Greetings, I know some of you clicking on this email are hoping that I’m here to tell you about Sins of a Solar Empire II.  I hope to be able to talk more about Sins of a Solar Empire more in the near future but today I wanted to make sure you know that we’re releasing a new RTS today that I think you might like: Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation. In many respects, it’s Sins of a Solar Empire on the surface of a planet. If you already know you want it, get it here: http:...

I’ve had JoeUser.com as my home but with two differnet IDs (draginol and frogboy) so thoroughly conflicted at this stage, I thought it would make sense to set up a site that combines them. My articles still get posted on all the Stardock sites (you might be reading this on JoeUser or WinCustomize or Sins of a Solar Empire. Who knows.  But now you can find all my stuff together at www.littletinyfrogs.com .

I have a standing opinion about people who take their forum disagreements into “real life”: They’re horrible people. This evening I was surfing the net and found someone who had been recently subjected to someone who disliked them on an Internet forum going out and taking out ads with their real name, address, etc. for the purposes of harassing them.  The person who did that is a horrible person. The irony, however, is that the victim of the harassment was someone who flamed me fo...

I just finished a really enjoyable book called The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution . Highly recommended. I’ve been planning my midlife crisis for awhile. These things need planning of course.  Last year I hit 40.  That’s the age where denial over middle age is over. It’s arrived. I’m a man of many interests. I just don’t know what to focus on nor do I know if I want to focus on anything in particular. The problem is incentive. I’d rather have more hours i...

Over the years I’ve found out what I’m good at: Business. At the same time, I know what I like to do: Software and game design. For awhile, I held the conceit that I was pretty decent at game design. But since hiring Derek (Kael) Paxton and Jon Shafer, I’ve come to realize that my skills at a game designer are much like my skills at graphics design or software development – I can do it in a pinch but I’m out of my league compared to a specialist. It’s a bit of a bummer. Actua...

Tomorrow is the 20 year class reunion for my high school. I can’t believe it’s been that long. For me, high school was not fun. Even with the benefit of hindsight the best I could describe the overall high school experience was “horrible”.  That it was horrible wasn’t due to my classmates (though certain classmates did make a bad situation worse but my main pain from high school is in prison serving a life sentence) but just the situation overall – I was a total nerd and HS isn’t...

So tomorrow I'm heading out on a 2 day trip. Blech. I don't know why but I just hate to travel. Well actually, I do know why. I don't like the actual "Travel" portion. If I could just beam to wherever I was going that would be great. Gotta pack up and get ready to go. Over the past several years I've gotten packing down to a science: 2 days: light clothes. No suits. I won't wear a suit when I travel. If a suit is going to make or break a deal, then I don't want to do business with a com...

The best part about being an entrepreneur is working with really good talented people. They say you can't choose your coworkers but that's the one perk of being an entrepreneur. And over the past few years, we've put together an outstanding team of developers. I don't mean this as an idle boast but we have some of the best people on earth working together. Years ago, in the OS/2 market days, we had put together a pretty good team too. But it all nearly collapsed when the OS/2 market died. ...

The new JoeUser.com system is still very new. There are still zillions of little buglets we're working through. Just today we fixed a problem with printing of articles as well as enhancing and then fixing the email article feature. There's still a lot of work to be done so please bear with us. But coming in a few weeks, people who create accounts (or already have accounts) will have the option of having their own blog. It'll be free to have your own blog here. And your blog won't be some wac...

On JoeUser classic no one could even comment on a blog.  No matter how obnoxious my opinion was on some topic, no one could come on and say "Hey, you may not like your Mac but at least it's not constantly infected by worm viruses!" or something like that.  Now, on the new JoeUser.com, you can.  On anonymous comments I do have the right to delete them (so no more "Go back to Russia!" comments <g>) but you don't have to actually create an account now to ...

Well what kind of blog doesn't have pictures and other personal stuff on it? Here's some pictures from this summer so far... Alex & Ryan at the zoo   Ditto Ryan turns 3

XXX As you can see, the system is still under development and will be for the next few weeks. It'll be shaping up pretty quickly though I suspect. yyy Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor i

I’m working a lot of hours right now.  But why?  At some point I think I should do some research on this.  It’s been years since I’ve “needed” to work from a financial perspective.  So what is the motivator?  Heck, I don’t even have a salary anymore but yet I love to work.  Clearly, I’m insane.

Bailey and her mother Hara and 8 siblings.