My Facebook friends are probably getting plenty in the way of details, but everyone else (a rapidly declining number) might not be getting much at all.

Right now I’m in a coffee shop retraining my huge hands to use my netbook keyboard. I might finally be able to use this thing to take notes the week after next, when my Project Management class begins.

This is my second summer living in Austin, and part of me just can’t relax. It’s a part that’s easily swayed by Texas martinis and nootropics, varied entertainment options and a hassle-free workplace, though. I imagine it’s kind of like post-hypnosis. The days when I used to quack like a duck on command are long behind me, and by “quack like a duck” I mean “seethe with disempowered rage.”

I’m sure other people would react differently to such a dramatic life change. This year, I’m sure most in this country experienced one that they’ve had to endure — but I’m also sure I’ve groused about other people’s problems before, without useful conclusions.

Meanwhile, my journey of self-reflection has progressed with fits and starts. I’m currently testing out the notion that the way I talk, both with inflection and choice of words, makes me sound annoyed more often than I really am. Still not sure if it’s actually true, but being happy makes me more self-conscious about such things. I am also aware, as well, that I’m getting old and fat. Being a guy in his 30s, this is not something I feel comfortable questioning others about.

The classical radio station is on too loud in here, and my Step by Step Microsoft Project 2007 book is sitting like a big blue and white lump on the table. I’m probably the happiest I’ve been in years, and the only thing I wonder about is how long it’ll last, which means I still don’t really know how to smile.

Maybe once summer’s finally over.

Trion World Network announced their new mumorperger, in connection with E3. PR-speak cut out, they’ve got a nifty server architecture, the game will be class- and subclass-based but will employ a “unique class system that allows the players to play every character class in the game,” there’s no release time set but you should set up an interview time in their suite on the convention center concourse anyway.

Only clear message: They really wanted a game with the abbreviation “HoT”.

I expect lots of Facebook spam. And maybe cookies.

Two years ago, a company no one had ever heard of decided to announce on the IGDA forums Bulletin Board (the board you use for useless free advertisements of companies no one has ever heard of, and occasionally hiring requests for said companies, along with Midway) that they had licensed the Unreal 3 engine for a game they wanted to call “End”.

More than one user of the forums made fun of the post as well as the supposed game’s stupid name.

Today, someone claiming to have been a former employee of the company no one had ever heard of, replied to the two-year-old thread to defame his former employer and call it a scam operation.

This remains the only sort of reason to read and post on the IGDA official forums. Go ahead and read it.

If I ever had a greater purpose for this site, like some people, I’d probably update it more often. But, now that I finally got a game-industry job, I’m mainly focused on keeping it. If you’re Facebook friends with me, you’ll have a lot more to read, obviously, not that you’ll necessarily want to.

It’s good to have someplace to come back to, I guess. Plus some of you actually keep me on RSS.

No, I wasn’t there for this, but it’s more evidence that Austin is in fact more awesome than where you live.

Take that, Filipino prison warden of doom.

I used to be a huge Molly Ivins fan. Her columns were a big reason why I came to Texas as a young(er) newspaper-man, because this place just sounded so interesting. Well, more than Kansas did. Plus there are more newspapers here, but as I found out, far fewer places than I’d actually want to live than in my home state.

I’ve been re-reading her first book, “Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?” It might be because she would be having so much fun right now skewering the McCain-Palin campaign, or because she’d be raving about the Democratic ticket being so much better organized, on message, planned and ballsy in a way so few predecessors since the Kennedy era have been. I’m sure she’d be plagiarizing her own reporting on how the 1990 race for Texas Governor related so keenly to the gesture made at last night’s debate — Ann Richards put out her hand to Clayton Williams and got rebuffed, and it turned out to be the tipping point that led to her getting elected.

But I might have also known that I’d find something hidden between the pages. Like the following, from a 1988 column in Ms. magazine, assessing what she referred to as a “third strain of Republican women,” the ones who weren’t engaging in class war and just tried to make good sense:

The only problem with this sort of bright, sell-educated, suburban-mom-driving-a-wood-stationwagon school of Republican woman is her smugness. Were this quality something fleetingly felt or observed, one could mark it down to subjective impression, but it comes out in Republican politics as well. Political self-righteousness is not the exclusive property of any one party: what is funny is how indignant Republicans get when they realize that Democrats consider themselves morally superior.

This is an autographed copy, incidentally. Molly wrote, or scrawled:

For John —

Raise more hell! And stick w. j—ism

Molly Ivins

I maintain that the abbreviation was meant as “with journalism” and that she intended the mark as an em-dash. And now she is dead and I have put aside professional journalism for the game industry.

No regrets, Molly. God rest you.

Pop quiz: What do the following two videos have in common?

Video for Frank Black, “Los Angeles”

G4TV interview about Warhammer Online

Answers in essay form only.

Jock: Oh my God! J.C.! Obama!

J.C. Denton: Obama!

Jock: It’s remote controlled. Hold on.

J.C. Denton: Get out of there!

Yeah.

Do not solicit me to post stuff on this blog unless we’re friends who speak regularly. You will be spamfiltered.

The opinions expressed on this blog do not necessarily represent those of my employer that I like a big huggy bunch.

I really couldn’t care less about Warhammer Online.