August Update

I saw my wife and granddaughter off this morning. It was a sad parting, but I'm hoping to see Kait this winter sometime and Yvonne will be back on the ninth. She'll sleep until the eleventh, but she'll be back on the ninth.

Now that work has slowed down, I've been able to go back and dive back into USEMP. I'm trying like Hell to get it to the point where it's a stable alpha. The alpha is already four months late, and every day the community for it dies a little more.

My column in "PC Gamer" has reignited interest in me from various parts of the industry. I've got a few interesting opportunities in my lap right now. The biggest downside is that if I take any of them, any direct involvement with USEMP has to end immediately.

I've also got my surgery on August 30, which means I'm going to be out of commission until about September 5.

I've been doing quite a bit of reading lately on the bus to and from work. (I used to take my laptop back and forth, but every time I'd launch anything, I'd get some dude saying, "Is that a laptop?" in Bill Engvall's "dorkfish" voice and then I'd get nothing done for the next half hour.) Orson Scott Card's "Empire" was amazingly well done and while a bit conspiratorial, it did a good job of coming across as plausible and that's the scary part. John Grisham's "The King of Torts" was a great read for the first 75%, but fell apart during the last 25% as he tried to tie up all of his loose ends.