Okay SG I am going to be AWOL for most of the next week and half. I am heading off to PAX East for work, and then spending vacation with my friends and family in Mass! Until next time! Take care of yourselves, and each other!

I knows for many years I came on this site and bitched about not liking my job. And many of you were sick of hearing that. Now I have a kick ass dream job, and I keep going on about it and many of you are probably sick of hearing about that. Well this post falls into the second category of things.

So it was finalized and approved yesterday (well Tuesday... this working night really messes up my sense of what day is actually is, and my boss (who is always on teamspeak with us) is from Australia, and the game time on the servers is the local time in Minsk)).

I am going to be working at my company's booth for PAX East!! So that means my company is flying me out to one if not the biggest Gaming Conventions! So that means I am going to be in Boston for the Convention April 6-8th!! Ys that is right I get to go to the convention, and go back to my home town!!

Now just when you thought it couldn't get any better.... (WHAM UP IN YOU FACE LIKE A BUG HIT BY SEMI TRUCK!) April 8th, happens to be my birthday! Booyah! Back in my state with coworkers for my birthday. I haven't been back home in over a year. And after talking to my bosses today I am going to take my vacation while I am out in Boston, so my return flight back is going to be later on April 18th!!

That's right Happy Birthday to Me! I am going to Home for vacation and the company is flying me out there!!!

PS Anyone in the Boston area let me know, my company is going to throw a party for the One Year Anniversary of the NA Office, when I compared it to the GDC party (See previous blog entry), they called that tame... So I think it's going to be a wild time!

Also I will be at E3 later this. Things are shaping up pretty nicely at this point.

Also I am up to working out twice a day on the exercise bike, and using free weights, I am up to about 1100 calories burned on the bike and 200 curls with a 10lb weight each arm and t's starting to show. Pretty soon you might need a ticket.... a ticket to what you ask?

So where have I been and what have I been up to?

Well last Wednesday was the start of GDC (Game Developer's Conference), and for most people this means the nerd population of San Francisco increases beyond it's normal level for the course of the week. How ever this means that my company WarGaming.Net / World of Tanks, was throwing the biggest bash of the entire convention. (Which seeing that GDC is not usually the kind of convention that people throw parties for wouldn't have been a big deal.)

But it was HUGE. First of all I had the wrong address for the club. Yes the rented out an entire club. 1015 Folsom St It was unreal. I mean I was couldn't find it since I was half a block away, then I turn and we see search lights, and LED projectors lighting up the front of the building.


Yes that is a limo and the line of people waiting to get it. (Note we had the VIP Access so we didn't have to wait in any lines.)

We got in the door and every where working the club are these sexy ladies in camo underware, combat boots, and sometimes goggles of a bandolier of bullets. I was blown away, and there was like 1,000 people there. So I go around and start collecting swag, they had name tags which you could get your name engraved on (I got my WoT user name), they had glow sticks, sunglasses, and you cold even get a flip book made of you dancing. (I didn't get the flip book )

So there we are in a two story, 6 room club with 1,000+ people. Oh yes, and did I mention it was an open bar? It was crazy. We wound up, up stairs most of the night, just so we had room to breath. From there we had a great view.





Now there was an amazing collection of people there. And because the pictures don't tell the whole story I took a few quick videos.





Now that would have been pretty damn sweet alone. But my cool stuff from work was not done yet. Then on Saturday, World of Tanks sponsored Operation Think Tank 2012.

Which was at Military Vehicle Technology Foundation. They had a round table discussion about Tanks with some of the leading minds when it comes to tanks. It was amazing to hear some of things they were talking about. Such as the naming of Tanks like the M3 "Lee" was done by Winston Churchill because he needed to be able to tell what tank was what and the alphanumeric codes weren't enough for him. The US Press picked up on it, and before too long the US Military was using them too.

Also that once tanks has names, Model makes selling kits put names on all their tanks, including tanks that never had names. So combine that with the internet there is a lot of dis-information out there.

Oh yeah and the place they had event at has a ton of actual tanks on the site. The millionaire who owns the place, always collected tanks, and when he was rich enough he started collecting the real thing.







This conclude the last week and chaos of it all. I hope you have enjoyed it.

Also I got meet one of the lead Game Designers for the Original Never Winter Nights (the AOL Game).

So the job is going well with the exception that I think the 3-Midnight shift is going to drive me crazy very soon. Right now I am working 3pm - Midnight get home watch some TV, or play a video game, or watch a movie. (Something to unwind), and it's usually Between 2am and 3am before I am ready to pass out. Then I try to get up by 10am. But more likely it's 11:30am or 12 (noon). On a normal day, I will get up spend 45 minutes on the exercise bike, while watching an episode of something of netflix (I just finished Star Trek Voyager, and I am working on Farscape right now.) Then shower, make lunch, feed the cat, eat lunch, then probably fuck around on the internet for the next 30 minutes or so until I have to head out to work.

The only time I see my other half these days is on the weekends, and maybe for 20 minutes if I come home for lunch (ie there is not something at work such as alcohol, which prevent me from driving home safely for lunch), or if she doesn't have a meeting, or plans after work. Which in the end means I see her maybe 2-3 time durning the week. I am very passed out still when she gets up for work in the morning. And by the time I get home she is already asleep.

Also working from 3pm - Midnight, the other problem is the hours I am working, tends to be the hours that almost everyone else I know is free. So people I would text, or chat with online most of the time are not around when I am. Or when people do text me I am at work, and not able to respond as actively as I would like.

And on top of all of that, I am spending 8 hours a day 5 days a week on a computer talking to people on message boards, and on chat rooms. And the only people I tend to interact with the majority of the time would be the people who are breaking the rules and I need to sanction (aka bring down the ban hammer on). Yes there is another core group of players who respect the rules and who are helpful and friendly, but I don't get to spend as much time with them, as the trouble makers who call me things I don't think I could even post on this blog. (Another note I am working on setting up a blog of insults I have been called) But after dealing with people online and being put through the ringer, one of the last thing I want to do is sit down in front of a keyboard, and computer monitor. Not because I don't love and adore all of the people I know here, and other places online, because I do. It's I am just done being on a computer.

But on a plus note sometime around the middle of next month I am going to be a rotating shift, where a month at a time I will be on a different shift (7am-4pm), (3pm-midnight) or (11pm-8am). And once that happens I should be found around here and other places more often.

I haven't forgotten about you SG!