Needless to say, moving across the country entails lots of work and many details. You have to tie up loose ends of your life that you didn’t even know you had.

Frankly, I’m beginning to think I stayed in Texas far too long. After the Origin Debacle and the Gizmondo Debacle it should have been clear to me that I wasn’t going to find what I was looking for in Texas. Plus, I’m starting to think that my brain is overclocked and trying to work in this heat just makes it want to shut down.

But the current plan is for the movers to arrive Friday or Saturday (we don’t know which, grrrr), at which point we’ll leave town and head for the great snowy fields of Michigan, hopefully arriving on the 21st so we can move right into our new apartment.

Of course, despite the fact that we’ve already got twenty boxes packed we’re nowhere near done and now we’ve got about four days left to finish it all. It’s crazy.

But it’ll be worth it 🙂

Last night my wife’s mother died.

This was not really a surprise. Margaret had been in bad health for a long time. She had Lewy Body dementia, which produces symptoms similar to Alzheimer’s. We had to watch her rapid decline into confusion and senility, and then continue to watch as her body broke down.

Last night her son Curt, my wife’s brother, had been with her for about four hours. He was noticing that she was having trouble breathing, but there was little the doctors could do. He finally left for the night…only to get a phone call almost as soon as he got home telling him that his mother had died.

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Margaret didn’t like me very much at first. Indeed, I didn’t meet her until after I asked Jamie to marry me.

I met Jamie when we were both working at Arby’s at Barton Creek Square Mall. We were both attracted to each other because we were both horrible at the “game of love”. We were both way too honest and forthright to keep potential mates who were used to being told how wonderful they were, and flirting? ForGET it.

Now, back then, both Jamie and her mom were Jehovah’s Witnesses, and one of the things about Jehovah’s Witnesses is that they really, really want their kids to marry other Jehovah’s Witnesses. I could relate because my parents had been Seventh-Day Adventists, who like to follow the same rule. Only substituting “Seventh-Day Adventists” for “Jehovah’s Witnesses”.

The only problem was, I wasn’t a Witness and had no desire to become one.

So our love was forbidden – so romantic! Indeed, at one point, due to pressure from her family and the elders of her congregation, Jamie broke it off with me.

But she looked at her congregation…there were so few people her age that the marriages may as well have been arranged. And the young couples didn’t seem to be doing any better than non-Witness couples – there was adultery and fighting and divorcing just like everywhere else.

She went out with a few of the guys, but they all treated her badly, mostly because there were more women than men in the congregation and they had their pick of the flock.

And she finally realized…oh, Lord, this is going to sound so egotistical, but she finally realized that despite not being a Witness, I would make a much better husband and father than any of the guys she’d been dating “in the church”.

So Jamie and I made up. I had been hoping she’d come back to me so I hadn’t really been pursuing any other women (that and the whole “shy as a rabbit” thing). I was very happy, and so was she.

And one thing led to another, and that thing led to a strip of pink on a stick. And so I asked her to marry me, and she said yes.

Now, in my defense, I’d already decided that I was going to marry her, I just hadn’t gotten around to proposing yet. Her getting pregnant merely accelerated a process already in motion.

But now I had no choice – I had to meet her mother.

So one Sunday afternoon we both went over to her mother’s house. I was surprised at Margaret’s age. Jamie told me that Margaret had had her when she was almost forty, so when I met Margaret that day she was in her mid-sixties. She looked like she could have been Jamie’s grandmother, not her mother.

She let us in; I introduced myself and was as polite as I could possibly be. We sat down in the living room and made some small talk. But then we dropped the bomb. Jamie said, “Momma, I’m pregnant, and Anthony and I are going to get married.”

Without a word, Margaret stood up, walked into her bedroom and shut the door.

We sat there for ten agonizing minutes before Jamie finally went into the bedroom to discover Margaret crying. She was absolutely inconsolable for a while. I sat there dying inside until finally Jamie coaxed Margaret out of the bedroom. At which point I pledged my undying devotion to her daughter and our unborn child.

Finally Margaret settled down. “Well, at least he’s not a Mexican,” she said.

——————————————————————————————

Margaret’s life was scarred by tragedy, just like almost anyone’s who lived through the two World Wars. Her first husband, Curt’s father, left her. Her second husband, Jamie’s father, ran a liquor store. With free access to liquor, Margaret quickly became an alcoholic. And when she began to suspect (correctly) that he was cheating on her she threw gigantic booze-fueled fits, throwing liquor bottles and crockery at him.

Eventually they divorced. And then, it seemed, Margaret’s life began. She kicked her alcoholism. Her son Curt had a beautiful boy named Brett – plus Margaret still had Jamie, her own child, to love. She got a government secretarial job and worked at it for twenty years, finally retiring with a pension. Joining the Jehovah’s Witnesses gave her a spiritual peace. Austin grew in the direction of her house so she was able to sell about half of her backyard to a local developer for a substantial sum.

And then…tragedy again. It turned out that Brett had cystic fibrosis. The odds of him living to adulthood were very low.

——————————————————————————————

I only met Brett a couple of times…he lived in Austin for about the first half of his life. As he grew up he became a big fan of computer games, and when Origin Systems heard about him they actually donated $3000 worth of computer equipment and games, making him the envy of the block. From a computer-related standpoint, at least.

When I met Brett I was working at Origin, which made me super-cool despite the fact that I was just doing tech support. He was an extraordinarily likeable kid.

But then Curt and his mother divorced, and she took him away to live in Missouri.

As a parent I now understand – grandchildren are your reward for successfully parenting your children. And not only was Margaret’s only grandchild sick, now he was hundreds of miles away.

And then, a near-miracle happened: Brett’s health started to improve. For almost a year he lived a near-normal life. During that year he came to visit Margaret, and this picture was taken.

That year was a gift, but it couldn’t last. Soon after they returned to Missouri, Brett worsened and then quickly died.

At the funeral, Brett’s mother told me that Brett had always looked up to me, and had wanted to make video games when he grew up.

——————————————————————————————

But as the years passed Margaret began to like me more and more, and I began to have a much better relationship with her than with a lot of my own family.

Of course, there were downsides. When Jamie and I got into financial trouble we lived with her in her house for a year. This was annoying for everyone involved; Margaret had become incredibly fastidious in her old age and Jamie and I kept forgetting to do various things.

On the other hand, I remember once while we lived there that I was playing Jet Set Radio on my Dreamcast late one night. I had the sound down low so it wouldn’t wake Margaret, but I glanced behind me and there she was. She was staring at the screen as if in a trance, captivated by the game’s visuals. Once she noticed I was looking at her, she made a quick comment about how interesting the game looked and moved on. Obviously, the power of Jet Set Radio transcends generations.

But the real upside was that Margaret now had daily access to Megan, the apple of her eye.

And Jamie was pregnant with our second child, David.

Only David wasn’t as easygoing a baby as Megan had been. Indeed, he cried unless he was constantly held (an early sign of his autism). He drove Margaret crazy and it was only a few months after he was born that moving out became the best thing for everyone involved. Fortunately at this point I’d just made programmer at Multimedia Games (my first programming job) and we could now just barely afford our own place again.

But still, I continued to, you know, not cheat on her daughter and not divorce her daughter and not take her only remaining family away to live in some other part of the country. And then Jewel came along, cute, sassy Jewel, to really seal the deal. Margaret finally told Jamie that she was glad Jamie had married me.

And then I started cooking turkey dinners for everyone at Thanksgiving, taking that weight off her shoulders. She loved my cooking.

But her health had been getting worse for about the last sixth months. Curt, who had been taking care of her, finally had to put her in a home because he wasn’t capable of providing the round-the-clock medical care necessary to keep her alive.

During this time, it became clear to us that the only thing that still mattered in this world to her were her grandchildren. Our visits with her were the only time she conversed, became animated. But it was obvious her health was seriously worsening.

The last time I visited her was about a month ago. I hadn’t seen her in a while so I wasn’t prepared for how much she’d declined. She could barely see and hear, called me “David” and couldn’t even prop her own head up, much less move under her own power.

It was then that I realized that I probably wasn’t going to get to make her another turkey dinner.

And then last night she left us. I’m sure she didn’t want to, but her body gave her no choice.

Goodbye, Margaret. I love you.

And I really liked it. If you’ve ever seen the original Shane Acker short, you might be disappointed since nothing will really surprise you. Fortunately, I hadn’t. While the plot was pretty predictable, the characters were easily identifiable despite only having numbers for names, and the action pieces were pretty darn awesome. The voice work was very good, and I was surprised at how dark the movie was…it’s a post-apocalyptic movie, so at some point you have to show the apocalypse. I think they pushed the limits of PG-13 there, despite there being almost no blood in the movie. Took the older daughter, had a fun time. Got Amy’s ice cream afterwards.

I moved some recent posts over to GameDevDad, since they seemed to be more appropriate there.

Okay! So I’m taking a trip to Michigan. (Still don’t know when; the Stardock folk are probably still recovering from PAX.) It is traditional upon taking such a trip to bring along a laptop so that you can a) stay in touch, b) cram it full of your demos to show your interviewers and c) play World of Warcraft in your hotel room.

But I can’t seem to find one I like. My friend Ryan Clark (who I’ve mentioned before) gave me an old (VERY old) laptop of his called a Panasonic Let’s Note CF-T4. As you might can guess from the website, he imported it from the ancient shores of Nippon.

Now, to me, this was nearly the perfect laptop. I liked the form factor (10.5 inches by 8 inches). I liked that the screen was big (12.1 inches diagonal), was 4:3 ratio and was a standard resolution (1024×768). I liked the fact that it did not have an internal CD or DVD drive, since those things only get used occasionally while they add weight, generate heat and suck up power all the time. I liked how light it was (about three pounds) and how long the battery lasted (about five hours). I liked that it was more than capable of development – indeed, this is the machine that CrazyBump was written on.

The only, ONLY thing I didn’t like was that its 733 megahertz processor meant that it was just a little too slow to play WoW.

So basically I want a laptop just like Ryan’s, only with a slightly faster processor and maybe more RAM. And since Ryan’s is five years old, I shouldn’t have to pay too much for one, right? Right?

Well, in this case, they don’t make ’em like they used to.

Laptops at this point have diverged into two paths: either expensive, big, heavy, full-featured “desktop replacement” models, or cheap, adorable, super-light, super-small “netbook” models. Neither fits my bill. A netbook of any type would be perfect…if it were just a little bigger! I can’t be constantly backspacing to fix errors due to tiny keys and I cannot peer into one of those things’ tiny screens.

I’ve looked ’round the internet a fair bit to try to find a suitable one, but companies tend to drop older models of laptops like hot bricks once the new ones come out. I wouldn’t mind a used one as long as I could make sure everything worked…but I’d really like a new one (or rather, an unused one). At this point I’m tempted to start cruising pawn shops.

Anyone have any ideas?

Yes, once again, I’m coming to this very late. But just in case anyone hasn’t tried it…

Short review: It looks like Vista, but it doesn’t hurt like Vista.

Shorter review: Awesome.

Longer review: I downloaded a copy of Windows 7 Release Candidate version 7600 off of Bittorrent (which is perfectly legal; while Microsoft is no longer providing downloads, they do still want people trying the software and are still handing out free activation keys). I burned the ISO to a DVD with no problems, then restarted and booted from the DVD.

It’s nice that you no longer have to deal with a text screen at all when installing Windows now, but you’re still doing the same thing – waiting for Windows to scan your computer’s hardware and copy the compressed files it’s going to need to install from the DVD to your hard drive. A couple times I thought the install had wedged but it hadn’t; a particular step was just taking a while. When installing Windows, patience is still your watchword.

I figured this was going to be a better experience when Windows 7 detected and installed appropriate drivers for my network card, my sound card and my video card automatically – my computer was fully capable as soon as the setup was finished. This was especially impressive since my network and sound hardware are built into my ABIT motherboard.

So I immediately started installing the most critical programs: Visual C++ Express, TortoiseSVN, Paint.Net, Google Chrome and Google Talk…and World of Warcraft and Left 4 Dead. I also had to get my SVN server linked to a folder on my local computer so I could do an initial pull-down of my repository. All of this went great, I had no problems downloading, installing, updating, etc (though of course it took forever; World of Warcraft is now about a seven gig download).

If you’ve looked at any screenshots of my XP desktop, you may have noticed that I like to keep my taskbar on the left side of the screen. I like lots of vertical space both to view web pages and to view source code. You’ll also notice that I’ve got lots of quicklaunch icons – basically everything I actually use on the computer on a regular basis. Also notice below the quicklaunch toolbar that there are icons for every program I’ve currently got open.

As I mentioned in my Mac post, the Mac doesn’t do this – all the programs on the dock simply get dots next to them when they are running. Microsoft has implemented their own version of this: there’s only one taskbar. You “pin” programs to it that you want quick access to. And when you run one, it gets a box around it. Hovering over the box shows you a small preview of what that program is doing and clicking the box (of course) switches to that program. Because of this I haven’t felt the need to move my taskbar from its default position.

One other thing is that the default ZIP extractor works well…and automatically opens an Explorer window showing you the extracted files when its done (this is another thing the Mac was already doing). This is going to make it much easier for people who sell software over the internet to support it (see the “Behind the Dumb” videos on this channel for an instructive example).

And this may sound stupid, but I like the name. Windows 7. Why? Because it’s the seventh major version of Windows. I’m getting kind of sick of companies naming their software in such a way that you can’t tell which version is more recent than which (and Apple is quite guilty of this). And don’t try to tell me what I’m supposed to think (or worse, feel) when I use the software, just tell me what goddamn version it is.

Things I don’t like? The Search function is too much like Vista’s for my liking, but I can live with it. Um…let’s see…anything else…uh…I can’t think of anything else right now. That’s how good it is – I’ve got exactly one minor gripe so far.

So (sigh) I guess I’ll be upgrading when it comes out.

So. Back on July 16th I wrote a post on my professional blog about Brad Wardell and the history of Stardock. Dave Shramek, a friend of mine, pointed out that Stardock was actually hiring a bunch of developers. So I sent in a resume.

Then, on August 3, I started working for Warped Productions. I thought my job search was over, and I’d won.

And then about two weeks ago, I got a phone call from…uh…Brad Wardell. He was doing a 15-minute pre-screen on candidates and, despite the fact that my voice was shot (possibly from yelling at chilluns) I guess I passed.

Because today I got a phone call from Cari Begle and Jesse Brindle. Cari was the lead developer on Galactic Civilizations II and Jesse Brindle was the 3D programmer responsible for creating the battle sequences. They grilled me on my past projects, what games I like to play and some technical issues.

And now apparently I’m going to take a trip to Michigan to see them in person. Stardock is interested in me. Glee!

Needless to say, my bosses at Warped already know about all this. I’ll continue to work hard for them for as long as they employ me, and since Stardock has a huge number of excellent candidates, there’s a darn good chance I won’t make the cut and I’ll continue to make iPhone games for Warped (which, frankly, is not a bad thing at all).

Still, we’re in “it’s an honor just to be nominated” territory, and it will leave me with a very tough decision should Stardock say yes.

You know, I’ve got some hope in the fact that eventually I’m going to run out of things that don’t work.