Another E3 over and done with…

D'Arque Bishop

Well, I'm back from E3.

I should be going to bed at some point in the next hour. The problem is that I'm still kind of on Pacific time, and I usually stayed up late every day this past week. Oh, well… the big interesting games that I saw were Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows, Stargate SG-1: The Alliance, We <3 Katamari, Quake 4, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Starcraft: Ghost, and others. I also have blisters on my feet… bleh.

If you want to see the pics that I took, just take a look here: http://drkbish.darquecathedral.org/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=e3-2005

(Take special note of the booth babe from the SG-1 area on the first page. She's holding her staff weapon upside-down.)

And now, seeing as I'm unpacking my laptop backpack, I decided to answer the never-answered (and for that matter, never-asked) question: "What do you take with you on these trips, Scott?"

<lj-cut text="Placed behind a cut for those people who don't care… heh.">For one thing, I take my laptop backpack instead of my shoulder bag, as the backpack is easier for me to carry around and can be less obtrusive. As for the contents of the bag…
<ul>
<li> My Apple 15" Powerbook and assorted power cables.</li>
<li> Two retractable cables… one network, one phone.</li>
<li> An AirPort Express (aka, a portable wireless access point and router). We used it so all four of us with laptops could share one room's network connection.</li>
<li> My Fuji Finepix 1400 digital camera, and two sets of rechargable NiMH AA batteries for it.</li>
<li> My Canon ZR80 MiniDV camcorder, a Firewire cable, and an A/V cable, plus two MiniDV tapes. (It didn't see much use this year.)</li>
<li> My Game Boy Advance, along with a small selection of games. (This time I brought Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, Space Invaders, Namco Museum, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, Tetris, and Arcade Classic 4: Defender/Joust.)</li>
<li> My noise-cancelling headphones. </li>
<li> The wifi detector <lj user=missyanthrope> got me for Christmas.</li>
<li> A stack of DVDs for watching during the trip. (This time I brought Mortal Kombat, Star Trek II, The Fifth Element, Doctor Who: Pyramids of Mars, and Doctor Who: Rememberance of the Daleks.)</li>
<li> My iPod</li>
<li> The travel charger for my Blackberry.</li>
</ul>
This is what I usually take when I'm on a personal vacation. When on business trips, I take the shoulder bag and don't bother taking the camera equipment.
</lj-cut>
In any event, it's good to be home… heh. A couple of other events happened during this trip, but I'm close to being ready to go to bed. I'll hopefully post about them tomorrow from work. For now, I can say it was a good trip, but it's good to be home in my own bed.

Welcome, my son… welcome to the machine…

D'Arque Bishop

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/3182087

<i>
<p>CHICAGO – Perfect attendance is such a virtue at Lawson Products that employees who go a year without missing work or arriving late are rewarded with extra paid days off.</p>
<p>But for some, there's a downside. At the distributor's warehouse and customer service center in Addison, Ill., there are no excuses for missing work unless time off is scheduled in advance. Any unplanned absence, whether for illness, a flat tire or family emergency, is a black mark.</p>
<p>Punching in one minute late earns half a point. Missing one to two hours merits one point. A full day adds two points.</p>
<p>Six points results in a reprimand; 10 points, suspension without pay. Employees can be fired if they exceed 12 points within a year.</p>
<p>Such "no-fault" attendance programs, which run counter to the trend toward more family-friendly approaches, are migrating from factories and warehouses to white-collar workplaces as employers try to standardize discipline and wrest greater control over workers' schedules.</p>
<p>…</p>
<!–StartFragment –>
<p>No-fault policies eliminate judgments about whether an absence could have been avoided. Instead, they draw a strict line between planned and unplanned time off. Typically, no more than six unscheduled absences
are tolerated within a year, although multiday illnesses count as one "occurrence."</p>
<p>Those with paid days off for illness or emergencies still get paid, but these unplanned absences count against their attendance records.</p>
<p>…</p>
<!–StartFragment –>
<p>"It's kind of like three strikes and you're out," said George Faulkner, absence management practice leader at Mercer Human Resource Consulting. "We try to tell employers, you have to give employees some
kind of flexibility here."</p>
<p>Strict proponents take a different view.</p>
<p>"When management says, 'We're going to give you an opportunity to fire yourself,' people understand that," said Gene Levine, a California-based consultant. "You decide how many times you want to be absent, and you begin to count down to termination."</p>
<p>Levine described his approach at a company that was unhappy about having to fire an employee after she missed work because of her grandmother's death.</p>
<p>"In each of the absences you had before, was there any one you could have avoided?" Levine recalled asking the woman.</p>
<p>She acknowledged one, he said.</p>
<p>"We're not firing you because of your grandmother but because of that date," he told her. "After that, absenteeism dropped because people said, 'If they can let this person go, they're serious.' "</p></i>

I doubt he'll read this… but Mr. Levine, I want you to do me a favor. Scratch that… I want you to do yourself a favor.

Go home to your wife, your kids, your parents. Tell them they're irrelevant. Tell them your job is more important. Tell them that you'd rather save your career than help them.

If you can't do that… then I want you to sit down, and realize <b>that is exactly what you are telling your employees to do</b>. Think on that. If this truly does not bother you… then I weep for humanity, as you are obviously one of its first casualties.

For <lj user=pandorah>…

D'Arque Bishop

http://www.wrongplanet.net/modules.php?name=Articles&pa=showpage&pid=98

The link is to an interview with Bram Cohen, the guy who created the popular BitTorrent protocol so popular in filesharing and the like. The reason I bring it up here to <lj user=pandorah>'s attention is that unlike most interviews, this one takes a different tack and focuses on Cohen's Asperger's Syndrome.

Just thought it might be an interesting read, especially as it focuses on someone who's in Gabe's shoes and has achieved some measure of success in the computer field. :-)

Things are looking up…

D'Arque Bishop

Well, a quick post before I go to bed…

I've spent all week working at my employers' booth at the Offshore Technology Conference. I swear, I know how the Midway folks feel now… I'm on my feet all day, more or less stuck at the booth, talking to people who happen by. The main reason I'm there is to keep an eye on the laptops that are showing our presentations on the plasma displays we rented, and making sure they don't crash and also switching them whenever needed. It's been a long week, and I'll be glad when I can get back to the office.

On the personal side of things, I've reconnected with an old friend, and things have been… well, I haven't been this content in a while. Cute little text messages and emails back and forth between us at work, talking after work, and just generally enjoying each other's company. She's known I've had feelings for her for a while… for one reason or another we never really connected until recently. I can honestly say I'm glad she's in my life right now. (And no, I'm not saying who she is… I'm taking the <lj user=jenndolari> route and keeping her anonymous until/unless she wants to become known.)

Oh, well… life is good. I'm content. Here's hoping things stay this way or better.