Around the Web - You Have Time For What You Prioritize

Early last week, Caleb put up an excellent post on the LoneWolf Distributors blog. While his column technically fell under the category of “Shooting Advice”, his words should bear weight for anyone who’s ever lamented the lack of time to get fit, learn a new software technique, or whatever.

“The problem with that statement is that you, I, and everyone who has ever said it does have the time to become good at something.”

This what what I made time for this year. I sacrificed a lot of game time, and a fair bit of good riding weather to hit the goal. The next goal is going to take even more work.

What Caleb didn’t say in his blog, was that the day before those words went live, he joined an extremely exclusive club when he became FAST Coin Holder #18. For those who don’t obsessively follow the shooting sports world, the FAST drill is a defensive shooting drill that involves drawing your pistol from a duty or concealment holster, and engaging a target seven yards away. The shooter first fires two shots to a 3x5 card, executes a slidelock reload, then finishes by firing four shots at an 8" plate. Earning a coin requires executing this drill twice, on demand, during one of Langdon Tactical’s classes, in five seconds or less.

It took my brother six years to achieve this goal. There were a few bumps along the way that probably slowed his progress by a couple of years, but that’s almost beside the point. He had a goal, and he kept at it.

I doubt that I’ll ever earn a FAST coin of my own. That’s okay, my goals are different than my brother’s, though they may require similar time to achieve. But like Caleb says at the end:

“The moral of the story is simple: don’t tell yourself you don’t have time to accomplish the things you want. You do, but it’s up to you to decide if you’re willing to sacrifice that time for something else.”

Vlog 2018-45: On the Road Again in Orlando

Orlando seems like an interesting town. Seemingly built up largely to service the various amusement park walled gardens that call the area home, it's not exactly a walkable city.



Good thing my hotel has pretty much everything I need!

I'm very excited to be here for Agile + DevOps East. I'll be working on my Agile Test Engineering certification, then attending a bunch more cool agile classes and training over the course of the week.

More to come!

Perseverance and Direction

I’ve been thinking a bit lately about perseverance and direction. Without getting into too many details, it’s fair to say that it feels like we (meaning my family unit) have been treading water financially for what feels like quite a while. Sometimes we slip back a bit, sometimes we move forward a bit, but it seems like the forward progress keeps getting called back, and it takes maximum effort just to get back from the slips. It’s frustrating, and since revenue generation is largely my responsibility, I really have no one I can be upset with save for the guy in the mirror.

It’s not like I don’t have a plan. Work hard, keep on the career track, and work harder to spin up the writer and streamer side businesses. They’re all making progress, but it’s so very slow. Maybe I should ditch some part of the plan and chase some other way.

I wasn't even in the top 50% of my age group, total runners, or my gender, but I wasn't last either. And for a first race, all
I wanted to do was finish.

Oh, right. That took work too. A lot of hot Sunday long runs where I didn’t want to go out, much less drag through the required distance. Boring hours on the treadmill when the weather just wouldn’t cooperate at all. Full marathons are going to be more of the same. That’s what this financial thing is, really. A full marathon. Maybe even an ultra-marathon. It’s not going to be complete in a day, or a month, or a year. It’s just a regular slog of doing the things I know I need to do to get to the well defined goals that are worth the struggle.

Thunderbird no. 6 ejection at Mt. Home airshow in 2003 [Photo by SSgt Bennie J. Davis III - Still Photographer, USAF]

On the other hand, sometimes there are reasons to bail out. There’s no reason to follow a crash into the ground if you don’t have to. Live to fly (or run, or work) another day beats riding a doomed effort down to a fireball. Are my efforts doomed to inevitable failure? I don’t believe so. Systems are still reading green, I’ve got the necessary altitude, and progress is happening. That’s not the time to pull the black and yellow handles.

Side note: the incident report that led to the above picture is well worth reading. The details that led to this very expensive incident form a multi-link accident chain that ultimately cost Captain Chris Stricklin his flying career, and the Air Force a $20 million jet. He ejected less than a second before the aircraft hit the ground, and after putting it into a slight turn to avoid endangering spectators at the airshow.

All that to say that punching out is something of a last resort. Better than the alternative, but still something that can have lasting repercussions. Best to try and break those accident chains, be they in aviation, motorcycling, or careers before they lead to incidents like this.

You Never Take Me Anywhere - Vlog 2018-34

Why do you almost only see Producers, Writers, Lead Designers, and maybe a Lead Artist get interviewed for a AAA game? What about QA, programmers, and artists? Do they ever get to go anywhere?



The truth is, if you want to travel for business, don't work in game development.

You Are Not Your Career - Vlog 2018-23

Somehow this has turned into a three week commentary.



All joking aside though, who you are if you were to lose some big part of your life is a big and serious topic that is worth some consideration. All of us will face major life changes at some point. Some general mental preparedness can do wonders for when those moments arrive.

Six Years

November 4^th, 2011 is a date that will always stick with me. It marks the day I was told that my services would no longer be needed by WB Games, Inc. at Monolith/WB Games.

The day had started like any other Friday, with me dragging into work after the quick drive from my condo near Lake Washington, anticipating another long day as pre-production on Monolith’s next bit title slowly came together. An odd email from HR telling me that I hadn’t yet filled out my annual health insurance enrollment (I had) was dismissed as a paperwork error, one of those things endemic to large soulless multinational corporations. The surprise urgent, all-hands mandatory meeting could not so easily be ignored.

Three weeks prior to the end. Fat, dumb, and happy,
enjoying the team's victory lap celebration as
Lord of the Rings: War in the North finally shipped.

I knew what was coming. But I’d dodged so many of these layoffs over the years, that I thought I was bulletproof. It was always a miserable day to say goodbye to friends and comrades, start sending out LinkedIn requests and updating email contacts, but at the end of the day I always came out unscathed. We filed back to our desks to await the emails announcing who was staying and who was going. But this bullet wasn’t one I could dodge. After seven and a half years at a company that I had convinced myself I could somehow stay with for decades, my employment was at an end. It was one of the worst days of my life as my cozy, well ordered career plan tumbled down around my ears in an instant.

Except, that whole plan was a lie, built on a shifting foundation of quicksand. My world had been slowly falling apart for years. We were deep in debt. I was practically wedded to the harsh mistress of overtime, which was the only thing keeping us financially afloat. Our cozy two-bedroom condo was unsellable after the housing crash, but also unlivable in the long term for a family of six. My mental health was slipping from too many nights of minimal sleep, and my fitness, well, let’s just say I wasn’t headed in a good direction there either.

But just like that, with a corporate decision made that I was expendable, we could no longer sustain even the illusion that everything was okay. It turned out to be one of the best days of my life.

Of course, recovery wasn’t an instant process. In the span of almost four years (November 2011 – October 2015) we moved four times. I changed jobs four times too (six counting contractor agency changes). Twice more I’d get surprise layoff notices as studios reduced headcount. The condo got foreclosed on. We defaulted on a few credit cards. I’m an incredibly stubborn, hard-headed person sometimes, but I finally gave up on game development after fourteen years.

I had a lot of fun at Monolith, and sometimes I miss it. But
having the time to spend regular evenings with this crew
is well worth all the trouble.

We moved to South Dakota. I took a job in the Financial Technology sector, doing work similar to what I’d done for most of my career, but with better pay, and sane hours. I bought a motorcycle and started getting in shape. After two years of stability, we decided to commit to this state and buy a house.

Which brings me to now. Six years after a layoff shattered my world and forced me out of my illusory comfort zone, both my family and I are happier, healthier, and better off financially than we were. Two years into my stint at my current employer, maybe this will be the place I make thirty years at. If not though, if I’ve learned one thing from the last six years, it’s that through perseverance, with the help of family and friends who stand by your side, and by the grace of God, all things are possible. Life is never a straight line, but as a motorcycle rider, we learn to flow with the curves and enjoy the road’s journey, not fight for a single direction path where none exists. Not all worst days can become best days, but turning points aren’t things to be feared. In via praemium sum est – The journey is its own reward

Every Once in a While, QA Gets a Trophy

They don't give out many trophies in QA. Oh sure, if you're with a company long enough, you might get a plaque or something for various work anniversaries, maybe something that says "I shipped this!" when a project ships, but awards are being handed out, there's nothing for "Excellence in Quality Assurance" or "Best catches of bugs so the public never saw them."

By its very nature QA is largely invisible to the consuming public, unless we fail at doing our jobs. There's an argument to be made that when something gets an award for excellence, QA shares in that award, but even so, that's not on the trophy/plaque/whatever.

But sometimes, we do get a personal achievement trophy.

Probably the closest I'll ever get to owing a Viper.

It was what the company called a "Bug Bash" with prizes for things like most bugs found, and best bug. I don't remember exactly which category I won in, but this was my prize. To be honest, I'd forgotten I still had this car until I unpacked it in a box that'd been sealed for the last four years.

This week, the car's going on my desk at work. Quality Assurance may not get much glory, but it's nice to have visual reminders of times when we do get positive recognition.