1. What drives your choices for travel destinations? Where do you want to go next?
2. Something I learned when managing employees at the game store is that everyone - EVERYONE - is crazy. How do you deal with the idiosyncracies of your direct reports without having daily aneurysms?
3. Apart from, I think, Pop Will Eat Itself, I don't think I've ever known your musical tastes. What bands were you into in college and who are you into now?
I keep getting writer's block on things other than birds, so I'm gonna do that interview thing. silentq is first up:
1. What was the most interesting (or frustrating) thing about figuring out your alcohol issues?
The gun didn't know I was loaded?
Oh _those_ alcohol issues! ;)
The most interesting was finding the pattern with top fermented (ale) yeast and bottom fermented (lager) yeast. I can drink nearly every botton fermented beer (save oddly for Brooklyn Lager), but I can't drink a lot of top fermented beers, especially Belgians and weizens. Once in a blue moon, a wine will give me trouble, but I haven't found a pattern there.
The most frustrating thing is not being able to have the Unibroue beers. :(
2. I haven't seen many updates lately regarding VTES, how's that going? What are your plans for the future with it?
This question is the biggest reason why it took me so long to write my answers, as there's been a fair amount of news swirling around. In the past few months, I've gone from "Things might be happening" to "Things are definitely not happening" to "Things might be happening again". The honest answer is that, for the moment, I really don't know. We'd been in a holding pattern for quite somet time, hoping that negotiations amongst OneBookShelf.com, Wizards of the Coast, and CCP (former owners of White Wolf) would finally come to fruition. The tricky part is that two licenses would be needed to make V:TES - the Wizards license for the patent on the game mechanics, and the CCP/WW license for the setting and characters. Unfortunately, Wizards decided they were not interested in pursuing V:TES anymore. Also, CCP just recent sold off all of the White Wolf properties to Paradox, a computer game company from Sweden. The Wizards news was the most discouraging, as it seemed to put a definitive end to V:TES.
However, the story is taking some interesting turns. It turns out that Wizards' patent on the game mechanics (which includes, and is primarily for, Magic: the Gathering) expired on October 17 of this year. This is very significant, as the only remaining properties Wizards owns with respect to V:TES are easily circumvented - a bunch of icons, the design and trademarks on the backs of the cards, and the text of the rulebook. All of those items could be replaced. On top of that, Paradox appears to have some interest in V:TES and there is active dialog between them and the V:TES player community. Whether that means Paradox will want to bring V:TES back, whether they license it to another company, and whether I'll have any part in it all remain to be seen.
No matter what, I've been having a lot of fun with designing cards for the game and I'm finding it very rewarding, so I plan to carry on with that. I'm also looking at the possibilities of print-on-demand, especially with DriveThruCards.com, and I think I should make my own game. Even if the game is terrible, it would be fun to go through those creative, development, and business processes, and the financial cost to do so would be really tiny.
3. Which country do you feel most at home in and why? What do you miss most about the US? Love most about Germany? Is there another country you'd consider moving to?
I definitely feel most at home back in the U.S. Culturally it's who I am, and I'm reminded of it a lot while living in Europe.
As for what I miss...I miss a lot of things. I miss things being open on Sundays. I miss convenience stores and bodegas. I miss 24-hour anything. I miss the cereal aisle of the supermarket which has two hundred kinds of cereal, of which I will buy three. I miss burritos. I miss spontaneous road trips. I miss more free and open political dialog. I miss the Bruins. I miss my friends.
I think what I love most about Germany is the ability to travel. As much as I want to move back home to Boston, it'll be hard giving up six weeks of vacation and a central launching point for traveling around. I like the bicycle culture and infrastructure a lot, too.
Is there another country I'd consider moving to? Hmm...when I was in Barcelona, I got the feeling that I could live there. I don't usually get that feeling from cities. So, yeah, I could definitely try Spain. I've never visited Denmark, but have a weird sense I might like it there.
Leave me a comment saying "Interview me!" * I'll respond by asking you three questions. * Update your journal with the answers to the questions. * Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions.
I saw the green woodpecker again today, but it wouldn't let me get close enough to see if it was a male or female (they look nearly identical, save for a red "moustachial stripe" on the male). I also saw a flock of blue-ish birds with red tails that my cow-orker identified as Black Redstarts (the Gibraltar subspecies). The flock of them reminded me of Grumman Hellcats taking off of aircraft carriers in the Pacific. Passing the farm next to the bridge across the Rhein, I saw _eight_ grey herons!
There were a lot of storks in the past two months, but they may have moved further south. The hawk/falcon birds I've been seeing were identified by a cow-orker as Turmfalke ("tower falcon"), which translates to kestrel. There have been other pheasant-ey/grouse-ey birds which I've identified as most definitely pheasants, as I've started seeing the males here and there. This morning I saw what I am naming the Yellow Torpedo Bird. I'm having trouble finding it online, but what I noticed of it were:
- pigeon/dove in size and profile - yellow, possibly greenish-yellow belly - wings and back appeared darker but seemed to be of the same color - red on the top of the head - flew in a pattern of quick flaps - tucked-in cruise - quick flaps - tucked-in cruise, hence the "torpedo" name - it would alight on the trunk of a tree (not branches) and move to avoid line-of-sight with me, much like a squirrel
I was at lunch today, and the pizza place had the news on TV. There was a segment on Caitlyn Jenner receiving the Arthur Ashe Award at the ESPYs, and the clips of her speech were overdubbed in German.
They used a man's voice.
“Trans people deserve something vital, they deserve your respect. From that respect comes a more compassionate community.”
With spring upon us, I've been seeing more animals during my commutes to and from work. Swans have shown up in nature preserve next to the Rhein River. Lots more marsh tits and other tits and tit-likes, plus squadrons of fork-tail swallows performing attack runs along the streams and skimming the tops of corn fields. I nearly ran over a fox one morning when it darted in front of me in the bike path, and I saw another fox late at night. Rabbits and hares are everywhere, plus the occasional weasel. There are also a couple of friendly cats that hang out around the farmhouses.
I was outside a supermarket last night, locking up my bike, and I overheard a woman speaking Hungarian. She came over to the bike rack to get her bike, so I said "Jó estét" (Good evening). Her eyes lit up in surprise, and we had a brief chat. I explained that I'm American, but I used to live in Budapest, and now I work in Germany doing IT. She mentioned she's in Germany to work on the asparagus harvest and that it's back-breaking work. Her skin color implied that she's Roma, but I didn't think it would be polite to ask. If I hadn't heard her speak Hungarian, I would have assumed she was Turkish.
I finally bought a bike. Got my second Surly Cross-Check with some mods - straight bar instead of drop bar (resulting in new shifters) and street tires instead of the stock trail tires. Gotta adjust a slight truing issue in the rear wheel, but otherwise it's been exactly what I wanted.
After a long stretch of no exercise, I knew it would take me a couple weeks of riding for things to stop sucking and to get my wind back. Looks like I'm about on target with that, and I'm glad to be getting daily exercise - about an hour and 20 minutes of riding every day. I'm looking forward to checking out more of the nearby towns. Oh yeah, I moved into a new apartment since my last update, in the town of Hockenheim. Heidelberg is an hour bike ride away, which I might try some weekend.
I found a new route to work, too. It runs past a few different farms and through a swamp. I've been seeing deer and rabbits at night, plus an owl once. During the day, it's more of the usual herons, crows, marsh tits, and occasional falcon/hawk. Oh and some sort of swallow-like bird. Overall, a very nice commute.
