Thoughts of the day...

I updated my msstyles rant.  It amazes me that someone out there would actually pay money to patch their uxtheme file. I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't busted "companies" that make a profit selling cracks to the gullible.

Tomorrow I'm speaking to U of M on software development and about the game industry.

Tuesday I'm off to LA on business and won't be back until late Wednesday. I really hate traveling. I mean I can't understate it. I REALLY hate travel. I could write a blog just on that subject. I know that our company could be a lot bigger and I'd probably be a lot wealthier if I was willing to travel more but while I don't mind going to new places, the actual act of traveling drives me nuts. It's not flying that bugs me, it's the airports, train stations, whatever. It's just such a hassle. I don't like being inconvenienced. I'd pay an extra 25% on everything dealing with travel if they would just make flights on time, have more logical paths (no flying to Atlanta "on the way" to Las Vegas for instance).  The result is that I end up just paying for first class (or insist on at least business class if a client really needs me to fly out to visit) which of course makes things a lot tougher when dealing with us.  This is the part where someone emails me and says "You need a better management team." Duh. I know, this is one area we are weak as a company. We don't have a "Vice President" who can do this kind of thing. Who knows the whole company's business, is reasonable technical, and knows business. I'm the only "generalist" (knows all the things going on but focuses on none) in the company at present. Our management team is brilliant in the sense that they are amongst the best in the world at what they do. But because we do so many different things it's hard to keep an eye on all of it or understand the technology, business, and running of all of them at once. Or more to the point, one can't specialize on the various details AND keep track of all of it. So I'm the generalist. And that's not surprising (read next paragraph on how much stuff is going on at once).

So right now I've got this on my plate. That is, these are the projects I'm currently spending significant time in the next few weeks:

• Galactic Civilizations 1.2 (have to code on that)
• Galactic Civilizations Expansion Pack (have to code on that too)
• The Political Machine (have to code on that)
• Try to get WinCustomize back in action (have to help organize exactly how we're going to get new drives up, budget new servers, etc.)
• Have to write up two WinCustomize Magazines to help get WinCustomize's traffic back on track.
• We'll need to send a reminder to all skin authors who lost skins in the crash a reminder of what skins still need to be restored once we have the archive restored.
• Have to work on promoting the Holiday Desktop suite both with C-net and on WinCustomize
• Need to get Universe Metal 2004 out the door, that will mean coordinating the various project pieces
• Need to work on DesktopX 2.1, that involves managing mainly and putting together objects, documentation, and marketing
• Need to work on Object Desktop 2004's install. Not the coding (Kris does that) but making sure the install is totally seamless
• Have to put together the default suites for Object Desktop 2004's CD.
• Have to put together the rest of the Object Desktop 2004 documentation, that includes writing about 30 more pages, putting together 30 pages, and editing 30 more pages (90 pages on top of the existing 90 pages of which I wrote about 40 pages of).
• Have to put together media kits on Object Desktop 2004.
• Have to decide if Object Desktop 2004 is going to come out now or in January 2004. It's looking more like January due to the WinCustomize crash.
• Will need to check in and update the Neowin.net WindowBlinds forum and help out there on news items and such as part of my news admin duties
• Same for WinCustomize.com
• Need to help on WindowBlinds 4.2 which includes putting together and deciding on default visual styles.

That's all between now and the holiday break.