oddgirl’s blog

For those of you who aren’t super completely bored with listening to me talk about my job, you can now watch a streaming video of Will’s presentation of the game to the GDC conference.

For those of you who are getting bored I profoundly apologize for the next many months of blabbering on about it that I can assure you will have to endure.

Back in SF, and I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but my internal body clock now seems to be set for about 6:22 am. And it doesn’t seem to matter when I went to sleep or whether I took an ambien or if Cheese is home or not. and on a day like this it sucks. I had nothing to be up for and all I wanted was to be able to sleep in this am.

Some of today’s goals: buy some healthy food to have in the fridge and start taking my lunch to work at least some of the days; go to GNC and buy some vitamins and that stuff Big Daddy recommended; get a copy of Ruth Reichl’s Tender at the Bone (the next book I want to read); try to not work, although I’m feeling a bit behind and would like to start the week strong.

Went to a couple decent restaurants this time around in LA. And that’s saying alot since I usually think the food in LA is sub-standard to my usual haunts here in SF. After two crappy meals at downtown places near the hotel/convention center, on night 3 I got invited to Yi Cuisine by some co-workers and had an absolutely wonderful meal, accompanied by many, many drinks. American kobe beef tartare tataki on caramelized rice cakes, tandoori inspired chilean sea bass and curried cauliflower puree, some coconut-tempura rockshrimp that I could eat by the plateful… ohmygod. One of my co-workers knew the chef so she just had him bring out his choices. That has got to be my favorite way to dine out.

My last night (and the first sans co-workers) Big Daddy took me to Jar. Amazing crab deviled eggs (which I will be making soon), a roasted beet, arugala, sweet-bleu cheese salad and big ass steak later and I was ready to put my head down on the table and fall asleep after my whirlwind e3 week.

LA may not be the epicurean wasteland I have always presumed it to be…

e3 ended today at 4 pm, tho it ended for me a little earlier than that. I saw a few demos today and then hopped in a cab around 3 pm to beat the rush. I put up a few pictures. Might put up more, didn’t actually take that many for public use. Some work ones I can’t put up…

The show went really well for our game. Will demo’ed behind closed doors and the responce seemed really postitive from the articles I’ve read and the people I talked to who saw the demo. I worked for about a day and a half as a demo’er for the new expansion pack for the Sims2, mostly to get some experience, and some because they needed an extra set of hands and I love those guys.

I thought the PS3 stuff looked pretty impressive in their theatre. I wasn’t as impressed with the XBox360 stuff, but I think Microsoft’s marketing machine is icky so it makes me pre-disposed to dislike their products. I’m looking forward to playing Age of Empires III but will need to get a computer for home in order to do that. They’re using the Havoc engine so the physics is really cool. We (heart) Katamari looks like it’s more of the same, but I think that’s a good thing. Black looks pretty cool from the blowing shit up point of view. No stalking, no stealth, just blow stuff up. I wasn’t terribly impressed with The Godfather, the pacing seemed slow and the cut scenes seemed long. But the probably haven’t done much tuning yet. Battlefield 2 looks great for the PC and the guys I saw playing it (I was standing next to their booth while I was demo’ing) looked like they were really having a blast.

off to dinner and a show in LA. sooooo sleepy. 8 hours of sleep in 3 days. yipes.

Are you an aspiring game designer? You could be!

and no one gave me this.

got invited to go up to wine country by some geeky friends who decided i would be able to play well with others of the geeky variety. there were many digital cameras and i should have taken my PSP. i would have gotten an opportunity to actually play Wipeout with other women with PSPs. no freakin’ way.

and i finally got to meet the guy who runs the ISP where i’ve hosted this site for many, many moons. that was cool

there was yummy-ness in the form of cheese, bread, meat and super-delectable tiramisu caramels and mocha trufflz at a really pretty place. onward to Old Faithful (no not the one in Yellowstone people… only had one day. hard to get to Wyoming in one day) with goats that did not faint upon the site of us and our many, many digital cameras. then to the petrified forest where we learned that there are many synonyms for really big old tree.

a bit of winetasting at another beautiful place and then back down to our starting point where dinner was a most delicious Double Double.

much laughter. and my joy and hearing people singing the theme to Super Mario Bros… i can’t even tell ya.