I came to the realization that there’s no way I can maintain a one page resume. I keep having to bump projects off, and it’s getting harder and harder to cut some of my babies off there. So I’ve reworked the thing to put the most salient stuff on the first page, and I guess I’ll just deal with the consequences if the two page format pisses anyone off. That being said, here she is in all her shining glory, freshly updated and gloriously resplendent.

Resume (pdf) and Resume (doc).

Older daughter:

“At camp today some guy sang Native American songs. But he wasn’t really an Indian, he was from America.”

Stand down, Jerry!

Looking for a date?

This joke is so old, it talks about Celis beer. Still funny, though.

There were these three guys drinking in a trendy bar down in the “Warehouse District” one night… a Californian, an Aggie and a bonafide Austin native (endangered species). Well after a few minutes, the Californian goes over to the bartender and orders a bottle of the finest red California wine on the menu. The bartender hands it over and the Californian pulls out a sterling silver corkscrew. He uncorks the bottle, takes the offered glass, pours a small mouthful, swirls it around in the glass, smells it deeply and drinks it down, then with a smile of satisfaction on his face, the Californian suddenly throws the bottle into the air, pulls out a small 22 derringer and shoots the bottle in midair, spraying fine California wine and shattered glass all over the bar.

The patrons demanded to know, “Why on earth would you waste such fine wine and act like such an ass?”

The Californian cooly replied, “Hey, I’m from California. Where I come from, we have plenty of great red wines!”

The patrons, grumbling, went back to their drinking, and then the Aggie swaggered up to the bar and ordered a bottle of Perfidido tequila. Upon delivery, the Aggie uncorked the bottle with his teeth, took a single sip, and throwing the bottle into the air, wheeled around, pulled out a .44 Magnum and with a mighty roar and flash, shot the erstwhile bottle of tequila into another reality, spraying the assembled patrons again, with finely powdered glass and mists of fine tequila.

This produced more cries of outrage, followed by the query, “Hey, why would you waste such fine tequila like that?”

The Aggie replied, “I’m from Texas, where I come from, we have rivers of tequila, no problem!”

After awhile, the Austin native went up and ordered a Celis Pale Bock. The bartender brought it over and popped the cap from the bottle and the Austin native tilted it back and drained it to the last drop. Then, with a satisfied smile, he touched his crystal pendant hanging around his neck, hauled off and threw the Celis bottle into the air, pulled out a crusty old 38 special and taking very careful aim, shot the Californian and the Aggie and caught the bottle before it hit the ground.

After a moment of stunned silence, one of the patrons ventured to ask, “Why on earth did you do that?”

The native of Austin replied, “I’m from Austin. Here we have gobs of Californians, and even more Aggies, but a glass bottle, you can recycle that!”

Jason Eyer, the man behind the phone calls

How many times have you gotten a phone call in the last week telling you that your car warranty is about to expire or that your credit card interest rate could be lower? I got three calls on Friday alone. This is one of the fine, upstanding individuals behind the calls. Note the scruffy face, the greasy hair, the all-around look of lizard-like complacency.

For more info on the scam, this Ask Metafilter thread has a lot of good links to follow. The people are crooks that don’t give a damn about the national do-not-call database and they prey on the old, sick, and weak. Karma’s a bitch.

This couple still makes beautiful music together after 62 years of marriage.

Amy Walker performs “Over the Rainbow” as Judy Garland, from the young, naive girl in The Wizard of Oz to the troubled woman in her forties who sang on stage -- older, hurt, addicted, but still yearning.  It’s a pretty remarkable performance.

I spent the weekend in Pennsylvania at the memorials for Dave Szulborski. I’m still incapable of expressing all that he meant to me. He was a mentor and a friend and a big brother and an inspiration. It seems impossible to me that I won’t be exchanging chatty emails with him anymore and hearing about the amazing stuff he’s been working on lately.

Anyway, I looked through my backup drive and found this old treasure from Catching the Wish in 2006. Here’s the story: The mayor and other entities were fighting to tear down the library and digitize all the books. Dave’s character, Dale Sprague, and my character, Sarah Wyatt, were totally opposed to the idea. The players rallied to the cause, bombarding the fictional development company with email and setting up a petition site to save the library. This is the audio recording of a call-in City Council meeting where Aglaura opened the floor to let non-residents make statements about the issue. All those who called in were players, save the crazy singing lady, who was one of the puppetmasters – Haley Moore.  Mayor Dobbs was played by Paul Melamud, Sam was Michelle Senderhauf, Bruce was Nick Braccia, and Diana was Kassandra Standridge.

Enjoy!

Aglaura City Council Meeting, June 22, 2006 (MP3)

I don’t have the words to express my feelings right now. I may never have them. Dave Szulborski died last night. All I can do is make travel arrangements to his memorial service. Still in shock.

One of the things about being an ARG designer is that you don’t often have time to be an ARG player. It’s easy to fall out of touch with the rhythm of the player’s side, that feeling of groping in the dark for a light switch that just barely illuminates a tiny patch and then the trek onwards to find the next flash.

I receive a fair amount of trailhead packages in the mail and via email, but either they come at a time when I’m too busy to participate or they don’t pique my interest. The tape recorder for the “Charlotte Is Becoming Real” game (could I have dubbed it anything goofier, I wonder?) was a perfect storm. It came when I had time to play and it was mysterious enough to make me monkey around and figure out just what in the hell it all meant. Normally these things come with some sort of overt puzzle. This, not so much. In fact, it took nearly two weeks to realize there was a puzzle there at all.

This led us down a twisting, snarled pathway of Facebook updates, websites, telephone calls from game characters, both authoritative and confused, frantic searches in Central Park for hidden objects, and finally a paid trip for two players to Berlin, where they had a finale in the Sacrow woods involving a mad psychiatrist, a wobbly rowboat, a bloodstained bathroom, and the grinning author of Therapy, Sebastian Fitzek.

Granted, there were some bugs in the game, at least from my perspective. First, the pacing was uneven – at times glacially slow and at times very quick. Second, the events of the finale were geared almost exclusively towards the two people who traveled to Berlin, and left the people at home no way to participate (or even watch live, because cell signal was weak and the phone battery ran out). Last, the players are left with more questions at the end than they started the game with, which runs contrary to how we expect ARGs to be. However, I’m reserving judgment on the last, because we do have a scheduled PM chat for next Wednesday and it’s possible that there is a reason for these questions to be left. I’m all for telling stories in new ways.

Now, those criticisms aside, I have a lot of praise for the game. First of all, I think that it’s important that an ARG be built around a solid product, and Fitzek’s Therapy is a rollicking good read (although perhaps a bit heavy-handed on the foreshadowing). I just finished reading it again for the second time, going back and noticing subtle clues that I wouldn’t have known to look for in the first reading. My mind is still on stormy Parkum Island, with my ears and toes chilled. But besides the book, the game was intriguing. It was fearlessly gung ho in ways that corporate American games are not: there were no waivers to sign, players were supposed to explore the return address the packages came from, someone needed to go to San Diego and dig up a tape recorder from a random place in a park, and so on. This was not a carefully-cultured, bubblewrapped entertainment experience. It felt more like a gritty, personalized, grassroots game, the kind you can sink your teeth into. A real, old-fashioned ARG, in other words, the kind your Mama used to play.

So to the game designers at VM-People and to Sebastian Fitzek I would like to say thank you for lighting a fresh spark of wonder in my cynical puppermastery heart. I had such a good time playing your game. I hope you do many more here in the U.S. and they’re met with great success. Kudos!