There’s an article in MSU’s student newspaper,The Reflector, about the midnight release of Halo 2 last week at the local GameStop in Starkville. Apparently they had 2 armed ROTC guards with rifles there to make sure there wasn’t any trouble. As far as I know there wasn’t any. Seems a little extreme though.
After a night of heavy drinking, I find that I need 3 things: a few glasses of water, a decent meal, and a BM. After I’ve had those, I feel better in about an hour or two. Friday night was fun, but because of that early Saturday wasn’t.
The shifts in the temperature around here has also made me sick, literally. Most of the weekend was spent playing Everquest. I have to get back to more important things this week.
Oh well, today is payday. And the next weekend will be here soon enough.
Electronic Arts, the world’s largest third-party video game publisher, is in a little trouble. Yesterday, this Livejournal blog entry by the spouse of an EA worker started a buzz on the internet. She was unhappy with EA’s unfair treatment of its workers. During crunch time, they are expected to work at least 12 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week. They get no overtime pay or additional days off for doing this.
I’ve known that in the software development industry, it’s expected that you work long hours during crunch time. I had heard that the video game industry was exceptionally harsh, but this is worse than I expected. I read some of the responses to the blog entry yesterday, and it seems like not all of EA is like that. And of course, not all video game companies are like that.
Now it appears that EA could be facing a class action lawsuit because of the unpaid overtime pay. I wonder how this will turn out.
Over the summer I went through part of the interview process with EA. I submitted my resume so that I could be considered for a position with their sports division in Orlando. They sent me a written test to fill out. I guess I did well on the test because they wanted a phone interview a couple of weeks later. The phone interview didn’t go so well, so I’m still here in Starkvegas. It would interesting to see how things are inside EA right now.
I finally got my copy of Everquest II just a little while ago. I ran into ole Russ at the store. I’m not surprised that he’s going to be playing the game as well. I think his group is going to be playing on the roleplaying-preferred server. It looks like I may be making multiple characters, which probably isn’t a bad thing. I’ve heard that Pacman might be interested in trying out Everquest. We must encourage him to pick up the habit.
I also got my copy of Halo 2 this morning. There just aren’t enough hours in the day.
The manager of the GameStop here in Starkville told me that I could pick up my copy of Everquest II around 3:00 today. I probably won’t get a chance to go pick it up until around 5:30, and I’ll be playing most of the night (assuming that I can play today). I wish Sony would have released the name of the game servers. I think I’ll just pick the 4th one down the list and start playing on it.
GameStop is also going to start selling Halo 2 at 12:01 tonight. I hate to say it, but I think Halo may just have to wait a little bit. No longer than a couple of days, of course.
I saw The Incredibles last night. It’s a VERY good movie. Loads of fun. But that’s to be expected from Pixar. Go see this movie ASAP!
This weekend was supposed to be the debut of the Star Wars Episode 3 trailer, but it wasn’t played before The Incredibles. I’m sure I’ll be able to find it online somewhere.
It’s been over 4 years since George R.R. Martin released the latest book in his A Song of Ice and Fire series. It looks like we may have to wait a little longer, partially because of President Bush. This message was posted on his website Wednesday.
I write this the day after the presidential election.
A FEAST FOR CROWS is still not finished. Yes, I have written some more pages since the June update. No, the book is not yet done. My August and September schedule was full of conventions, travel, and speaking appearances, which cut deeply into my writing time during those months. Yes, I could have made more progress on the book if I had stayed at home chained to the desk, but I make these commitments years in advance and I take them very seriously.
Also, some of the writing that I have done since June has actually been rewriting. My goal, as I have said repeatedly in these updates, has always been to produce a book that is a good as it can be, so when I suddenly realize that one of my story threads can be made much more powerful and dramatic with some restructuring, I restructure… even if that means going back, tearing up finished chapters, and reworking them from start to finish.
That’s done, anyway. A FEAST FOR CROWS will be much better for it, and now I am back at work on new chapters once again… although not today, and maybe not tomorrow, or next week. I am pretty good with words, usually, but no words can express how miserable, angry, and depressed I am feeling this morning over the results of yesterday’s election. The exit polling makes it clear: this was a victory for bigotry and fear, a mandate bought with lies. I know from past experience that it is going to take me some time to shake off this depression.
Losing myself in the world of Westeros would probably be the best medicine for what ails me just now, I know full well. There is solace in work, and books — my own books, and those of others — have always been a refuge for me during dark times in my life. Today, however, the {fictional} travails of my {fictional} Seven Kingdoms seem pretty unimportant compared to the very real woes that the United States is facing, a future of war and isolation abroad, and division and repression at home.
Winter is coming to Westeros, but it has already come to America.
—George R.R. Martin, November 3, 2004
I was doing some reading on one of my favorite series of books, The Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind, and found some cool information. Debt of Bones, a prequel to the series, was released in standalone paperback on Nov 2. On the copyright page, the author is listed as Robert Jordan, who is the author of The Wheel of Time series. Both authors use the same publishing company, Tor Fantasy. Since The Sword of Truth is similar to The Wheel of Time in many aspects, some people say that Goodkind copied The Wheel of Time and just changed the name and places. Maybe somebody at the publishing company was just trying to give credit where it’s due. I doubt it though. Anyway, on the same day as it was released, Tor recalled all copies of the book and is having them destroyed. If anybody got a copy, it’s probably a collectors item.
I want to recommentd Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series. I’m currently on the second book. Someone had recommended this series to me before, but I had told myself that I wouldn’t get started on another incomplete series. Since the final book was recently released, I figured it was a good time to get started.
I guess I was about halfway through the first book before I started to really get into it, but it got really interesting after that. Now I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen next.
I spent a little time tonight playing in Guild Wars World Preview Event. It seems like a decent game so far. It’s weird, but fun to play. The preview lasts for only 3 days (Oct. 29-31), so get it now if interested.
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