(I'm a little behind, here.)

Greetings from the city that never sleeps.

I'm in the New Yorker hotel, on the 23rd floor. Not too shabby.  :)

There's three of us in this suite: myself, Jim, and Andy. Andy's our QA
guy at Loki (for a description of his job, check out "QA Confidential" at
http://www.leisuretown.com/), and Jim is...I -THINK- he's a programmer,
since he did most the work on the Heretic II port, but he doesn't like
programming anymore, so he's doing the trade shows, now. This is his
first trade show, and it hasn't even started yet and he's hating it. He's
not long for this profession, I think. More about that later.

We left Orange County yesterday around noon from (no kidding) John Wayne
Airport. Our flight was scheduled for departure at 12:10. I managed to
drag my butt out of bed around 10:45 and get in the shower.

Hey, if you've never missed an airplane, you're spending too much time in
the airport.

So Lance, Loki's VP, comes and gets me around 11:30. We then swing by to
get Andy, who is flipping out, since it's now 11:55. The airport is about
15 minutes away, but Lance seemed unconcerned. We made it there in
roughly 4 minutes, total. And while I appreciate maniac drivers, I think
it's important to note that Lance said he was taking it slow.

So we cruise into the airport, and hop on our flight. Three hours later
we're recharging our laptops in the airport terminal in St. Louis, and
three hours after that, we're cruising into La Guardia airport.

Jim is from New York originally. I don't mean some suburban, richy-bitch
part of New York; I talking about friggin' Queens. So the second we start
breathing New York city air, he turns into the power-New Yorker. He's on
his cell phone trying to get a car to pick us up, and he's cursing at the
luggage, and he's actually suddenly (re)developed a New York accent. After
hanging up on the car people (with a little curse), he tells us that it
would take too long to get the actual car out there, so being a New Yorker,
he flipped his phone the figurative bird, and then hailed a cab.

New York City apparently contracted with a bunch of famous people to
record sound bytes for the taxis. When you start your ride, a recording
of a famous person tells you to buckle up, and at the end of your ride
tells you to get a receipt.

Our sound byte was from Issac Hayes. Imagine how it feels to hit a big
city like New York and be effectively greeted by South Park's Chef.

So we get to the hotel, and after a small credit card problem, find our
way to our suite, drop our luggage, and hit the town.

We headed for Times Square, got some food, and went to bed. Saw on the
ABC news ticker that a plane had crashed outside Los Angeles. No, I
wasn't anywhere near that airport. Thanks for worrying, though.  :)

The next morning, we dragged ourselves over to the Javis center for the
expo setup. This is wierd, since the place was a barren warehouse when
the day began, and looked damned polished and professional by the time we
finished.

But when I'm standing in line to get my exhibitor's badge ("Ryan Gordon,
Hackmaster, Loki Entertainment" ...I had my chance...man...settled for
"programmer"...ugh), I see this lady who I swear used to work at
Youcentric, my previous employer...it's then that I remember they are
actually one of the exhibitors at this show (which is strange, since they
aren't a Linux shop...they do Java that happens to run on Linux...largely
thanks to me. Pfft.)

I wonder if they've noticed I'm still using their phone card.

...so today I sneak up behind Brett (one of Youcentric's hackers) and
say, "so you finally got this thing to support more than two users at
once, huh?"

And he jumps. Whoa, strange dude in a hockey jersey that knows our
product is a poor performer...uh oh. Oh, it's just Ryan. Whew.

So he fills me in on Youcentric. Apparently there was a small developer's
riot, and they've decided they aren't working 14 hour days anymore, so
they're gonna slow down and do their code right. This is probably not
going to fly, since they signed FedEx to a > 3.5 million dollar contract,
so the pimps that run Youcentric are probably going to slap their bitches
around, and make 'em bring in more C-notes. I mean, business as usual.

Anyhow, I've met a WIDE variety of people here. Mostly strange. I'll tell
y'all about it tommorow, but I'm tired after pitching Quake all day.

Hell, pimpin' ain't EASY, dawgs.

Backatcha,
--ryan.