After last night's late night with Iwatani-san, the last thing I felt like doing was another late night out. But, this was a special night, so there was no way in heck I was gonna miss it.

Every company has its goals. Well, we in the wireless division of NAMCO hit one of our critical milestones recently, so Kenji-san took us all out to celebrate.

Our destination was a really fabulous Greek restautant in Palo Alto. Many courses of food were consumed, and something like one bottle of wine for every person at the table (there were 14 of us).

I had fun asking many at the table a question my friend Alyssa had posed at Tommy's some years back: If you could have dinner with any three people who ever lived (and assume you could speak with them), who would they be? The answers sometimes surprised me. My own answers? My parents when they were 30, so I could see who they thought they were going to be, and Jesus Christ...just to set the record straight.



Amy's been "In the Basement" counterfitting again...


Late into the meal our Marketing Manager Amy Steele presented awards to everyone. Those of us who've been there the longest got lucite encased bills for One Million Dollars! Well, not real dollars...Federal Reserve PAC-DOTS...which I guerss one can only spend in PAC-Land. I guess I can buy all the power pellets I can eat! Others got faux gem's with a PAC-MAN ghost etched atop. Contrators got PAC-MAN boxer shorts and candy.

The evening got pretty silly late on. Kenji was drunk enough to start telling us his plans for world domination...then he'd back off and refuse to tell us the key ingredients in his plans. The tease!

Linked below are pictures from the event:

CLICK HERE to see most of the crew

CLICK HERE to see me getting my just reward

Posted by molyneaux at 12:01 AM PST

Updated: Tuesday, 19 May 2009 11:30 PM PDT

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Mood:  incredulous

It's my experience that most people outside the game industry don't recognize the names of even the biggest game developers/publishers, even if they've played their games. So, when I tell people I work for Namco, they have no idea what that company is or what it's made...until I make a munching motion with my hand and go "wacka wacka".

I've been working on a number of PAC-MAN related games for mobile phones at Namco (www.namcogames.com), and one of my jobs is to make sure that our PAC-MAN and Ms. PAC-MAN games are as arcade accurate as possible. This isn't always easy, because there's very little actual documentation on the games, so I have to rely on my familiarity with them and what information I've gleaned from playing.

So, imagine my glee when Kenji-san told me I;d be meeting and having dinner with Mr. Toru Iwatani, the creator of PAC-MAN!

The only challenge: Iwantani-san speaks only slightly more English than I speak Japanese...which means a few words at best. Luckily, Kenji and Scott were there to translate.

I asked Iwatani-san a lot of questions about how the original game works. Most of this would bore the average person to death, but it was pretty illuminating to me. I mean, how many people wonder about the differences in the seek behavior of the ghosts in the game. What's the difference between Inky and Pinky, aside from the obvious color? Let me raise my hand here.

Scott Rubin, Iwatani-san, Maurice and "The Man"

We discussed some ideas I have for future games. Iwatani-san suggested we do back and forth discussions, rather than him just accepting or rejecting my ideas outright. Oh, twist my arm...ow...ow...

Dinner was very nice, Scott, Kenji, Mr. Iwanti and I were joined by Hideki from our licensing dept. at a nice Japanese restaurant in Mountain View. The bill, with tip, was over $700, and something like 3/4s of a gallon of sake was consumed. Scott and I went our separate ways at that point, but the Japanese contingent then went into San Francisco and partied and Karaoked until 2:30 a.m. Yikes!

Posted by molyneaux at 12:01 AM PST

Updated: Tuesday, 19 May 2009 11:31 PM PDT

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Today was the first day of the GDC (Game Developer's Conference), held this year in San Francisco instead of San Jose where it was usually been held in the past. Great for me, because it means I don't have to do the lengthy San Jose commute that my job usually requires.

This morning I worked on update the "roadmap" for Namco's 2005 wireless (mobile phone) product line. I added two games, one of which is somewhat obscure, but a really fun game with a good name that I hope we can make attractive to our carrier partnes like Sprint and Verizon.

The afternoon was spent in meetings and at GCD panels. The fun thing about trade shows like this is that you run into industry people you don't see often. Today I saw three people from Tira Wireless whom I visited in Toronto a few weeks back, a lady from Stunt Puppy (a company I briefly interacted with a few years ago), Steve Patterson (formerly of Psygnosis), etc. etc.

The conferences were pretty boring. I guess most of these things are of more use to people trying to break into the biz than those of us who've been down in trenches slogging through the mud. I put my time to use scribbing game designs in my notebook while waiting for the few-and-far-between nuggets of information I didn't know.

I was three different people today. I loaned my show pass to Rob Schoeppe while I was in meetings, so when I was done Kenji loaned me his pass, so I was Kenji for a while. Then Kenji needed his pass back, so I borred a pass from Rie, because Rob forgot to give me my pass back before driving to San Jose!

In the evening I joined Scott and Kenji for drinks with reps from Verizon. Afterwards, sans Verizon people, we went to a restaurant in Japantown (S.F.) and had good food and drink.

I tooled back across the bay bridge listening to loud disco music. I then fell asleep on the couch watching an episode of the new Battlestar Galactica series. Odd evening, but viva le difference!

Below is what I looked like just after walking in the door...

Posted by molyneaux at 10:31 PM PST

Updated: Tuesday, 19 May 2009 11:31 PM PDT

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Today I did something I've been wanting to do for a while, which was to have some of my co-workers from Namco join me for a day out and about. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing, but not badly attended for being so short notice.

Fellow Namcoites (Namconians?) Amy Steele, Bryan Chang, and Jeff Buccellato arrived, along with Jeff's fiance Eileen. They carpooled up to Oakland and met me at Jack London Square. The overall plan was a day in San Francisco, but the only thing I had decided for certain was our brunch destination. I planned to wing everything else.

After recent rains, and Friday's downpour, I was concerned that the weather might not be condusive to running around. However, Mother Nature smiled on us and after the morning gray it was sunny and not cold. So, we went with Plan A and took the Ferry across the bay from Oakland. I love that ride, out on the bay and under the Bay Bridge. Sometimes it can be frickin' freezing, but not today! The ride was so nice I proposed that we not get off the boat at the San Francisco Ferry Building and instead ride the ferry to its final stop at Pier 41.

There was one big rule for the day: no talking about work! This was a social exercise and I wanted all of us to hang out as friends and not get into office stuff. Fortunately, no one really crossed the line, so spankings were not required! Well, maybe I'm just a tad disappointed by that, but that's not really appropriate to discuss I suppose...

As we arrived I told the group the story about the Transamerica Pyramid and the Bank of America building as seen from Marin County across the Golden Gate, where the two are often referred to as "The finger, and the box it came in." And yes, "finger" as in "giving the..." Take a look at ye olde pyramid from due north sometime and see what I mean...

After disembarking at Pier 41 we made a beeline for the F Line streetcars. My goal: get as far away from the tourist trap that is Fisherman's Wharf (Pier 39) as quickly as possible! After a very short ride on an old SF steercar we had to change to a different car, which was from Milan Italy (the F line usues vintage streetcars from all over). We rode this car along the Embacadero (SF waterfront) and then up Market Street to the end of the line at Castro. Ah, Market Street, where the socio-economic scale fluctuates by block almost as rapidly as a Gough Street changes altitude... but perhaps that's a tad too much an S.F.-insider comparison.

Anyway, after showing they group ye venerable Castro Theater, we used an L underground train to get to West Portal, where I took the crew to brunch at one of my favorite restaurants; A Cafe for All Seasons. Rob Schoeppe joined us there (he lives on the far west end of S.F.) and we have a very pleasant meal with mucho good food. Bryan had never had polenta before (he's from Irvine, CA, so we cut him some slack), so we expanded his palette with a taste of these "fried italian grits" as I called them.

Our boss Kenji-san was out of town an unable to join, but he left a phone message saying that uncle PAC-MAN should pick up brunch, so the meal went on the company credit card. Thank you PAC-MAN!

As we were leaving, co-worker Umesh Ghodke called and told us that he was sorry that he could not attend. I hadn't actually expected he would make it, but one of these days I'm going to make that man come have fun with us! Hmmm...a plan must be formulated. Bribes musy be made...plots must be thickened...

We piled into Rob's vehicle, but there wasn't really room for six, so poor Bryan rode in the back. He got pretty comfortable...he looked like he was napping!

Next stop was Ocean Beach. The sun was shining, the waves were impressive without being big, and the temperature was perfect for an early March day. I was the only one who dared to shed shoes and dip toes in the ocean. Amazing how people can be so fearless about all kinds of things, but hesitate about putting their feet on sand for fear that someone somewhere broke some glass there. Wimps! Needless to say, my tootsies survived without incident. A few jokes were had about all the great white sharks that inhabit the waters offf the S.F. coast near the Faralon Islands, and we did make a few obsevrations that kids and dogs playing the water's edge would be "tater tots" for said fishies. But no fins were seen, and no puppies were gobbled up like so many deep-fried potatoes. Ah, never any excitement on this beach!

Amy's boyfriend Bill met us at the beach, and we moved the group slightly up the coast to the site of the old Sutro Baths. Most of the group climbed the rocks north of the old tunnel, but Eileen didn't feel up to it, so I stayed with her and Jeff and we climbed around the old foundations and eventually met with the others.

Naturally, being a mere 26 blocks from Tommy's we couldn't leave the city without stopping for a drink or six. We were there for quite a while (where DOES the time go?) and put away a lot of drinks but none of us crossed the line in drunken slobland. Rob and Bryan were the odd men out, though, because Rob was drinkign Jack and coke, and Bryan drank maybe half a margarita total to my 3+ or whatever the heck I drank. Heck, even Amy drank more than Bryan and she's the lightweight!

We parted company at this point, Amy and Bill heading back to San Jose in Bill's car, and Rob drove the rest of us downtown so we could catch BART. Jeff and Eileen live near the Froment BART so Bryan and I bid them adieu at the Lake Merritt station. We then strolled back to Jack London Square to fetch out cars from the garage, and parted company there. Lucky me, my drive home was like 5 minutes. Bryan's was probably 40+!

Everyone seemed to have a good time, and it was nice to hang out socially without work stuff interrupting. I actually genuinely like my co-workers, and I really enjoyed this day out with them. Another excursion seems mandatory. But where? Angel Island? Bodega Bay? Las Vegas? The sake tasting place in Berkeley? Tune in next time to find out!

Posted by molyneaux at 10:01 PM PST

Updated: Tuesday, 19 May 2009 11:32 PM PDT

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I got this via email. I'm never comfortable sending things like this around...as it smacks of Spam, but I filled it out anyway and decided to put it on here and on a Yahoo Club I maintain.

********

Welcome to the next edition of getting to know your Friends.

What you're supposed to do is copy (not forward) this entire email and paste it onto a New email that you'll send. Change all of the Answers so that they apply to you. Then, send this to a whole bunch of people you know "INCLUDING" The person who sent it to you. The theory is that you'll learn a lot of little known facts about Your friends. It's fun and easy. You might be surprised with some of the things you learn about People you think you know!

1. IF YOU COULD BUILD A SECOND HOUSE ANYWHERE WHERE WOULD IT BE?
Somewhere in San Francisco with a view.

2. WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE ARTICLE OF CLOTHING?
My shirt that is nearly magenta, which everyone always compliments me on.

3. THE LAST CD YOU BOUGHT?
Songs for a New Generation, the B-52's

4. WHAT TIME DO YOU WAKE UP IN THE MORNING?
8 a.m.

5. WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE KITCHEN APPLIANCE?
The coffeemaker.

6. IF YOU COULD PLAY AN INSTRUMENT, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
The piano.

7. WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE COLORS?
Blue...no! Yellooooooooooooow! (and if you get it, kudos!)

8. DO YOU BELIEVE IN AFTERLIFE?
Of course. It's a game, commercially available. Buy now!
Actually, no.

9. WHICH DO YOU PREFER SPORTS CAR OR SUV?
Sports car. SUV's are glorified trucks that roll over waaaay too easy. I hear about SUVs rolled over on the traffic reports all the time. What did they say about the Suzuki Samurai? 0 to 180 (degrees) in 1.2 seconds!

10. FAVORITE CHILDREN'S BOOK? As a child, The Boxcar Children. I don't read Children's books now, and neither should you. And the Harry Potter books are technically for young adults, so Booyah! on you if you said it. DO not pass Go, do not collect 200 dollars.

11. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SEASON?
Indian Summer.

12. IF YOU COULD HAVE ONE SUPER POWER, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
The power to block SPAM and keep people from forwarding lame jokes.

13. IF YOU HAVE A TATTOO, WHAT IS IT?
Don't have any. Won't get any.

14. CAN YOU JUGGLE?
At work, yes. Mandatory!

15. NAME ONE PERSON FROM YOUR PAST YOU WISH YOU COULD GO BACK AND TALK TO?
Charles F. Johnson...my musican once-friend who sorta fell off the face of the Earth.

16. WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE DAY?
Saturday.

17. WHAT'S IN THE TRUNK OF YOUR CAR?
My car is a hatchback, ergo no trunk. But in the back are rain clothes and a tripod. Thanks for asking.

18. FROM THE PEOPLE YOU WILL EMAIL THIS TO, WHO'S MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND FIRST?
Not gonns email it...but I'm gonna post it on my Yahoo Club called Fallon's Fallen. My guess is Sherri will reply first, since I know she sent this to question 21's answer.

20. WHO'S LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND?
Brian Doe. Karen. Tracy. Gene. Barry. Damn you all! ;)

21. WHO DID YOU RECEIVE THIS FROM?
Phil in Elko...the metrosexual in the middle of nowhere!

Posted by molyneaux at 1:06 PM PST

Updated: Tuesday, 19 May 2009 11:34 PM PDT

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I'm so behind on this Blog...I really have to get back in the habit of writing in it.

This week's been rough. I've been pulling 11 hour days at work. Thank goodness I'm meeting a developer in San Francisco mid-afternoon, because it'll force me to get away from the office and get off work at something approaching a reasonable hour.

Kinda backfilling events since my last posting, on Monday Dec. 20 I attended the company Christmas Lunch, held at the Decathalon Club in Santa Clara. The food was decent, and there was wine. Once nice thing was that the company popped for actual entertainment, having hired two comics from San Francsico to perform for us. The first guy was the funnier...a juggler and comic who runs a comedy club in Union Sqaure. The second is someone probably better known, but not as a comic. She's the woman who appears as the Pine Sol lady in all the commericials. In her act, she was talking about how the only video game she can play is Ms. PAC-MAN, but complained that it as hard to play on her cell phone...and as she said this, she looked right at me, which is funny because I'm in charge of the cell phone products at Namco. After that, she kept talking to me throughout the act. She even gave a gift certifacte for Pine Sol. After that, I won one of the table decorations in a raffle, which, strangely enough, was made from Pine branches.

So, no, I wasn't pine-ing for anything that day.

Posted by molyneaux at 12:46 AM PST

Updated: Tuesday, 19 May 2009 11:35 PM PDT

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Went to see The Incredibles again on Saturday. Great movie. Definitely a must-have on DVD. I'm always impressed how PIXAR's animation and rendering is two years ahead of everyone else's. I loved director Brad Bird's "The Iron Giant", so I'm thrilled he's two for two in the feature dept now.

Spoke to Terry today. Making plans to get together next weekend and hash over his script. I reworked the scene directions in the fist 16 pages of it, and I need to get on the next chunk. The plan is for me to help him streamline the directions so we can get an accurate page count, and then start hashing over the scenes and characters and dialogue. I'm looking forward to it because I like the story, and it's fun to work on something so utterly different than the kind of thing I would write.

Posted by molyneaux at 4:11 PM PST

Updated: Tuesday, 19 May 2009 11:37 PM PDT

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Well, it's over with Nick Pettitt and I. Not that there was much there, just a few visits in 2002 and 2003, but I'm still disappointed.

Well, let me qualify "disappointed". Nick's partnered, so I never had any illusions about the relationship being more than what it was. But I did like his company when we were together. I'd hoped we could stay long-distance friends who occasionally saw each other, but apparently he started to see our getting together as some sort of obligation, which is too bad. I never asked anything much of him...even he was the one who instigated all his visits here. Just goes to show you that sometimes even asking for nothing is too much. Cest la vie!

Actually, I'm surprisingly ambivalent about the whole thing. I knew it was coming when he typed "we have to talk" just before I went to bed Thursday night, but I didn't lose any sleep over it. I mean, how broke up can you really be about someone after 18 months where all you do is type a few short messages to each other a couple of times a week?

Friday was a little crappy at work. Lots of stuff didn't go right. No major disasters, just lots of frustrations. Fortunately the evening was pretty good. I went out with my friend (and next door neighbor) Patrick and his new boyfriend for Happy Hour, and chatted with some nice guys. A nice wind-down to the week, and the kind I rarely get as I don't usually get home from work in time to go out for things like that.

Also, I got a call that my new dining room table has arrived from Italy. Now I have to arrange to go pick it up, as the cost of shipping it here from SW San Francisco is a bit much!

Posted by molyneaux at 12:44 AM PST

Updated: Tuesday, 19 May 2009 11:36 PM PDT

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1. MOVED. After 7 years in my apt. at Lake Merritt, I moved. My previous entry here was when I decided to make the move. I've been here a little over two monrhs now, but I'm nowhere near settled. Work's had me so busy that I'm seldom home! I did manage to order a dining room table last weekend. Maybe tomorrow I can finish painting the bathroom...
2. JAPAN. In late september I took my first trip to Japan. It was a business trip, but not an overly busy one. The food was great. The people were nice. The trains are on time. And then there's the sake and Karaoke...
3. BIRTHDAY. For my 41st birthday a bunch of friends and co-workers showed up at Tommy's and farrr too much tequila was consumed...hoo boy.
4. WORK WORK WORK. I've been working a lot...part of this is because we've been understaffed, and I've been doing the job that producers would do...if I had them. Well, I just on Friday officially extended offers to two candidates, one of whom's already accepted. Having them will make it possible for me to do the job I was hired to do, and maybe actually have a social life again.
5. HIKE HIKE! I've beeen trying to go out and do more walking and hiking on weekends. Skip and I have been out hiking in the Oakland Hills over the past few weekends. Today we hiked to the top of Wildcat Peak. Hoping to keep doing that.
6. MOVIES. Haven't seen that many in recent months, but I do recall seeing these:

• The Indredibles -- A blast!
• Sky Captain & the World of Tomorrow -- Laaaaame
• Team America World Police -- Rude, crude, foul, and I laughed until I hurt
• The Corporation -- Interesting and Infuriating
• OutFoxed -- Which Proves that Fox News is neither Fair nor Balanced...which should come as no big surprise to anyone

Posted by molyneaux at 9:31 PM PST

Updated: Tuesday, 19 May 2009 11:40 PM PDT

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I've been in this apartment 7 years and 1/2 month. It's the longest I've ever lived in any one place nonstop. But, that; coming to an end at the end of this month, and I'm going to be renting one unit of a duplex owned by my friends Jerry and Patrick.

The place is great. Built in 1936, it's two floors with two bedrooms and bath in the carpeted upstairs, and living room, dining room and kitchen downstairs, which is mostly hardwood floors. The house is on a hill, so streetside the master bedroom is at 3rd floor height and the front door in up a flight of strairs (there's a garage below the living room), but step out the back door (kitchen) and it's ground level. There's a nice back yard I'll share with my landlords, and off the master bedroom is a wide balcony with a great view of all of downtown Oakland and glimpses of San Francisco beyond.

The living room and the 2nd bedroom both have corner windows. I love that. Now I have to start buying furniture to fill the place! Today I stopped at an open house at the Design Centre Italiano in Emeryville, and they had some really nice pieces, but more were too pricy for what they were, and a lot of it was too modern for my tastes. I did see a dining room table I drooled over, but it was close to $3K with the chairs. Yowch. For the living room I'm contemplating doing a mix of the art and crafts pieces I have with something more modern. I'm also toying with painting, because I hate white walls. I'm also trying to figure out what to do with the TV, since I hate how they dominate a room and I don't like those big TV cabinets. Can't wait for the day when those wall-hangable plasma screens are a reasonable price.

The only real downside is that the 2nd bedrooms's pretty small, but I've got some ideas on how to make the best use of that.

The other downside is that I have to start packing. Oy!

Posted by molyneaux at 4:59 PM PDT

Updated: Tuesday, 19 May 2009 11:41 PM PDT

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