Today is officially the last day I will be an IT professional. Starting tomorrow (well, really next week) I’m a full time educator and part time assistant adult hockey league director. Of course the topics that I’m teaching are IT related, specifically software engineering and graphics programming, but I won’t be doing it full time anymore. This is both refreshing and terrifying. I’ve been doing IT pretty much straight through since I got my first job at 17 helping build out a startup ISP. Now I get to change gears. Instead of tech being what pays the bills, tech gets to go back to stuff I do for fun, which I’m hoping will mean that I make progress on the many stalled projects I’ve had going for weeks/months/years. I’m not sure what career #2 is going to turn into but I’m sure tech will sill be there, hanging around as it’s been all my life.
This is a rambly, what’s-going-on-in-Dave’s-life sort of post with very little content of interest who don’t know me and/or are stalking me. You have been forewarned.
I have a habit of jumping around between jobs. I find that I’m rarely satisfied for long in a position as the thrill of learning a bunch of new stuff wears off, the grind sets in and the drudgery of doing real work is all that’s left. To many, this penchant for flittery is a big fat check mark in the negatives column while evaluating me as an employee candidate. Then again I probably don’t want to work for people who care about such things. This is not to say I never stay put. I spent 2 years running my own company and there was plenty of drudgery amongst the fun (and terrifying) learning activities such a job afforded. So, when it seemed the end was drawing near for my time as a failed entrepreneur I made a pledge to myself. I didn’t want to get stuck right back into those boring jobs I had fled several years back.
Since there wasn’t a lot of excitement for me in the types of jobs I was likely to be offered I started wondering, where can I go? I had been teaching at the Art Institue of Phoenix for 2.5 years at that point and I knew that I enjoyed my work there. It was peripherally related to software development (which I still love) but conveniently avoided all those pesky issues like customers and deadlines and software that actually has to work. It also afforded me much more opportunity to play with and develop game technology, the very thing I had gone to college for all those years ago. Perfect!
I was all set to move over to the Art Institue when the next surprise came along. I had written a rather lengthy letter expressing my concerns and dissatisfaction with various elements of the adult hockey league at Oceanside Ice Arena. I expected to get back something stating “Your concerns have been noted, now buzz off”. What I got back was “Those are some really great points, this is what I’m going to do to address them, oh and by the way do you want a job as assistant adult hockey director?”.
…?
That’s the first time I’ve ever been offered a job by complaining. So I met with the rink’s manager and in the next few weeks I’ll begin to take on duties as assistant adult hockey director. Check mark in the “try something new” category. Luckily the hockey gig is mostly evenings and the Art Institute is mostly daytime so they’re quite compatible.
So, I leave a full time software engineering job, go to teaching and managing a hockey league. Sounds like a pretty good career shake-up to me.
Today I got linked an article about Phil Spector’s arrival at Corcoran prison in CA. It’s mostly about him and playing music, blah, blah, blah. The interesting bit is at the end of the article.
Spector was previously held in the Los Angeles County jail and then an intake center in Kern County, where corrections officials evaluated him and assigned him to the Corcoran facility.
Spector’s wife, Rachelle, welcomed the transfer and said it would be an improvement from the Kern County prison where, she said, she was unable to visit her husband or speak to him by phone. “Anywhere is better than that place,” she said.
I was born and grew up in Bakersfield which is the seat of Kern County. Damn I’m still glad to be out of that place, even after all these years.
I’ve been surprised by the immense amount of anger expressed over the forthcoming M10 rules changes, slated to go into effect next month. I gave my initial impressions here, but since then I’ve been trying to figure out why combat damage not using the stack has been quite as motivating as it has been for complaints and declarations that Magic is being dumbed down. I think the big deal with combat damage not using the stack anymore is that it is
- totally unexpected
- going into effect really damn soon now
So the change creates a very emotional state of mind in which Wizards is taking away something many Magic fans love suddenly and without warning for seemingly no good reason (for the people complaining) and their options are:
- stop playing competitively
- shut up and put up with it
That’s a rather bad position to be in as a customer and doubly so as a customer of a product that depends on a base of “lifelong” customers. It doesn’t help that I continually see people misinterpreting how the new assignment of blockers works. Clearly WotC is not doing a particularly good job in communicating some of these changes although I think the initial article was 80% really well written.
Ok, so perhaps that was just the reaction from THE ENTIRE INTERNET over today’s article regarding rules changes in the forthcoming M10 expansion in June.
I was fine with everything in the article, a bit annoyed at times, but generally ok with everything until I got to this:
5) Combat Damage No Longer Uses the Stack
O M G !
Now it may just be that I have a podcast called Damage on the Stack. It could be that Mogg Fanatic is one of my favorite cards or that I love combat trickery, but this one change seemed a bit too much. From the 34 pages of forum comments regarding the post that went up less than 12 hours ago, THE INTERNET would seem to agree. Removing combat damage does seem to be the most ill-received change. I have many times on the podcast stated that I think R&D is doing a really good job in tightening up the game and making it better with each set, so I’m going to hold off on much wailing about the end of the (MTG) world. Perhaps after the M10 release we’ll see that Magic is the same game and has all/most/some of the great interactions that make it so much fun to play.
It’s the Onion, but for Magic: The Gathering. Basically everything I’m looking for in a humor website.
Last night I walked out on my hockey team. It’s pretty rare that I walk out on something. Bad movies, boring lectures, pitifully performing sports teams, I can make it through a lot. One thing I refuse to put up with though, is a lack of effort.
It’s one thing to get beat. It’s another thing entirely to get beat when you’re putting out 150% the defensive effort as the defensemen of your team and contributing positively to your team’s offense (something our defensemen jumping up into the play was not doing).
So, after the 4th or 5th time that I (a forward) was left to be the sole man hoofing it back to defend a 2 on 1, I had reached my limit. After the goal that made it 7-5 in our opponent’s favor, I headed to the bench, slammed my stick on the boards and let the defense know exactly how I felt about their performance that night.
The response was predictably not anything that would improve my opinion of the defense that night so I quickly made my final decision and headed for the locker room to change out. About 8 minutes later I was talking to the assistant rink manager about switching teams.
Now I get to look forward to the best kind of revenge, scoring against those same defensemen.
Some parents seem to totally miss that they are being totally irresponsible. What’s even better is when they find righteous indignation in the wrong-doings of others and in the process advertise their irresponsibility. Apparently a UK dad found some extacy inside the instruction book of… you guessed it, GTA4! The perennial whipping boy for all of society’s ills returns with a vengeance. This was a used copy of the game, so of course there was lots of room for tampering. The best part of the whole BBC story (other than the fact that NO ONE brought up this point, was a quote from the father).
Mr Thornhill said: “What made me feel the most distraught was the fact we let our 12-year-old play the game.”
Mr. Thornill isn’t being upset that he’s letting his 12 year old play an M rated game that’s famous for violence. No, he’s upset that his 12 year old might have found the drugs in the instruction book. In the game he NEVER SHOULD HAVE BEEN PLAYING. When extacy starts showing up in the instruction books of the latest Tony Hawk, then maybe you’ll have some legs of outrage to stand on Mr. Thornhill.
The video of the IGF awards are up. As usual, it’s packed with amazing inide games that deserve your support. This year is rather special (for me) as the content directors are local indie developers Matt Wegner and Steve Swink of Flashbang Studios. Also, another local indie Dan Tabar won 2 awards for Cortex Command! Yay Phoenix indie game developers!
