"Very innovative TCG"?

Glancing through the business section of the local newspaper this morning, I chanced upon the cryptic headline "Waterside Invests in Card Company". Thinking vaguely that it was probably something to do with credit cards, I nonetheless took a closer look. Imagine my surprise to find that the "card company" referred to was in fact The Company that so many of us knew so well, and that the "initial investment" was to the tune of $450K. A bit of Googling turned up the website of investment company Waterside Capital Corporation, complete with a news release on the topic that included the following interesting passage:

... changes in the trading card game industry and management issues created some challenges for the company.

[The Company] CEO ... says the company has worked through those issues and is coming back strong. "We've had many successful products in the past and we're looking forward to adding several profitable new products to the company’s line in the near future." [He] says [The Company] is on the verge of announcing a very innovative trading card game before the holidays.

Ye Gods. You don't suppose it's, oh, something named after a color?

This should be fascinating.

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For whom the ball rolls

So, last night my employer hosted a bowling party for us at the local lanes. And unlike the last time I was invited to a company-sponsored bowling party (i.e., what proved to be the last corporate shindig at The Company), this time my carpal tunnel wasn't encased in a brace. So I actually put on a pair of those funny-looking shoes and spent a couple of hours heaving an 8-pound ball in the general direction of a set of pins that were not nearly as cooperative as those pictured here. (I'd have gone for an even lighter ball if there had been one with holes big enough not to threaten to get stuck on my fingers and drag me down the lane too. Though I might've had a better chance of knocking the pins down if it had.)

I can't remember how long it's been since I last went bowling -- has to be at least 20 years -- but I'm pretty darned sure we were still keeping score on paper. (Live pinboys had, however, been replaced by automatic pinsetters.) Good job that it's all computerized now, because my aging brain cells have long since purged the memory of how to score spares and strikes. Not that scoring strikes would have been an issue for me, you understand; I'm not sure that I've ever gotten one in my excessively sporadic bowling experience, and I sure as heck didn't get one last night. To the astonishment of all (especially me), I did, however, manage three spares, with which I was quite content. In fact, the last spare would have been a strike had it only been my first ball of the frame instead of the followup to a resounding gutter ball. Timing is everything.

Speaking of gutter balls, I have to say that -- as welcome as automated scoring may be -- the concomitant cartoon displays to celebrate STRIKE!s and SPARE!s and, yes, GUTTER BALL!s get a bit tiresome after the fourth or fifth or thirtieth time they play. Especially the GUTTER BALL! announcements. I mean, c'mon, I know I just rolled a gutter ball. OK, two gutter balls in one frame. I don't need to have it advertised in technicolor for the entire clientele of the lanes to see. And as for the helpful little "sparefinder" displays after each first-ball-of-the-frame, pointing out where you should throw the ball to pick up that spare... well, shoot, even as rotten a bowler as I can deduce that I should aim at the single remaining pin rather than throwing it down the gutter. Duh. Of course, if I was actually capable of deliberately aiming the ball (instead of heaving it in the general direction), I'd be getting strikes instead gutter balls.

But all kidding aside, I had a blast. For some reason, bowling is the only physical activity that I actually enjoy despite my utterly wretched performance at the game. This goes all the way back to my freshman year in college (contrary to popular belief, bowling was not done with small round boulders even that long ago), when I managed to snag a spot in a bowling/badminton section (you got seven weeks of each) for one of my two semesters of mandatory physical education. The university couldn't boast ten-pin lanes, but they did have a nice set of candlepin lanes in the student union. If you're not familiar with candlepins (they seem to be peculiar to New England and the Canadian maritimes), they use these more or less cylindrical pins and a quite small ball (no finger holes -- you just hold it in your hand), with three balls per frame. I had a great time even though I ended up at the bottom of the class in terms of my cumulative score. And inexplicably, I got an A in bowling (the instructor said it was because I improved more than anyone else), which was a good thing because I flunked badminton, so I still got a C for the term and didn't have to suffer through another semester of PE.

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Year of Hell

In roughly 12 hours, it will be exactly one year since I, and a number of my friends, were "transitioned out of" The Company in its first wave of layoffs. Although I eventually found employment in a much less stressful job at a much higher salary (making the layoff ultimately a Good Thing for me, as my friend DrHeimlich says it was for him), it took a six-month-long trek through dense clouds to reach that silver lining. It will be a while yet before my finances recover from the double whammy of living on unemployment insurance while having to pay the full freight on my medical insurance, and I don't think I will ever forget the punched-in-the-gut feeling from getting that figurative pink slip on Black Monday.

That said, I know that many of the others caught in that layoff and the two later rounds (not to mention those who pre-emptively departed for greener pastures before they could be likewise unwillingly "transitioned") had their lives disrupted a great deal more than I did, having to pick up and move, some with houses to sell and/or babies on the way. I'm thankful that I was able to find a new job locally, and that I didn't have to worry about the impact of my unemployment on anyone but myself.

To all of my former colleagues, here's wishing y'all a peaceful and truly happy new year in 2006, sans pink slips, job hunts, moves, or any of that bullshit. I miss you all.

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Company (clothes)line

Like most of my former colleagues from The Company, I managed to accumulate more company-logo shirts than any one person could wear out in a lifetime. This was mainly a consequence of the fact that at least one new "official" T-shirt or polo shirt was created each year for convention season, and all staff were supposed to wear the current official shirt at the booth and on the tournament floor. With most of the cons running four days, we'd generally get issued four T-shirts. Add to that special T-shirts for tournament prizes, promos, product launches, product champions, in-house departmental shirts, and annual World Championships, and you can pile up a lot of shirts in eight years of volunteer, contract and full-time work.

To be exact (well, I think I found all of them, though there could be one or two more lurking in the far reaches of the closet), my company shirt tally comes in at 33 T-shirts and polos (25 of which are black), plus 5 long-sleeved black cotton shirts. I know some of you had even more, as you were full-time employees for much longer than I was. Regardless, that's a crapload of shirts, and a lot of them aren't exactly something you'd use for everyday wear outside of The Company. (There's something a tad conspicuous about a black T-shirt with STAFF in 6-inch high red block letters on the back.)

So what does one do with a plethora of company shirts when one no longer works for that company? Well, for one thing, I'll certainly never have to buy a pajama top any time before I die. I can wear'em for painting a ceiling with no regrets when I drip paint on them. They're great for yard work, too; I can dirty up two or three a day without ever running out of clean shirts. And a couple are souvenirs that I wouldn't part with for anything, like my 1997 Worlds Finalist shirt. Still, 33 T and polo shirts are more than I need – I mean, it's not as if these are the only shirts I own, far from it – so it's past time to ship some of them off to a local thrift store.

Especially considering that my new company just gave the staff sweatshirts with the company logo for Christmas. Only one apiece (we don't have anything akin to a con season, thank goodness), but it's begun, and I don't imagine it'll stop there. Best I make some room now.

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Flashback

Had a disquieting moment at my workplace last week. Picture this:

It's early Friday afternoon. Earlier, there has been a fair amount of upper management discussion behind closed doors (though that in itself isn't unusual). Now, the company president goes around and gathers the members of the project team into one of the offices for a quick meeting. A couple of people make lame jokes of the "Uh-oh, are we in trouble?" and "What'd we do now?" genre. I don't laugh. My former colleagues from The Company will understand why, I'm sure.

Turns out one of the remote employee/contractors is being let go. My stomach does a somersault. But thankfully (at least from my perspective, though perhaps not from his), it's not a portent of cutbacks; apparently there was some kind of issue with this individual (we didn't get any details). The project team is being told before the weekly company-wide newsletter circulates the terse and damning "We wish him the best of luck in his future endeavours" message. A couple of the developers who had worked with him want to email the guy to say goodbye, but for security reasons, his email account is going to be shut down immediately, and no one has an alternate email contact for him.

I go back to my office and breathe a huge sigh of relief.

I hate deja vu.

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Usability? We don't need no stinkin' usability.

Cre8pc.com is a forum on website usability issues. A recent article, in the course of discussing why website usability is important, observed a phenomenon with which I am all too familiar:

"... sadly, especially in the case of web sites, the biggest hurdle is just getting the boss to understand that just because he or she likes or wants a particular design, doesn't mean it's going to work for everyone else."

I'm reminded, among other things, of a decree that the "last poster" information be removed from the template for a certain set of forums, because The Boss found it "cluttered" and aesthetically unpleasing. Numerous pleas from admins, moderators, and users alike that the information was needed and used were futile. The Boss didn't like it, want it, or need it, therefore it would not be there.

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Innovation?

Back in January, an announcement on my former employer's message boards stated:

"In 2005 [The Company] will expand its selection of fan-focused products and services while striving to reach new levels of innovation. To achieve this goal, some internal reorganization was necessary."

Judging by this recent article on TrekWeb, three bouts of "internal reorganization" haven't helped them achieve that goal. Far from expanding their fan-based products and services, it would appear their original fan-based service, the Official Star Trek Fan Club, has received so little attention that its magazine, the Star Trek Communicator, has ceased publication, without any notification to subscribers. Former editor Larry Nemecek (who apparently was "transitioned out" like the rest of us) says that Paramount intends to revive the Fan Club and magazine, and made this telling observation:

"I also expect that Paramount ... will be insisting that the next incarnation will be in experienced hands, with a return to a more accessible payment and customer service attitude."

This doesn't come as any great surprise to me; I overheard the in-house end of far too many phone conversations where the beleaguered CSRs had to try to explain to irate, bewildered, and/or computerless customers that the only way to buy or renew a subscription was to go online and "do it yourself", establishing an online store account and paying by credit card. No sales by phone or mail, no checks accepted. Of course, those phone calls subsided somewhat once the phone numbers (and email addresses) were eliminated from the magazine and the website, leaving a website form as the only option for "contacting" customer service.

Oh, and did I mention that the entire customer service group either was laid off or left voluntarily? Now, that's what I call "a new level of innovation." Take away the phones, the email, and the CSRs, and presto – no more customer service problems!

And to think that Paramount has issues with this... I guess they just don't know innovation when they see it.

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6 + 46 + 15 = Pay Dirt

6 months. 46 applications. 15 interviews.

That's what it took to get one job offer. But it all finally paid off yesterday. On August 1st, the ex-chemist/webmaster/photographer becomes a technical writer (at a more than 30% increase over previous salary!) for a local software/consulting company. I'll be writing software documentation, online help modules, and the like. It promises to be considerably saner than my last job.

My heartfelt thanks go out to my references who provided such glowing recommendations, as well as to my well-wishing friends for their moral support and good thoughts beamed to my new employer. I'll do my best to live up to your evaluations of my abilities.

I miss my former co-workers more than I can say. I will consider myself fortunate indeed if, in my new workplace, I can make half the friends and experience half the cameraderie I found in my time with The Company. I will also miss the proximity of the Kwans' Subway shop, the MacArthur Center Food Court, and the MacArthur Pharmacy, where they actually knew my name. I will not miss commuting into downtown Norfolk, paying for parking and health insurance, or having said health insurance periodically F-ed up by The Company's failure to pay the premiums.

Now I just need to banish the "permanent vacation" mindset engendered by my lengthy unemployment, and get used to getting up and going to work again five days a week. **Sigh** It was nice while it lasted, other than the lack of a paycheck.

I wish the best to those of you who are still looking (or God forbid, still at The Company). I know exactly how discouraging it is We're all pulling for you. Hang in there, and don't hesitate to ask for moral support and good thoughts.

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Law of Institutions

From The Murphy's Law 2004 Calendar (August 12):

Law of Institutions

The opulence of the front-office decor varies inversely with the fundamental solvency of the firm.

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Pink Slip Blues

To the recipients of the latest round of pink slips (which, a certain out-of-kilter Aussie has pointed out, weren't actually pink) from our erstwhile employer, you have my sympathy and/or my congratulations, whichever fits your feelings about the situation. May you all find bigger and better opportunities in your future.

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Delayed dreaming

I imagine it's typical to dream about one's workplace from time to time, and I'm no exception. BUT, I've found that I never dream about a workplace while I'm working there -- the dreams only surface months after I've left that place.

Last night I dreamed about my last workplace, the one I was laid off from 5 months ago.

I don't remember any of the details, but I don't think it looked anything like the offices where I worked for almost four years. But in my dream, that's what it was, and there were people I used to work with.

I think my subconscious has finally decided that it really is over.

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Ripoff or Coincidence?

You don't suppose that Subaru...? Nah. Couldn't be.

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Marketing 101

Research
Step one in marketing is to do research to learn what customers want. Step two is to ignore what people want and try to package whatever it is that your company knows how to make. That's called product development.

– Scott Adams, Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel

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Spam withdrawal

One of the hardest aspects of dislocation to get used to was the abrupt, almost total cessation of incoming email. For the last 8 years, I've been used to getting a huge volume of email. In the early days it came from answering STCCG rules questions, an active STCCG listserv, and playtesting feedback. As a "remote" employee, virtually all my interaction with the product development team was, of necessity, carried out by email. Finally, I moved to Virginia to work in-house, and while the STCCG traffic had dropped way off by then, damned if my email traffic within the company didn't pick up the slack. (It's hard to believe how many times a day you can email people who are working in an office just a few doors away.) And then of course, there was the spam, up to around 400 a day by the end of 2004.

All in all, it meant that even if I set automatic mail checks to, say, every 5 minutes, I could almost guarantee that something would download every time. It might be nothing but spam, but at least I could tell the mail server was up.

And then my company email address was taken away and rerouted to someone else, so I set up a couple of accounts on my ISP. Suddenly, I'm getting essentially no email. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Now, almost four months later, I may get 3 or 4 emails in an entire day, and those are from a handful of newsletters I subscribe to and the occasional online billing notification. I don't even get spam any more. One piece in a week's time is a lot.

I'm not saying I miss the spam. But after 8 years of email playing a central role in my life, it feels decidedly weird for my mail traffic to almost vanish, literally overnight.

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Pod people

So let me get this straight. An iPod shuffle costs what, 99 bucks? Supposing that I owned one (I don't, can't afford it on unemployment, and if I was going to get an iPod it would be a mini, not a Pez dispenser that holds 120 songs), why in the name of Steve Jobs would I want to buy one or more $20 accessories for the gizmo? Accessories, I might add, most of which don't do anything useful, unless you consider a mini-Mr. Potato Head-wannabe (which makes it look even more like a Pez dispenser) to be useful.

OK, maybe the clip might be marginally useful, and certainly I can't claim that flashlights or watches are useless. But mating a flashlight to an iPod seems somewhat like mounting a paper shredder on a bicycle -- a useful piece of equipment, but not necessarily in that context. And for $20 I'm sure I could get a better-quality and more versatile flashlight.

Give me a real Mr. Potato Head any day. He's only $5.99, and you can let the kids play with it.

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Coming soon to a Dumpster near you

So, those of you who went to see Episode III already -- did you get your copy of that new collectible movie mag? According to the press release, the 2.5 million copies might be gone from theaters in less than 24 hours. It didn't say where they might have gone to.

Just in case you didn't go to a Loew's, Cinemark, or Carmike theater, or they were already out of stock, not to worry, you can download a pdf version from the mag's website, assuming you want to waste 4.3 MB of perfectly good bandwidth. Methinks my virtual copy is headed for my virtual Dumpster.

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Ouch, I think I dislocated my job

You learn something new every day. Yesterday, I learned that we former employees of The Company That Must Not Be Named are not just laid off, terminated, transitioned out, or plain ol' unemployed. What we are, my friends, is dislocated. Who knew?

A couple of weeks ago I got one of those ominously official-looking envelopes in the mail from the VEC, which turned out to be an invitation. Specifically, I was "invited to participate in a Reemployment Services Orientation" to be held at the VEC office in Virginia Beach on May 18 from 9 to 4. Now, I can't say I was keen on going, but declining an invitation from the VEC probably isn't such a hot idea if one wants those unemployment checks to keep coming in the mail, which I do. Besides, it would count as one of my two required "job contacts" for the week. So I bit the bullet and headed on over to Viking Drive yesterday.

There were eight of us in the orientation session -- seven women and one man -- and we learned, among other things, "Why Are We Here?" This wasn't meant in the cosmic sense; it was about why we eight were there in this seminar. And the answer is... because Public Law 103 requires the VEC to "identify individuals who are most likely to benefit from additional job search assistance" and then tell us about reemployment services and job search skills. We lucky eight were selected because of factors like our industry, occupation, length of time in last job, education, and the current unemployment rate. And, they said, aside from the two military retirees who were transitioning to civilian employment, we are all "dislocated workers." That category includes (this is straight from the PowerPoint presentation) "Laid off. Terminated. Self-employed, but out of work. Displaced homemaker."

So the next time someone asks you why you left your last position, tell them you were dislocated. The VEC said so.

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I remember...

Meeting Jason and other dStaff at Star Trek 30 in Huntsville, and coming in 7th in the first STCCG "Nationals" -- my first tournament ever.

Hashing out the dilemma rules with Jason by email.

Being invited to "help out" at the Exhibition Tournament Weekend in Rochester, New York, and watching Jason lose a gunslinging match when he inadvertently seeded a stack of dilemmas under his own mission.

My first unsuspecting trip to the basement restroom, puzzled by Jason's inexplicable "Have fun".

Collaborating with Evan by email on the Useless Romulan Review.

Finally meeting Evan at the second First Contact playtest. He wasn't as blue as I had expected.

Lord of the Rings movie premieres.

Evan and Matt's "Men In Black" impersonation at STCCG '97 Worlds.

Proofing the First Contact rules sheet with Evan on the red-eye out of Vegas.

Teaching Chase Masterton to play STCCG at '98 Worlds.

Hairstyle variations -- dyed orange, shaved off, shoulder-length, ponytailed... and that was just the guys.

Job jackets.

Helping Evan, Brad, and Todd design The Borg.

Evan interviewing me and Brad on RFD before the Borg playtest.

Helge's tantrums.

Sheer terror, flying into Norfolk from Pittsburgh with Mark and watching as lightning struck the wing of our plane. The pilot came on the intercom and assured everyone it hadn't come near us. Yeah, right.

Brad's bottomless bowl of candy.

Tripping on the carpet during booth setup at Essen, plowing headlong into one of the black shipping crates, tearing my pants and almost breaking my wrist.

Escalating e-mail wars with Sandy over rules committee issues.

Thanksgiving dinners at Kendrick & Bonnie's, Tom & Kathy's, and Tim & Melony's.

Not having a phone for my first two months in-house. I got so used to hoofing it upstairs and down to talk to anyone, I kept doing it even after I got a phone.

Mark and me being accused by the lady on the plane of having diarrhea of the mouth.

The Bin of Mordancy.

Four-hour rules committee conference calls.

Trying to figure out the German subway ticket system. I was probably riding illegally most of the time. I'll never know.

Judging Continentals and Worlds with Evan.

Blurting out a totally stupid, totally broken card suggestion at 3 AM at the playtest house. It took Evan all of 3 seconds to point out its fatal flaw. I think 2 of those seconds were just to be polite.

Bad news -- that Jason was leaving -- that spawned some good news -- they hired me to be the new "dAnswerman".

A phone call from Carol with good news -- they were hiring Evan -- and bad news -- I wouldn't be handling rules any more.

A year later, good news -- Evan was moving into PD -- and more good news -- I got the rules-guru hat back.

Breaking Jason's record for tenure as STCCG rules guru.

Listening to Mark record... and re-record... WARS Radio in the office next door.

Memorial Day cookouts at Tim's.

"Porn runs."

Getting tipsy at a Mexican bar in Germany. At least, I think it was a Mexican bar. And I think it was in Germany. But I could be wrong. Does anyone remember just what we were drinking?

Looking for Grunty photo ops.

Playing the Pez Game with Tom and Kathy and Chuck.

Splitting the Worlds photo and article assignments with Marcus.

Putting the booth together and tearing it down at all those Origins and Gen Cons.

Joy at the job offer from Bill. Terror at the thought of pulling up roots and moving to Hampton Roads at the age of 50. If I hadn't already had so many friends here, I couldn't have done it.

I miss you all.

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Bad case of deja vu

That's what I got today when I started seeing rumors of more layoffs at my former employer. With a sinking feeling I started checking my friends' blogs and various other sources and found that, sadly, the rumors were all too true. To all of you who have just joined the ranks of "former employees of the company which shall remain nameless", my thoughts are with you.

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