[Personal] Self-Imposed NDA

You may have noticed that I will talk about just about anything on this blog. Note the almost. There are several things that I intentionally omit, even though a lot of it would be of interest to my readers.

I don't mention most things related to my marriage, for instance. I've only been shilling for MDA donations because she asked me to, but a lot of things related to my marriage simply should not become public knowledge, like the in-jokes associated with me rubbing my fingers together or the reason she is deathly afraid of my navel. Some items would have you rolling in the aisles, other would have you flipping through the Rolodex looking for a licensed psychotherapist to take one or both of us in.

There are some aspects of my professional life that I don't discuss as well. While some are under my NDA because of Ritual, others are because these items (if publicly known) could hurt my career (for letting them out), could hurt the careers of other people in this industry (if they were found out), or could hurt other companies. One interesting thing about being on the inside is that you quickly find out how much other people really don't care about their NDA's when they're talking to people in other companies. Since I've been here, I've managed to play eight titles before they were even announced, helped find jobs for twenty-two people who were silently laid off, and learned of three dozen SKU's that were cancelled for reasons that would shock you. (One was cancelled because the VP didn't like the shade of purple used for the trim on the costume of the main character. As the company is no more, I can reveal that much.)

And of course, there's the personal stuff. I'll talk about what it's like to live in a new area, live as a QA professional, etc. I won't talk about the lives of my friends or family very often. I don't want to make things difficult for people who are going through hard times. I also don't want to make a "permanent record" of some embarassing things, like party A sleeping with party B, even though A is married to C and B is married to D, but all of B's kids that are supposedly from D are really from A. (Yes, this is a real relationship I am aware of, and no, I am not any of the letters involved.)

That said, I do try to inform and entertain on this blog, so as a "reward" for sticking it out, here's your story. The restaurant I took my wife to on Tuesday night is a local Chinese restaurant. I really dislike going there because they cook everything in peanut oil...and I mean everything. Normally that isn't a big deal, but my digestive system has issues with nuts and soy products. After I eat anything that has been cooked in peanut oil, my sweat smells like peanut butter for a day and a half. So as you can see, I rarely feel like a nut, but I occasionally smell like one.