09-II-2009.
Found this on the wikipedia about this company where Go worked:
In February 2009, Midway Games filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.[7] Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment acquired most of Midway's assets, and Midway settled with Mark Thomas to relinquish his Midway stock and debt.[8][9] The U.S. District Court in Chicago dismissed a lawsuit alleging that former officers of Midway misled shareholders while selling their own stock.[10] In 2010, the bankruptcy court dismissed claims against Redstone concerning his sale of the company to Thomas and approved Midway's plan of liquidation.[11] Midway terminated the public registration of its securities on June 9, 2010.[12]
So the last guy who lived and worked with the company he mostly owned was replaced with the new owner, who then squandered the shop on the stock exchange and screwed up.
Later I found a stack of business cards that her branch, the Surreal, had printed for her. Well, they typeset it as SUЯЯEAL, and I, of course, always read it as „sooyayaeel“. Their fate was well deserved, whoever approves of such bullshit on their logo shouldn't go on forever.
The game she was working on, „This is Vegas“ was progressing nicely, she had lots of fun designing strippers, various gamblers (one is a Texan dude, who looked like a perfect mongrel of Beau Bridges and Sloba), old ladies with expensive habits and whatnot, and generally the whole thing was just a joyride for the whole team, they loved it. She showed us printed material several times, with a „for your eyes only“ warning. Skype video quality being what it currently was, the screenshots were worthless, but then we got some hi-rez renders of the characters, with the same warning. She's had some sensitive touch to them, they looked really well.
What I am finding now, in the post game's obituaries, lacks any explanation from WB on the side of the reasons why was it canceled. Apart from the obvious NIH syndrome - the SUЯЯEAL and Monolith were bought in a bundle from Midway, not WB's own brainchild - but the real reason was the same, just deeper: the game was conceptually something very non-WB. It wasn't developed from any movie, and games from movies (later in the opposite direction) was the main reason why these game studios were bought in the first place. So the bigheads of WB had no clue what to do with this game, how to sell it, what actual gameplay to have in it. They could have read the critics of the previews, they were all positive and „this is sheer fun“, but no, they changed course several times. At some points a decision was made to introduce pistols in it, which ran contrary to the spirit of it heretofore. And then, after a few more such wild ass guesses, they concluded that they didn't know what to do with it, and decided to ditch it, and write of 50M$ of investment. Soon they switched to making LoTR games, Peter Jackson was often seen in the building, giving instructions to the designers, how to make the game look essentially as an extension of the movie(s). Go will later do some armor, weaponry and even a levitating stones troll in it.
(Of course, the text down to here was written post festum, fifteen years later, by dead reckoning)
She's got no big news either, except they finally saw the big boss, who came to dispell the rumors of his purported nonexistence :). If things go as he planned, he may buy off all stock and became a privately run firm, which would mean he wouldn't need to obey Wallsttreet dictates and may shoo away the whole legal department and at least half of the accountants, which serve only to churn reports for the stockholders and various agencies which keep track of the financial health of the firms whose stock they deal with. The budget for Vegas 2 (the game they're finishing now is „This is Vegas“) is approved, and if everything goes according to plan, when Vegas 1 is published in the fall, they'll be deep into working on the two. She's the inner characters team by now, keeps churning faces, hairs, clothes...
We started getting our patio into shape. It isn't much, six by six (meters, of course), but the shed, which is back to back with Juliška's half of it takes half of the edge on that side. The shed was already half rotten, the sheating has already developed algae, it's facing north and its bottom corners never quite dry out. We went to Lowe's and bought two plastic cupboards for outdoor [use], assembled them and put by the opposing fence, where I finished paving last fall. Today we put them there, and moved whatever stuff from the shed we thought was worth keeping. The rest we simply dumped. All the planks we could use we relieved of nails and screws, which I tried to collect for maybe first couple of hours, then just let them fall. The day's result: the front wall of it is gone.
We mean to remove the fence to the back alley, to make a soil box on the bottom in full width and spread chicken wire above it (but made of steel, it's actually quite heavy) so the tomatoes and cucumbers can climb upon it. It will be shielded from underneath so the neighbor's tree roots can't access the soil, while the water would be drained... and so that we can finally see what's going on outside, we were quite fenced in as it were.
It's still quite chill-like at night, but in the day [one] can [go] outside in just shirt, then when the sun goes down [one] needs a jacket again, and when it sets suddenly both sweater and jacket are necessary. This saturday it was really incredible - as we returned from the lumberyard, the puddle was still iced over, ducks were walking on it, and when we finished assembling the cupboard, a shirt sufficed. All within two hours.
The Kimberley reports „ pt: "Gajic Natasa" staff choose two embryos to thaw, however three appear, the two they choose in IDEAS Ovum #3 &4 were selected to thaw and instead of it giving the derails of the two individuals it gives you all three of them from 2005. They feel only the two selected should appear. For further discussion please include Carrie & Arslan. “. Hana put her straight, „can't thaw two embryos from a straw containing three, all three are thawed together. The third is to be discarded, or whatever they decide to do with it“.
We found some pulser to buy, similar to the chinese acupuncture contraption, works along the similar lines just without needles, so we went on to try it. Costs about as much as one visit to a doctor here plus an x-ray (i.e. 250$ because we took a stronger model, which does several variants, could have a half cheaper [one]). I'm just as fine as I was before (and out of the three week beginner's course we pulsed out just one so far), but she's already noticeably better - her legs aren'r jittery in sleep as they always were, she slept like a suckling, and I hear that I almost don't hear her, ie. she breathes nicer. Go also ordered one for herself - we showed her how it looks, how it hooks up.
The customer in Briesbane migrates to a new machine, and it will have just the esql server there, they're weaning off the deebyeffs. Their eyetea boss, one Star Palmer (eh, when your parents screw you up with a name... but then, if a Stella is okay...), so I created a minimal environment there to make Feds work, not quite complete. The additional fuckup there is that they have two networks, so about half of the workstation access it through one half, and half through the other. Which means they see the esquel server under two addresses*, and the snafu ensued. Which I solved... our text file with the connect string will now have multiple lines; each workstation will, first time in, have to try each line in turn until one of them works (which I later used a lot in development, one line per each version of the sequel server), and then there's another text file where I write the names of the workstations and the number of the line which works for it. Next time I read that file first, find the row number, use that row from the first file, done.
The above explanation is four lines long. It led to writing at least two hundred lines, repeatedly explaining the matter to various personae of Firriver, sometimes ten times to some of them.
So I told this Palmer guy that this installation is his playhouse, and that he should try things to see that they work, and whatever shit he leaves in the data will be tread over during the official migration. This didn't work exactly right of the box, because there's always a higher admin above the admin, and various permissions need to be negotiated first, so whoever should will be allowed to access the app and escueell server.
On eastern front, David said it was time, six months were up, so I churned up another invoice to Sima, though I didn't clock up too much time for the UniJewel, but give what you may. Four hours, 208$, not to be neglected.
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* I refuse to say „two different addresses“, because I'd immediately have to consider the case if only one was different while the other one was the same, or vice versa.
Mentions: David Krakovski, Feds, Firriver Fertility (Firriver), Gorana Sredljević (Go), Hana Burberry, Juliška, Kimberley Clarke, Simon Buchs (Sima), UniJewel, in serbian
11-XII-2024 - 11-XII-2024