Some backstory can be found in this comic about Doug Rattmann, the delusional Aperture Science engineer who survived the events surrounding GLaDOS‘ activation.

EDIT: Okay, okay. Since those last two links at Combine OverWiki also contain lots of spoilers, here is the Portal 2 ending video. But it will make absolutely no sense if you haven’t played at least through Chapter 5 of the game.

The weather here did make a difference in my relocation from California. I spent my childhood in the midwest, and while I don’t miss the hot sticky summers, I liked the summer rain. I missed the change in the air, the thunder rolling across the fields, and the way everything smelled after it was over.[1]

My first Fan Week was in 2006. It was taking a long time to unpack my things, so I had the fan but not the cover. The first time I ran it, the cord from the venetian blinds got caught in the blades. Etc.

Hold onto your butts.

UPDATE: Imported. Will fiddle with URL stuff later

mamablogga.com – The ultimate guide to migrating from blogger to wordpress

It was quite a long dream … I spent weeks in my rural hometown. In the house where I was staying there was a wasps’ nest. I told someone about a childhood experience with wasps and it occurred to me that, in a sense, they were only harmful because I’d stumbled into them.

My grandparents took out a massive loan to convert their farm into a spaceport. We had engineers inspecting everything. Later I was in another spaceport where we were trespassing (for no particularly good reason) and watching little bullets whiz around, and the thought crossed my mind that the action in Star Wars Ep IV was far less intense than in Ep III, which didn’t make sense. Note to Lucas: if you remake the second trilogy to add more action, I shall be very sad ;-)

One of our teammates had uploaded a major chunk of code into an old robot that nobody used or thought was working, and when the others went looking for the code I kept trying to tell them the data they were missing was stored in that robot, but they kept digging around anyway.

Then we were setting up engineer workstations at the spaceport, in an office that had been built around an old tree, and asked for the workers’ feedback on the setup. Some people thought they were too close to their neighbors, but others in identical arrangements thought they were too far away. We reached a compromise. The dude next to the tree wasn’t happy. :D

I think I ordered the same thing but I didn’t like it, too much ketchup and generally sloppy but it cost $12 for some reason. Digging through my wallet all I had was a $5 and a $7 and a $25, and a handful of ones; and as soon as I spent the $7 I knew they were going to want to know where i got it from — or rather, they’d assume I was trying to pass counterfeits. I knew they must be legit, because they were really authentic-looking and worn, and obviously I’d gotten them from somewhere myself. Oh darn.

p.s. Happy National Blog Posting Month. Out of a misplaced sense of journalistic integrity I am not back-dating posts to fill in the days I missed already. :P

EDIT (2011-12-22) This information is now obsolete. :-( See comments below.

I just finished an informal “interview” at blist in Pioneer Square. My brain stalled out when it was my turn to answer questions, but even so, I think there’s a >25% chance of getting an offer by Christmas. Before last week I’d never heard of them, but it sounded like they were doing something interesting, which would be a welcome change.

No. What they’re doing isn’t interesting. It’s mindblowing. It does for relational databases what Scripting News and Blogger did for writing. I mean, your grandma can keep recipes in this thing.

But blist is not only a really smart UI. Consumer applications for blists are also a free demo for organizations who are traditionally dependent on IT[2] to build and manage database applications for them. Need a timecard application? Drag ‘n drop. Need a gradebook for your school? Copy an existing design shared by the community. Need a warehouse management system? Tricky — you might need an analyst. This is everything Access was supposed to be.

The other end of the system is a massive-scale database fleet on a par with AWS or Google, capable of providing enterprise-class service with the same economies of scale. I’m a hippie-geeky idealist like my dad, so it pays to be skeptical, but I think these guys have the experience to pull it off. The CEO, Kevin Merritt, is a nice guy. He’s also got a track record. Even without attending the Steve Jobs School of Mass Hypnosis, he’s got me excited about this thing.

And they understand that the UI is crucial — with only a dozen or so employees, they already have a full-time UX person on staff.

I think I want this.

Elephant. Never forget.

Footnotes

1. Okay, sorry, Elephant wasn’t around back then. But there are plenty of other holes you could have picked at besides this one. Oh wait, it’s the only one with a footnote.[3] Never mind. As you were.
2. It always feels weird to speak of “traditions” relating to IT.
3. I’m not afraid to admit I was wrong.