Remember The Ventletter? Well, I actually did something much more strange. I’m really interested in people’s opinions here. I’ve noticed a certain uniformity in reaction.

When the company called and asked for references, I decided I’d had enough. The CEO asked me to track down a reference they were having trouble contacting and something in his tone made me furious.

I called up my other references and had them all agree to two things:

1. That we hadn’t discussed what to say to the guy.
2. That when I work overtime I sometimes, playfully, strangle coworkers.

And that, as they say, was the end of that. He was digging, so I gave him something to find — a strategy from poker. I’m collating reports from my obliging refs, perhaps for another update.

I’ve seen a couple of beneficial side effects already. First, I feel better about my interactions with the douche — like I counted coup. Second, I broke a creative block I’ve had on a story I’ve been working on for a couple of years about the games industry. Third, I feel more confident — I got an anecdote out of an unpleasant encounter. Fourth, I feel more connected to my references. Fifth, I didn’t send someone a crazy fucking letter.

I’m sure the list will grow.

The negotiations are still in process but it looks like I will soon be on a long term contract at a studio in the fashion/media district. There’s a small chance I will end up in the financial district at a place offering stock options — but I’ve long since learned the trick of offering someone a piece of the glorious future. They’d also have to trump my locked-up chunk of the gritty now.

I can’t say too much — this is high tech so obviously everything is tip top secret on pain of enhanced interrogation and rendition to room 101 — but I’ll be at an iOS studio that is expanding to the major consoles, and I’m one of the relatively few people in TO with seventh generation console programming experience. I guess.

From their hiring questions (it turns out they liked that answer!) I will probably be building interface design tools and display systems. I used to think that I was doomed to do interface development forever, but as I matured it turned out to be interesting and useful — even something I do for fun — “become what you are.” I reckon this change of mind is largely due to “interface” stuff sounding sexier to my design brain now.

It’ll be useful for me to update my company’s paperwork and web presence shortly — I’m going to start banking deductions and development incentives because “we” have nontrivial revenues now. It might be time to outsource some economically efficient subset of “our” business to India.

Aside: I wrote this on my slide phone while waiting to see a doctor. An older guy sitting across from me interrupted a girl tapping away, “look, everyone’s on their phones” — and we all were — “I am more oldschool.” She smiled and went back to tapping. He turned back to the television.

McLuhan might say that we were all modifying our environment with electronic technology. Doctors’ waiting rooms have always needed cybernetic enhancement — even with something as low-tech as a book or magazine. The real space of a waiting room is far less interesting than ANY possible virtual environment. But privileging an anonymous broadcast over personal, perhaps social, engagement is oldschool in a strange way: It’s anti-tribal, googie even, as if the future had come and gone in 1986.

Watching reports about stocks I don’t own, weather that isn’t here, and traffic I won’t encounter is a much more passive, disengaged way to spend time than [micro]blogging and playing Marble Cannon. Or killing those goddamn smug pigs in Angry Birds. The old guy was essentially complaining that we were impoverishing his technological-environmental experience without identifying that experience itself as impoverished. We were much more socially engaged, albeit in our own isolated universes: I was talking to people all across Canada and he couldn’t engage someone across an empty chair.

I had McLuhan in my pocket too, to cybernetically modify the streetcar ride home: “The Medium is the Massage”. I should have given it to the old guy, but while I was writing this he got bored of waiting and left.

Aside’s aside: it occurs to me that “small” games should be tribally social: “eclectically” multiplayer, instead of “massively”. They should all have “friends” leaderboards, baseline. Maybe matching the scope of a game to the scope of its social engagement is a good guideline.

Via BB, the prevalence of celiac disease has quadrupled since the 1970s. Via a random conversation I once had with someone claiming to be a nutritionist in Street Level Espresso, our wheat supply is essentially a monoculture (Canadian Red being a notable alternate varietal).

Anyway, I know a couple of celiacs and they are skinny as heck — and there’s nothing I’d like to do more than diet based on an implausible corporate-grassplant conspiracy. I think it was Michael Pollan who said you can think of modern agriculture as a war between wheat and corn to control the humans — the resources that enable their propagation. They certainly have lobbies in most governments more powerful than you, I, or our elected representatives, as well as a more complex genome.

Today for breakfast: olive oil cooked omelet with chopped red peppers, fresh ground black pepper, and kosher salt. Coffee (lots of cream, no sugar). Down with wheat!

I would also say “down with Corn!” but, let’s face it, all of the most delicious foods are corn-based: tacos, burritos, enchiladas, tortilla chips… Or maybe I just like South-Central American cuisine?

This is the page that I see whenever I open a browser window/tab. I’ve recently modified it to style and randomize the message, which was originally:

You can find the full version here. Refresh to refresh. The versions with less pleasing visual layout tend to also be worse advice, though “less rock more talk” is quite nice.

Note that sometimes it reads up-down as well as left-right.

I was just asked some pointed questions in a company’s second interview. They want to talk to me again next week, but I am fuming and considering sending the following (this is one of the benefits of pseudonymous posting — I can do this, have the satisfaction and self-esteem boost of a public whinge, and then send it or not depending on how I feel tomorrow). It’s ordered from most-to-least likely for me to actually send:

Hi Chris:

I thought some more about the questions you asked during our meeting, and I have some different answers.

First, it is standard in the game industry to take time off, and even change studios, between projects. I have left studios for a variety of reasons, including being headhunted and to pursue educational interests. I have also stayed at studios for consecutive projects, and been invited back to ones I left. I was wrong-footed when you asked me about this so pointedly and might not have responded skillfully.

Second, I have multiple interests and I have been fortunate enough to be able to explore lots of educational avenues: the visual arts, business, computer science. If I choose to go back to university again, next time I’ll probably study anthropology or linguistics. Or maybe philosophy. Or French.

Third, I think diverse skills are both valuable and needed in the game industry. I can code. I can critique visual layouts. I can budget. But only by accident — I just studied things that interested me and, as luck would have it, found out that I’ve got multidimensional competencies. You’d need to hire two or three people to duplicate my skill set — think of the cost!

The questions you asked revealed more of your understanding of HR best practices than, perhaps, was wise. You seem to think my background is fragmentary whereas I think of it as broad. This makes me think you are looking for someone who is “just a coder”, whereas, in the words of Marshall McLuhan, I am not looking for a J-O-B, I am looking for a R-O-L-E.

Given that disconnect, I don’t think we’re a good fit. Thanks for the opportunity, but I don’t want to explore this particular avenue any further.

Sincerely,

[Jack]

This company has severely upset me twice during the interview process, so that’s it for them regardless of my decision to send this or not. “Won’t be a strike three ’cause I don’t play fair.” But, via BB, some mollifying quotes from Steve. Another fave was “getting fired from Apple was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

I’m going to Vegas for a couple of days to unwind.

I’m having trouble dealing with companies that only want to hire me for one thing. It’s like they haven’t even read McLuhan about the death of the job and the rise of the role. I need to put some money together, build a product, and fucking jet.

Shalom. Selah.

… to be employee #4 of a mobile startup or not? I guess that’s not really a choice, because they haven’t offered yet and my alternative so far is unemployment. Plus, there’s no reason to not do something awesome.

They want me to come in and work for them on a two-day contract as a trial period. I love that — it’s something I’ve planned to do with employees since I read about it back in the day, I think in a /. comment multiple years ago. You get both get to see what the day-to-day is, more or less, before over committing.

My job search is going well — I have several more interviews lined up. It’s been a few days past three years since I’ve had a “normal”-ish job and it’s only slightly terrifying being back in the market. I have a small “how am I going to be abused this time?” feeling and a larger “money!” feeling.

Via Wikipedia, you must be/have:

• Aged 18 or over;
• Holder of a permanent resident permit or a valid residence permit with a non-temporary reason of stay, e.g. family formation and/or reunion (gezinsvorming/gezinshereniging);
• 5 years of continuous residence in the Netherlands, Aruba, Curaçao, or Sint Maarten with a valid residence permit prior to the application date. Residency under a temporary reason of stay (e.g. study) is also counted in those five years.
• sufficiently integrated in Dutch society and are able to read, write, speak and understand Dutch. This must normally be proved by taking a naturalisation test. Successful completion of an eligible integration course is an alternative.
• in the four years preceding the application, the applicant has not been given any custodial sentence, training order, community service order or high monetary penalty.

Essentially you have to live there for five years, and then you get European citizenship. Sounds do-able, no?

Today I’m starting my game design critiques in earnest. I must say: bitching about, and being amazed by, video games is something I feel very comfortable with. It’s one of the few things where I feel I really know what I’m talking about. Most of my opinions I’m open to disagreement on, but non-skippable cutscenes after a savepoint are the stuff of heresy, cancerous vomit, poor taste, and impoliteness.

The cardboard dinos can wait, I have games to play!

Here’s a roundup of some of my stuff at the ‘mo, some stuff I think is cool — I always have projects in the works that I don’t talk about so people won’t be disappointed if I space. This is more about consumption though:

Tomorrow I’m going to start tweeting all the food I eat. This is partly ridiculous narcissism, partly an attempt to abuse the diet-improving effect of self-reporting, and partly because I just figured out how to do media tweets with my not-a-smartphone. I’m opening my diet up to scrutiny and mocking — please do so, it’ll help. “You eat that?!” etc. My twitter is four characters: the first two letters of my first name and the first two letters of my last name. Sounds like “awful”.

Second, I’m listening to an assload of dubstep with Daz’s buttons. I think I like it because it’s game-like and industrial-like. My younger film compatriots almost-universally worship at the wubbly altar and their taste has, perhaps, infected me (though Daz had me on that shit back in the day).

And since I’m always thinking about music — I just thought of a NIN/Beatles mash I want to try — I thought I’d post this, via my film school droog Big Sexy. Dubba Jonny’s Intro to Dubstep Production:

[download]

And when Jill comes home I pretend I’ve been listening to KCRW, an LA station that mostly-only plays good music (via BB somehow). And I am kidding, Jill likes dubstep well enough.

And my new favorite celebrity-type-person is JSJ from World of Wonder, largely because I loved his character in Party Monster and mostly-all of the WOW’s productions, and because of his publicity still on Wikipedia.