Yeah hey, so I made it.

It was a remarkably smooth drive, a fact I can utter only now without fear of retribution from capricious travel gremlins. There was exactly one scary moment with an asshole in Vegas who thought sideswiping me might be a good idea. Fortunately, he changed his mind.

No one broke into my car, no hotel nightmares, no cats peeing all over the car seat, no car breaking down on that stretch of I-70 with the ominous NO SERVICES FOR 100 MILES sign.

Speaking of the cats -- I don't know what I did right, but they are remarkably not-freaked-out. They're already mostly adapted to the new (temporary) digs, and after tomorrow they'll have mousies and scratching posts. My fridge is totally stark empty, which I consider to be a fine, fine challenge.

Anyway, tonight is dinner with friends. Tomorrow is move the rest of the crap out of the car and probably give her a wash. She deserves it. And a friend got me a ticket to Blizzcon, which is the geeky icing on my moving cake, so there's, like, that, too. The fam also wants me to swing by, which I may try to do tomorrow. It just seems wrong to be this close and to not go see them immediately.

All in all, very happy, very content...the only thing missing is Mike. Mike is who I want to share all this with. Someday soon I know I will.

Do I think I'm blessed? Baby, I know it.

Car is mostly packed. Mail is soon to be forwarded. I'll be on the road for five days and I don't think I'll be posting much. Or maybe I will. I can be contrary that way.

I thought I'd do a little experiment and liveblog my last day. I realize this could be utterly boring, but I will do my best to keep that from happening.

And so....

Evening - Dinner and drinks with old friends, some tears, some "happy sadness" as I have come to view it anymore. The good buzz I built from a bloody mary and a beer quickly went south when absinthe was introduced, and carried through to Saturday in the form of much hurling between the hours of 6 AM and 10 AM.

Mental note to self: no more absinthe.

5 - 7 PM - Mike reminded me that some people leave at 5, so I started walking around and giving hugs out. Oddest hug: Tamma, in the bathroom. Not as icky as it sounds (we had just gotten done washing our hands).

Then went and started wiping down my computer. So many years. Sooooo many files.

4ish - Bryan, who put in 2 weeks notice the same day as me, came by for one last hug.

3 PM to 4:30 PM - Talked to coworkers, gave my former intern a "pro tip" on how to set up email filters. (Yes, really.) Told Chris what account to transfer my characters to. Weird to think that I can play GemStone or DragonRealms again as a player. That hasn't been true for 15 years.

1ish to 2:50 PM - Dealt with car, got cat supplies, chatted with cat food representative who was trying to sell me on her products and told her I was going to California. She congratulated me.

Noonish - 1:45 PM - Lunch at Miss Aimee B's. Quite possibly one of the greatest restaurants in St. Charles. I finally got to try the Peach Bomb, which was always either out of season or out of stock when I've been there before. It was worth the wait. Bought a copy of their cookbook, which includes the recipe for their divine milk-lemonade.

11 AM - Noon - Dropped off car to be balanced and aligned, then came to work and started sorting through what's left of my desk. Answer: not much. Formed words on the corkboard using pushpins, then wrote someone else's poem on my whiteboard. The last line of which I intend to someday tattoo on my body. Somewhere.

9 AM - 10ish - Ate leftovers (thanks Chris and Ann!) and waited for Mike to get ready. Watched part of the Scrubs episode "My Finale".

8 AM - 9 AM - Awake before the alarm again, but I seem to have slept through the night without incident. Printing out the directions to California, as well as my housing instructions (the place I'm going to offers 30 days corporate housing while I settle into my new OC life). Next up, the usual mundanity: shower, stirring Mike from his torpor, feeding and medicating the girlcat.

So, at around 2:30 PM Friday I quit my day job to go work for another one. August 14th is my last day.

There have been two obvious questions that keep coming up. Why? is simultaneously the easiest and hardest to answer: because it was time. After 13 years, I've made the decision to be back near my family and to do something different with my career. Conversely, after 13 years it is a hell of a thing to say goodbye to the people I have "grown up" with. I now have this ticking clock over my head, reminding me that by August 16th, we will part ways. Some of them I will almost certainly see again.

Some I won't. And yeah, that bothers me.

Is Mike...? is the other question, the one people leave dangling a little because they know it's delicate.

It's not. Mike and I may not be bound by social contracts, but we are forrealz and have no intention of splitting. We've talked a whole lot, and since the current project is a short-term one, he's going to see it through. A couple people have uttered the words "long-distance relationship", but look -- I grew up in a military family. It was not at all unusual to see my stepdad deployed for three, four, six months (or more) and my mom and him got by just fine. Mike and I can survive a couple months while I acclimate to my new position and he finishes up something awesome. Emotionally, a little tough. Financially and career-wise -- very responsible. We're kooky like that.

As for the company I'm going to...I don't feel like publicly disclosing that at this time. I will say it's in Southern California and I'm going to be an Associate Producer. This job I was hired for seems to be surprising people left and right. It's a role I played at one point during Hero's Journey's production, and I enjoyed the dance of schedules and coordination. I suspect it's going to give me the breathing space to be creative in the after hours again, and I like that, too. I like that a lot.

There's a lot running around in my head right now. I have two weekends and a day to be a good Autobot, transform, and roll out. I am looking forward to the drive as a chance to let go of a lot of anxiety and see parts of the country I love, as well as a few friends and Mike's family.

But, hell, I'm looking forward to a lot. I'm blessed. I know I am. What I'll miss can't be recouped. What I'll find -- who knows. Life is good. Life is complicated. This I know: life goes on, whether I stay or go. In the grand scheme of things, I'm just one thread making her way through the tapestry. I'm just an extremely loud one.

The interviews are fun, I find. Part of me hates the idea of them. This is the part I suspect is still sitting on the bleachers and reading books while everyone else runs laps or flirts with boys. I'm learning to ignore her for these circumstances.

The truth is when I get in there and start pressing the interviewee for answers, I find myself having a whole lot of fun. This is because People Are Interesting, and a good interviewee knows to make him/herself Interesting. It also helps to have three fellow interviewers asking their own brand of quirky questions.

My role in these hires is the interview lead. This (usually) means:

• Welcoming the interviewee and giving them a quick view of the office and some project concepts.
• Introducing the other interviewers, their roles, and the company history, as well as the flavor of our game.
• Setting the tone. This usually involves uttering a "fuck" somewhere at the start of the interview.
• Keeping a list of standard questions and make sure they get asked.
• Making sure the interview stays on track. Sometimes, though, tangents can tell you more about an interviewee than the "So, describe yourself in 3 words." type questions.
• Explaining the company benefits, work hours, and how we run our schedule.
• Making sure the interviewee leaves the building with questions answered or a place to contact me if they have more questions.
• Conducting the postmortem.

As the company's only dedicated writer, I'm the one most likely to ask the questions that pick away at what kind of writer they are. There are key phrases, experiences, and sentiments I'm looking for that indicate whether someone is what they say they are. There's no trickery here. If the person is a writer they'll just say them. If they're not...they won't.

So that's where I've been. I'll have another post Friday, pretty sure of it, but for now that's it. Good times. Good times.

I've been doing some cleanup in the old "office" in my basement, which means digging through the fanzines I wrote in back in '92 and '93, and...hooooleeeecraaaaaap that stuff is bad.

(At least I was never published for REAL back th -- ohwait.)

It's not just bad, it's insultingly one-dimensional in the portrayal of what I consider now to be "sensitive subjects". I was trying to address things I could not possibly understand at that age, and wow it's painful to read my younger self fumbling her way through this crap.

At least I didn't have my heroine discover she was the lost vampire princess of Happyland and make everyone instantly fall in love with her ESPECIALLY THE REALLY HAWT SINGLE GUY. I didn't give her magical powers. But she is an orphan (of course!). And I break her nose, leg, and ribs over the course of 48 hours, yet still manage to get her to ride off into the sunset. And then she heads out on foot and on her own with no money and no food to cover roughly 200 miles of road.

And her last name is Morningsinger.

Christ, people. Morningsinger.

Thwew. Wow. Now I want to go write something good.

Oh hai. I live.

I read The Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner over the last week, and have to say I think it's the first coming-of-age fantasy novel I've read in a long time that delighted me and made me wish I had teenagers to pass it along to. It has also once and for all beaten out my urge to spell privilege with three "e"s. I would perish as a writer if not for spellcheckers.

Anyway, back to the book: it's good enough that I'm going to buy the one she wrote before that in the same universe (Swordspoint), though I'm leery of the other (The Fall of the Kings) because, well...co-writer. I will probably pick it up, regardless of my bias toward collabs.

(I am aware that Delia is herself a well-known wordsmith, but I fear that the 90s turned me cold to anything co-written. It is a character flaw, I know.)

Anyway, delightful book. Wonderfully witty. Made me want to write and play with words all over again. Marvelous.

I'm also picking up a Jack Vance collection, because It's About Damn Time. The Dying Earth concept intrigues me, though Lyonesse intrigues me more, but GFL finding that one in print. I should also say: I'm a D&D geek who wants to read the books where Prismatic Spray came from. Durr hurr.

If you are lucky to work for a nice big company, you have an HR department. HR does great things like put up notices of an open position, screen resumes, and set up interviews.

However, if you work for a small, independent game company and your production assistant was one of the casualties of a recent layoff -- well, you're on your own, sister.

( An exciting expose on how to organize a hiring! )

Next up: how to gently tell people they are not exceptions to the rule.

I am probably tougher on applicants than I should be. This is the magazine's influence: we learned to cheerfully bounce anyone who failed to follow our submission rules because 99% of the time, their writing was no good anyway.

And these weren't difficult submission rules. Double spaced. Courier. Black on white. Single-sided. 1.5" gutters. Standard, simple rules that any writer -- even an amateur -- knows.

But we got it all. Spiral bound, fancy fonts, illustrations, a different color for every page, floppy disks (well, it was the mid-90s), cover letters longer than the story itself (okay, that's exaggerating).

I can go on and I'm sure there are more with worse.

When I began, I was soft-hearted. I was soft-hearted because in my head I was "one of them". I was horrified that my boss would bounce a story without even reading it because it failed the guidelines test. I felt they deserved a chance.

Until I read the stories and realized: no. No, they really didn't. It was, as someone put it to me, a "filter". If they couldn't follow instructions, it was a pretty good chance that their story wasn't worth reading anyway.

But regardless, I wanted to help them. And there was an outlet for that, in the form of the mighty highlighter. As part of my job as manuscript processor, I would take a copy of the submission guidelines and I'd highlight the section Where They Done Fucked Up and mail it back to them. 99% of them got the point. Sometimes they even resubmitted with the problems fixed.

(This is assuming they included a SASE with their submission. Quite a few of the guideline-breakers didn't, and thus likely remain in ignorance to this day as to why their story fell into a black hole at MZBFM.)

So here I am, once again acting as a gatekeeper. This time, though, I'm reviewing resumes, and I admit -- frustration. Because people have not changed. Which includes me: the part of me that wants to give people a chance is contending with the part of me that doesn't have time to sit down and hold everyone's hand when they don't include a resume, or send a letter telling me to "call them", or do anything on the extremely short list of things that we asked them not to do on the job posting.

I'm a bit incredulous at it because...this isn't a short story submission. This is a chance at a full-time job, with benefits, writing for a living. And I just sort of assume that people will...y'know...read the guidelines. First impressions, right? Why would you blow that?

One friend put it into perspective for me when I said I was feeling like I was being too judgmental: when you're reviewing resumes, that's what you're expected to do. If you're too soft, you hire the wrong guy/gal, and then what?

So, y'know, maybe this blog post will get read where our guidelines weren't. And maybe some of the people who I've flat-out deleted from my voicemail will read this and realize why they're not going to get a phonecall from me: because our guidelines on Craigslist said don't call us. Because if we wanted calls, we'd have included a phone number. Because we are not a big company with a big HR department and it's just me and Eric going through these. Because I don't have the time to chase you down and talk to you about our job. I'd rather not do it at all, but if you do have questions, there's always email.

Maybe you're the greatest, awesomest writer in the world. But if you can't follow simple instructions, I can't in good conscience employ you.

So forgive me for being callus -- I'm just doing my job.

Looking for a comedy writer. See job posting.

Aside: know of an awesome place to put free job postings? Leave me a comment. I would like to get the word out. Thanks!

Oh, I admit it. I just wanted to use my new avatar.

And when did May become Geek Movie Month?

This is me, being a bastard in Mafia Wars.

19 minutes ago:
You were attacked by Don Gill.
You lost the fight, taking 21 damage and losing $100,000.

9 minutes ago:
Katrina Leona claimed your $8,000 bounty on Don Gill.

8 minutes ago:
You were punched in the face by Don Gill, receiving 3 damage.

8 minutes ago:
You were punched in the face by Don Gill, receiving 2 damage.

8 minutes ago:
Don Berfield claimed your $80,000 bounty on Don Gill.

6 minutes ago:
You were robbed by Don Gill.
Your property lost 4% of its health and your enemy made off with $816,130.

6 minutes ago:
You were robbed by Don Gill.
Your property lost 4% of its health and your enemy made off with $816,130.

5 minutes ago:
the mace claimed your $8,000,000 bounty on Don Gill.

4 minutes ago:
\\\"Rickster\\\" claimed your $800,000 bounty on Don Gill.

2 minutes ago:
You were attacked by Don Gill.
You lost the fight, taking 14 damage and losing $630.

2 minutes ago:
Lefty claimed your $8,000 bounty on Don Gill.

1 minute ago:
[JMG] SwytScorpion claimed your $8,000 bounty on Don Gill.

0 minutes ago:
Don McCarthy claimed your $8,000 bounty on Don Gill.

Getting tagged by some anonymous player? Meh. Six Seven (7) hits on the same guy in nine (9) minutes? Awesome.

The boyfriend walked in for his afternoon kiss, took a glance at my screen, and stopped dead in his tracks.

"Say it," I said.

"That --"

"Say it!" I barked.

"That's code."

"I told you I was a coder!"

He gave a shudder, as if trying to shake off a bad dream. "Sorry, honey, that's just scary."

"Coder!" I yelled, jabbing my thumbs toward my chest. "That's me! Hoo-hah!"

Yeah, so, the recent work project has involved javascript, and that's my field, so....

sdshaver.com is now all blue and swirly. In a surprising turn of events, I don't hate the design, though I'm sure in about two years I will.

Times like this I wish I'd bothered to add Flash ("Ahhh-aaah!") to my repertoire. I tried. I remember going to seminars. I bought books. But there was just no bandwidth for it.

And now, back to weapons.

Mike P: What was the text editor you guys use to use.
Me on AIM: Uh. Ultraedit?
Mike P: Before that.
Me on AIM: I think it was PFE?
Mike P: Yep.
Me on AIM: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/steveb/cpaap/pfe/
Mike P: Thanks.
Me on AIM: So long ago.
Me on AIM: And before that, we used the editor in the old IFEs.
Me on AIM: Which corrupted files.
Me on AIM: It was so awesome.
Me on AIM: SO AWESOME.
Mike P: :)
Me on AIM: Whole scripts. Poof.
Me on AIM: Steph, sobbing softly in her overly ginormous chair at Marion's place.
Mike P: Got it.
Me on AIM: And before that?
Me on AIM: STONE TABLETS.
Mike P: Minimizing you now.
Me on AIM: The worst part was when we had to try and edit on AOL's client.
Mike P: Hiding my task bar.
Me on AIM: It didn't allow tabs.
Mike P: ::smooch!::
Me on AIM: Okay, I'm done.

(Not ironic at all sidenote: I edited this post mostly in Ultraedit.)

Steph has been:

• Dieting.
• Working.
• Keeping quiet about what she's working on.
• Not playing games.

That last one is mostly due to the extracurricular stuff, which has included overtime and enjoying the sudden spring weather.

For instance, I would really love once again to get back into WoW and play the expansion. I have the expansion. I liked what I played during the trial. I just don't have any damn time. And neither does Mike, Mr. Drood to Steph's Hunter.

It was an effort just to make time for the BSG finale. We haven't even touched Burn Notice. People! I am too busy for Burn Notice! What the hell?

But I have faith things will settle, and we'll once again get around to the things we love. Until then, I just keep on keepin' on, and try not to think about the boxed collector's edition collecting dust on my couch.

In case anyone should be like me and google "wordpress movable type import line breaks WHY THE FUCK WON'T IT WORK", here's what you do to fix it.

( Only important if you are having problem with linebreaks in your Movable Type -> Wordpress import. )

This week at work, I am hashing out design (which usually involves arguing) and mocking up GUIs (which usually involves me being alone with Photoshop and a closed office door).

Game design. It's an exciting life I lead, I tell ya.

Damn Trader Joe's. I'm craving corned beef. All their fault with their "samples" and their pleasant, smiling "sample lady".

Maybe I'll pick some up. It's physically painful for me to pay $13 for a cut of meat. Even one that will last several meals.

I've been plotting. I won't go into much more detail than that.

I really want to change the sdshaver.com site to be just the blog and a biblio. I'd rather entrust my photos to Flickr anymore, so there's no need to keep the gallery (or keep updating the gallery software), and these intentions are all charming and lovely, but it also means time, and I'd rather be writing.

Yeah, so, if you've been reading the blogs of SF writers and fans on Livejournal, you know what "RaceFail 09" is.

If you've been confused by it you should really go read Mary Ann Mohanraj's essay over on Scalzi's blog.

It's good. It rings true. It may actually be the best thing that's come from the mire.