We manned two demo stations and were the talk of the Con. We kicked some serious ass and had everyone talking about the new collectible RTS game that is going to revitalize the hobby store industry.

The convention season is just starting, the next one on the list is Origins in Columbus Ohio with a slightly larger attendance of 35,000 rabid gamers. This day I woke up at the ungodly hour of 3AM, rolled over onto my cats head and with a swipe of a claw and a sharp pain across my ribs, I was awake and ready to start the trip.

Apparently Tuesday is the day the Mormon missionaries fly out across the nation to spread the gospel. Fearful that should one sit next to me, I would be in for 6 hours of preaching I quickly prepared a story that I was sure would dissuade any youngster from trying to preach further.

Sure enough the plane was full and a black sister (All the guys are called Elders and the girls Sisters) took her seat next to me and with a smile, introduced herself as Dante. She knew right away that I was a non believer and asked me about my faith. Demonologist I slyly replied. Oh I’m from Hati and know all about black magic, my family does not approve of my choice to follow the teachings of Jesus and practice black magic. Feeling suddenly outmatched, I had no choice but to drop the façade and subject myself to hours of preaching.
At some point during the lesson she must have gotten tired of my blank stare and fell asleep as her head hit the tray unfolded in front of her seat. I felt it rude to take a picture at this time. The angry stare of the very large Mormon physical fitness trainer sitting next to her may have also dissuaded me.

The second leg of my trip was on a plain a bit smaller than I was comfortable with. I can’t say the ability to feel every turn and wind gust was especially entertaining. I found myself wishing for the security sister Dante seemed to convey. I briefly considered praying to god as she had suggested, but was jarred to reality in the next moment as the landing gear retracting made the little plain jump.

For my steed on this adventure, I was given a Volvo S70, which may be a bit beyond what my aging years can handle. I managed to figure out, peg A into slot B but sat for minutes poking and jabbing at the start stop engine button before noticing the flashing lights and sirens with the message “Step on the break THEN press the start button”
That obstacle out of the way, I made good time to the hotel where I will return each night to nurse the wounds that 35,000 gamers can inflict. Tomorrow is setup, Thursday I dive into Hell.

When I grow up

Wanting to be a Fireman or Policeman is a bit cliché. These days kids want to grow up to play in the NBA, make computer games or do what ever it is their Dad does until he forbids them to follow in his footsteps.

I always thought it would be interesting even for awhile to write messages for fortune cookie companies. But how does one get started on this career track? Is that really a job someone has or is it some mythical position such as game tester? Well one of our mythical game testers decided to bake us some fortune cookies today and show off her creativity.

My First Picture

My bro Dave sent me a new camera for my birthday along with enough memory to start taking pictures of every random thing I come across.

I'm not sure how well this will work until I install something on this machine that can edit pictures, but for now lets try one of the view when I leave my place.

More wierd business practices

After surviving my walk to the movies I decided that physical exercise wasn't entirely a bad thing. Not wanting to overdo it however, I decided a cheap bicycle was better than walking to work.

For me at least Wal-Mart is synonymous with cheap both for price and quality, but for this experiment which is sure to get old in less than a week, the former is more important than the latter. I somehow won the argument that all management should ride bikes to work, and so everyone piled into the CFO’s truck and ventured the mile down to the closest Wal-Mart, which seems to be in every town in this part of the country.

I found a bicycle pump in one of the isles and prepared all 3 bikes for a ride to work the next day. There was even a contest for who could find the gayest looking helmet, which I won by declaring that I would not be wearing one.

At the end of the day when preparing to take my new instrument of torture and misery home, I found that my front tire had deflated. No bid deal right? I still had the receipt and should have been able to exchange my new toy for a non defective model. At least it seems like an easy solution.

I arrived at the local Wal-Mart to find that the greeters at the front of the store actually have a purpose. One of them stuck a return tag on my bike and was mumbling something about safety and death rates for bicyclists in Utah as I left her behind to search for the customer service line.

After a short wait, made shorter by people who left the line in search of their kids who had run off, I made it to the cashier. I’d like a shiny new bicycle please, this one is defective I told the nice customer service lady, putting on my most enchanting smile.

I was informed that it is Wal-Mart policy not to accept returns for defects in the tire or brakes. It’s not my fault I explained, look I said, I didn’t even take the cardboard ads out of the tires. It’s out of my hands the lady told me, at best she could impound the vehicle and hold it for the bicycle mechanic who would come by when he was available to inspect and rule on the situation.

I still have the receipt I pleaded. The merchandise is defective and I only wish to procure a working model to enhance my failing health. The lady however stood firm and unyielding. Sigh, I guess I’ll have to ask for a refund then. Well that would be fine the lady told me and promptly refunded my purchase. I suspect I should probably wait till her shift is over before picking up an identical bicycle.

I sometimes wonder why I am the only person blessed with such entertainment? But as long as I am, it is my duty to share it with you.

My product

It's been awhile since I gave up this blog and a lot has happened. In the future I will touch on events at work, however for now, here is a real photo of how the retail product turned out.


It is now being carried by somewhere between 100-200 stores across the US and Canada and may be showing up in the UK soon. We are still working on the large retail chains in the US.

Stupid internet practices

These days when a good portion of the world lives online, you would think business's have "figured it out". Unfortunately I am still encountering absurd business practices.

I celebrated my 29th birthday last week and unlike every year past, this time the choice of gifts was simple for my sister. I could really use a nice digital camera, which should have been easy to research, locate, purchase and deliver with a few keystrokes sitting at the kitchen table.

This morning I received a call from the company selling the camera to inform me that they could not ship the camera to the address provided unless it was added as a secondary billing address to the credit card used. WTF

You may as well put a huge header on your billing page. FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY, NO GIFTS ALLOWED. These days when half of the spam in my inbox is from companies suggesting I send Viagra to my dad for fathers day you would think gifts to people other than yourself would be encouraged. At the very least, don't allow the shipping and billing address to differ and waste my time.

As long as they took the time to make a phone call you would think the obvious course of action would have been to call the credit card company and ask for verification of purchase. Maybe I'm just a genius who should be making millions consulting to such companies, then again, maybe not.