Category: Personal

Not a good day at all

As days go, this one could definitely have been better. As reported here (the details of which have probably been spread all over by now), about 20% of Funcom’s work-force are being laid off or put on forced leave, and most of those being affected are situated in the Oslo-office, where I happen to work.

I was not, thankfully, among those 20%. Unfortunately, plenty of others were, and it’s going to be really hard to get used to not seeing the now familiar faces of those departed friends and colleagues in the hallways, during the morning meeting, in the cantina – or face to face as a part of the development process. Though not quite as hard as being without a job, obviously…

Best of luck to all those who were affected by the layoffs/forced leave; I really hope I get the chance to work alongside with some of you guys again one day, be that at Funcom or elsewhere. You guys all rock several different sorts of awesome.

Blog maintenance and restaurant criticism

After having just updated to the latest versions of WordPress plus all active plugins for it, I’m experiencing some… funkiness on the admin-side of things. Hopefully it won’t spill out into the actual blog, but with my luck where updates and upgrades are concerned, something bad is almost certain to happen.

Those who wait for pizza have to wait a bloody long time..

Also, I just have to mention this horrible experience a co-worker and I had at Dolly Dimple yesterday. We arrived there at around 8 pm, and the place was all but deserted when it came to other customers. We sat down, peered at the menus, then ordered a best-seller pizza and something to drink. The drinks came, and we drank them while waiting for the food to arrive. Meanwhile, other people had started to show up, though the place could at no point be considered “packed” or even slightly crowded while we were there.

Some amount of time passed. Then, as more time passed and no pizza showed up at our table, we started getting a bit suspicious. Especially considering that the other customers that had arrived after us were getting their food. And finishing it. But we remained calm, collected and patient. At one point we saw something resembling charcoal being taken out of an oven, so we assumed they were just having a hectic day and we’d get the food eventually.

However, sometime after the one-hour mark one of the waitresses comes over and asks whether we’d like something to drink before we go, or maybe some dessert. /facepalm. Actually getting us the main meal first would kinda be a good idea, wouldn’t you think? Turns out they’d forgotten about our order. So they threw some free nacho-chips our way before they went to work on our order. For real this time.

Then, finally, after some more waiting we at last got our pizza. It actually did taste pretty good, and that’s something coming from me who normally doesn’t like pizza all that well… but was it worth 337 NOK ($52,69, split on two people) and nearly 1 1/2 hours of waiting? Not really, no.

Huzzah – I’m blogging again!

After having taken a nearly two-year long break from blogging (in English, that is), I’ve finally figured it’s time to get my blogging-hat back on and take this website for another spin around the block.

Lots have changed since my previous blogging-period, which lasted from March 2003 until March 2007. For one thing, I moved to Oslo last year (in the end of March). For another, I got a job working as a designer for Funcom, on their MMORPG Age of Conan. Yes, those two points are connected – the main Funcom offices are in Oslo.

I’d also like to pretend that I’ve matured a bit, that I’m older (true) and wiser (still up for debate) now, that I am more prepared for the kind of commitment running a blog actually requires. Of course, this could just be me lying to myself in an attempt to justify re-opening the blog (and a much improved version of it, thanks to WordPress and various plug-ins for it!), and in reality I will end up updating it as in-frequently as I did with my previous blog – but I’m hoping that won’t be the case.

As with the previous incarnation of the website, this one will also be host to some of my drawings, works of light literature and possibly even some of my photos. New this time around will be a heavier focus on computer games, both when it comes to playing them and when it comes to actually designing them. To this end, I might also put up tidbits of game design-knowledge that I (hopefully) manage to pick up, both from my own experiences and from what I can learn by crawling across the multitude of designer/developer blogs that exist out there.

Wish me luck, I’ll probably need it.