Tick tock

Photo via Computer Chess, LLC

We had layoffs this week. They didn’t affect the newsroom directly (but, boy, indirectly… you could say we’re rattled, to say the least). I found out about it late; I was out of the office when word got around and I missed it in the paper the next morning.

So that’s been rolling around my head yesterday and today and frankly, I look around my desk and think, “Should I start taking a few personal things home so they don’t all have to be taken out at once in a big box some day down the road?” We’re not at that point, I hope, but it doesn’t mean I can’t worry a little.

It’s very hard to work in an environment where things are changing so quickly around you, when people you’ve gotten used to for literally more than a decade are out the door every few months. You start kind of laying low and just plowing through your work and wondering if there’ll be a day when the luck runs out. One day you go to work, a little grudgingly but pleased with what you do, and then next, that whole idea (you:work) just stops existing. You are shown the door. It’s not good thoughts. You hear the clock and you’re thinking Hemingway titles and the fun just seeps out of your day.

But time rolls on. On Monday, I had a story run in the paper about retro computing. There’s an Austin movie that’s been shot called Computer Chess that I’m really looking forward to seeing. The film folks were a pleasure to deal with.

I don’t think I’ve written much about it here, but my life from about 8 till high school had a lot of computers in it. My dad got me into it and I fondly remember those glasses-wearing geek days. The best part of the story was getting to visit Goodwill Computer Works and seeing my story up there. It made me feel really, really warm.

I also had a Tech Monday column the same day about this week’s Game Developers Conference Online. I wish I had more time to see more panels over there, but they’re a lot more inside-baseball than we’d typically write about for our readers. Still, if you love video games, it’s fascinating stuff to see what developers talk about when they get together.

I got to see author Neal Stephenson speak and hear Atari founder (and Steve Jobs’ former boss) Nolan Bushnell entertain a room with his typical bombastic silliness. (He IS smart and knowledgeable, though. To a scary degree.).

Then on Wednesday, we broke a little news about Austin game studio Twisted Pixel being acquired by Microsoft Studios. Right after I wrote that story, I got to go to GDC one more time to hear some writers from Valve talk about their work on games like Portal 2 and Team Fortress 2. It was awesome. They were funny and inspiring and clearly work very hard at what they do to get it right. I didn’t write about that panel so I’m so pleased I got to attend.

I don’t really know what else to talk about, but you can probably tell I’ve got a lot on my mind right now. We’re starting up new Trailers Without Pity videos soon (first new one should be up around Halloween) and I’ve got vacation in early November. I’ve been keeping myself distracted upgrading to iOS 5 on our various Apple devices and waiting for my iPhone 4S to come in the mail. (My 3GS, seriously.. it’s so close to death. Cracked, missing volume buttons, wheezing, practically.) The death of Steve Jobs hit me a little harder than I was expecting last week. I wasn’t an early Apple user, but boy did I learn to love the hardware in college when we used those machines exclusively to put out a daily newspaper.

Now, my wife and I both use iPhones, my daughter uses an iPad almost every day and I do most of my writing on a MacBook Pro now when I’m not at work. (Sometimes even at work.) I was bummed when Jobs’ death got turned into a globalization debate, but I’m sure Steve himself would not have been surprised. He was used to being polarizing. I think he liked that on some level.

We gave up Macs at work a while back and switched to PCs, right around the time all these huge changes started happening. Most of our workplace got a new version Microsoft Office installed the same day the layoffs happened. It’s probably not a great mental association to create, but I’m sure it was a coincidence.

But, seriously, that vacation can’t get here soon enough, y’all.