Early flights

I hate early flights. Having to wake up before 8am is my recipe for torture. Of course, this morning it was 5:15am, with the flight out at 9am.
The security gate agent recognized me today, which mostly flattered me. But I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing in sum. Flattered that I have a recognizable face, I suppose. Happy to be joking around with the security folks. But at the same time… maybe I’ve been at the airport too much lately. 🙂
Have been thinking a lot about blog posts lately. There are some things I think of posting and then consider that my co-workers are reading it and may not appreciate those thoughts. Other thoughts I consider, and realize certain game companies or game media may not find them particularly appropriate. Or maybe they’re not so good for my career. So haven’t posted much lately. In general I’m feeling pretty scattered anyway, have been running around too much and not grounding myself enough.
But right now I’m heading to LAX. And posting about travel – well, that’s always pretty safe! I’m going down to visit a few developers and publishers who are working on next-gen PlayStation titles. So, it should be a fun trip. We’re planning to have some conversations about hardware timelines, the state of the SDK, use of some particular middleware that’s giving folks troubles, and so on. I was thinking this may be the last trip for awhile, but I’m considering going to Thailand with some industry friends, over Thanksgiving. Haven’t decided for sure whether to do that, but getting the opportunity to go somewhere new, and go with friends, is very appealling. Gotta decide that soon. 🙂
I also need to work on the Game Programming Gems 6 foreword. Isn’t that crazy that we’re at #6? Michael Dickheiser has done a great job with the book. The Gems books have been markers for me, mileposts in life really, but getting to #6 it begins to feel less powerful each time we ship a book. Hahahaaahaa. I’ve been considering lately how it would be very easy to stick around at Sony for a long time, and if so, I need to find some new mileposts for myself – challenges that I can take on in my own life which I’ll be proud about completing. If I stay at Sony, the work mileposts essentially go away, as launching a platform is something so large now that I don’t take particularly strong pleasure in it personally. And, I’ve helped launch quite a few platforms now: N64, Gamecube, GBC, GBA, PSP. Maybe this is why people get married and have kids. 😉
Oops, gotta board. Bye!