Today’s my last day as a gainfully employed member of Electronic Arts. We enjoyed a big lunch at Dave & Busters this afternoon, but are otherwise keeping busy up until the last minute trying to get Character Transfer wrapped up and ready for public consumption. (I spilled queso on myself at lunch, but had fortunately had the foresight to wear my cheese-colored shirt.) It’s been interesting (and a bit difficult) to watch friends work through the decision of whether to stay in Austin or to move out to California.

I’m planning on taking a couple of weeks to spend with family, to take each of the kids out individually for a day together, and to relax while doing some very low-key job hunting. If none of the initial prospects pan out, I’ll get more serious about it at the beginning of April.

Liam has recently gotten the hang of riding a two-wheeler without benefit of training wheels. He’s been teetering enthusiastically around our street for a couple of weeks now, finally causing me to decide yesterday evening that we should go bike riding together.

Of course, nothing is ever as easy as it sounds around our house. Abigail didn’t want him to use her bike, which is in good shape and a reasonably good size for him, so we grabbed a tiny little bike that looks more like it belongs under a clown in the circus than under a five year old boy. (Perhaps I should add one of those funny squeeze bulb horns to complete the effect.) A quick inspection, however, revealed that the back tire was flat. I grabbed the cigarette-lighter powered air compressor and pumped it up, only to discover that it had a slow leak. He’d be able to ride it for about five minutes at a stretch, and would then need reinflation.

So, we tossed his bike and mine in the van and headed to the bike store to get a replacement tire. Closed! Curses! Fortunately, I’d had the foresight to borrow a manual air pump from Possum John before we left. We went on down to the San Marcos River, unloaded our bikes, helmets, and accessories, pumped up the back tire again, and headed down the riverwalk together.

We had a great time tooling down the sidewalks, getting grins from passersby and stopping every few minutes to put more air in his tires. We rode on sidewalks, across bridges, and on gravel paths, occasionally coming close to collisions with innocent bystanders, but always avoiding catastrophe. He made it a good deal farther than I had expected, and talked all the rest of the evening about how much fun he’d had, though it would be difficult to determine who had the better time.

Yesterday the Grant Mazak Band, for which I play bass, played our usual first Sunday of the month gig at Cheatham Street Warehouse. It was a fun show for a couple of reasons: we had one of Grant’s faculty friends sit in on saxophone, and my good friend David was recording the performance for us.

David graduated from Texas State University a couple of years back with a degree in Sound and Recording Technology, and he really knows his stuff. He brought out his Powerbook-based ProTools rig and recorded 15 tracks of digital audio goodness. We listened to the raw tracks briefly after the gig and were delighted with the results. With some mixing and equalization work, I think we’ll have some very workable recordings of the band.

If you live in Central Texas and need some audio engineering work, I highly recommend Dave.

Toward the end of last year, I finally got completely fed up with Quicken. It had a number of bugs that Intuit never thought important enough to fix, and we lost data from Quicken more than once. (In all fairness, the data loss wasn’t entirely Intuit’s fault, but once it was done, it became much easier to entertain alternatives.)

After reading about a number of packages, and trying a few out, I settled on Moneydance, a Java-based package that’s available for a number of platforms, Mac OS X among them. Because of its Java roots, its UI doesn’t always look quite as polished as some, and certain operations are a bit slow. In spite of that, however, I’ve been delighted with it. Contributing factors to my satisfaction:

1. For my inner geek, it has a Python plugin that allows you to access all your financial data from your own scripts. Want to have your bank balance text messaged to your cell phone daily so you can keep close tabs on how much you have remaining to spend? It’s pretty easy to write such a module with the scripting support.
2. A platform neutral file format means you can work on your finances on any of the supported platforms, and that using UNIX copy commands won’t corrupt your data. (Yes, this was how I lost our Quicken data one time — using cp left behind the resource forks, and made the files unusable.)
3. It’s only $29.95.
4. Best of all, they have answered every email I’ve ever sent completely, promptly, and courteously. This level of support is unheard of from most large software vendors, and I love it. It’s great to be able to say “Hey, I encountered this bug” and get back a “Sorry about that, we’ve fixed it now, go grab the latest preview build” message, often within 12 hours.

I’ve no affiliation with the Moneydance folks, I’m just a very happy customer. If you’re looking for a good financial management package, I highly recommend it.

Back toward the end of 2002, our friends Steve & Renee Johnson and their kids moved away from San Marcos. We were pretty sad about it, since they had been instrumental in getting us down here to begin with, and our families have always enjoyed each other immensely.

Now, after various trials, travels, and travails, they’re returning to the city of Saint Mark. Even better, they’ll be within walking distance, so when I get the urge to blow on the pennywhistle, I can take a short stroll and have someone to play with. They’re overjoyed to be back in a city with a number of people they’ve known and loved for a long time, and we’re thrilled they’re returning.

Welcome back, Johnsons!

I’m working on a redesign of The McMains Chronicles, so things here may be a mess for a few days. As our way of saying “Thank You”, please take 20% off of your next order with the coupon code “WEDONTACTUALLYSELLANYTHING”.

Thank you.

My friend Brit Baker is both a crackerjack Quality Assurance man, and a very funny guy. He was unfortunately among those who met with the Grim Job Reaper last Wednesday at Origin, so if you need someone who knows his QA stuff, and is a treat to work with, hire him! Now!

We had an IM interchange today that rather amused me:

britmanxtc (3:43:49 PM): Remember the halcyon days of Broadvision multimonth discounts? When the fields of sawgrass did not lay so fallow?
Sean McTex (4:07:25 PM): Ah, yes — the golden-hued vision of yesteryear, when life stretched endlessly before us like a middle-schooler’s first day of summer break.
britmanxtc (4:09:28 PM): when the vagaries of life that quenched our innermost thirsts were as sharp in the imagination as if they were whetted on a barbershop strop
Sean McTex (4:15:48 PM): and thoughts of our own mortality were far from us, as the witches brew of our inner lives boiled and bubbled with the energy of youth.
britmanxtc (4:22:35 PM): but then the cold bitter winds of change set in, coming in phases like the moon, but with far greater gravity than the puny forces of that desolate orb…
Sean McTex (4:32:44 PM): the chill of winter worked its way through our coats, our shirts, our very skins, until it settled in our bones, the hoar-marrow of a new, dark age
britmanxtc (4:41:11 PM): and then we got a sandwich
Sean McTex (4:44:47 PM): mmmmmmm….roast beef.

Well, the rumors were true.

Electronic Arts is closing down Origin, its Austin studio. Many people have been given relocation offers, though I’m not among them. My last day of work will be March 11, the day after my birthday. (I’ll be covered finanically for quite a time after that, as the severance package they’ve put together is pretty generous.)

I’m not actually too upset about this, as I’ve been thinking pretty seriously about my options for a while now. Having the severance should make the transition easier and less stressful. I’m interested to see what I can find next — hopefully something closer to home this time around.

Siblings, as many of you may already be aware, don’t always get along. Though skirmishes ocassionally erupt among all the members of the junior set, the principal combatants in our family are generally Liam and Abigail, whose closeness in age makes living together peacefully a bit more challenging for them than it is for other family members.

Recently, Abigail decided that she didn’t want Liam to come into her room — an initiative we supported, since we feel that it’s important for her to have a place she can go and have some peace. In order to make her wishes clear, she posted a number of signs on her door: “Liam’s not allowed,” “No Liams!”

We didn’t think too much of this until a few days after the signs had been up. I happened to be looking more closely at one of them than I had previously, and noticed this particular one said “Abby yes” on one side, and had a self-portrait that featured flowers, angelic wings, and the ilk.

The other side, as you might expect, said “Liam no!” on it. The thing that took me aback was not the general sentiment of the poster, but the fact that the portrait of Liam which Abigail had drawn featured a T-Shirt with the catchy slogan “I love Satan!” on it.

I had a little chat with Abigail about the fact that this was neither true nor kind, and that we’d need to take it down. It had to wait about 10 minutes, however, until I could do it with a straight face.

There are lots of interesting rumors flying around currently about Origin Systems, where I work. I’ve heard nothing official at this point, but there have been some pretty telling clues that they might not be fabricated.

I should be able to say more on this in the next day or two.