Managed World

As Benny mentioned on his blog, last night I had pleasure of going out to dinner with ZMan and Benny. We went to Ruby's Diner out at Redmond Town Center.

For those of you "not in the know", Ruby's Diner is a 50's diner among the many other 50's diner clones and knock-offs that tend to invade the rest of the country like a sweeping parasite spreading with reckless abandon, all the while trying to convey a sense of the Good Ol' 50s with a disdain that shows just how warped and twisted our country seems to be now when compared to "simpler times."

Of course, I find all that ironic considering that the waitresses wear extremely short skirts that are borderline-Hooters that you would have scoured the country for in the 50s and not found a shred of evidence of its ultimate existence. The mythical "short-skirt-and-large-mammary-glands waitress" that is not afraid of flaunting it all in the name of Show Business. I guess it shows how it's becoming more difficult to go out for a simple meal without getting some kind of Show in return. Sigh, us Americans and our twisted Capitalist ways: anything in the pursuit of money. It's the one American Universal :).

Enough of this pseudo-intellectual psycho-babble that I have absolutely no knack in the least at pulling off. The conversation was pretty fun. We covered everything from game development and XNA, to health (and me thinking about my apparent lack of it :P), to banks, credit cards, identity theft and the differences of all the above between this funny country, Amerigo Verspucci's namesake, and European countries like Germany and England (or is it Great Britain (or the United Kingdom (eh, what do I care; I'm just a crazy American anyway)).

Two things dawned on me throughout the night. First, Benny is crazy smart and wicked good at game development. One need only look at all that he's done (and see Xna Racer in action) to come to that conclusion. I honestly wish that I could be half as productive as he is. Perhaps that gives me a goal to shoot for :). Second, Andy can Get Things Done. I'm jealous of Andy in this, as I never have seemed to be able to finish any personal project outside of work. Oh, and all that jogging and running have done wonders for Andy's sexual charisma, haha. If I was a Bummer (as some of the Brits like to say), he just might be that fruit of temptation that would get me exiled from my personal Eden. Alas, I'm not, so I'll just admire Andy for his fortitude and sticking with it through the last 18 months and keeping it up.

Thinking about it in hindsight, the night was pretty inspirational. Seeing all the work that Benny has done, and all that Andy has accomplished as well, I'm going to try to take some baby steps to make me more productive in my personal life as well. First of all, I'm going to finish a game for once, dang it! After having messed around with being a hobbyist game "developer" for as long as I have, it's shameful for me to admit that I have never finished a single game. Yup, not one. Not a single game.

I say game "developer" in quotes because looking back at the least three years I might as well have been a game development "philosopher." I argue the fine points of how to design a game and how the code should look, but never get anything done myself. I'm all bark, and no bite. Well, time's are a changing, and I'm going back to the roots. Tic-Tac-Toe baby. Yup, I'm going to finish a game dangit. Tic-Tac-Toe, then Breakout, perhaps Tetris. No more predictable "Jason get's nothing finished" jokes. Well, at least for the next week until I settle back into my ways (I give Andy and any of you out there my full consent to call me out if I settle back into my rut though as I truly do need to change my ways).

Anyway, I send all my gratitude and thanks out to Benny and ZMan for the wonderful and enjoyable evening. May the motivation from it last longer than a couple of days and help me actually get some private projects done for a change.