Atrophe. I think that's how you spell it. I could look it up but that would be work. And that brings me to my problem - I've become so lazy that my muscles are starting to atrophe.  I think I should do something about that..but yet..the chair beckons..

Last night the master database became corrupt and one of the machines had a catastrophic failure.  I kind of "perfect storm" of failure -- two bad things on two seperate servers.  For a few hours, JoeUser ceased to exist. It was the worst case scenario. However, LUCKILY, we do daily backups on all your blogs. So this incident can at least provide some assurance that all your hard work, your thoughts and written record are being treated with respect and care. It does mean, however...

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...

The points system doesn't exist to promote fairness.  It doesn't exist to encourage competition.  It's not even designed to encourage bloggers to blog more. The points system is designed spefically to promote articles and bloggers that have already gained a readership.  It doesn't care what you write about.  It doesn't care whether you're a liberal or a conservative.  It doesn't care what color your skin is or what sex you are.  It simply designed to promote thos...

JoeUser has been going up and down and up and down.  What's the deal? This is going to be a bit technical but we want you guys to know exactly what is happening. All Stardock community sites share the same underlying Stardock.net database structure.  Your UserID and Password will work on JU, GalCiv2.com, TotalGaming.net, WinCustomize.com, SocietyGame.com, PoliticalMachine.com and even in Stardock.com's forums.  The same is true of the blogs/posts. When I write a blog...

For those of you interested in what the new office looks like here's a video I took (in .WMV format) with my digital camera.  The first part is muted (too windy) but I narrate a bit once inside.

So you're a kid. La-di-la-la.  One day you're 19. At college. Trying to get through your classes. And then one day you wake up and you're 33, married with two children. The good news: Your acne cleared up.  The bad news, your hair may be thinning. The zits are gone, but now I swear my hair is thinning. I'm not sure, it used to be too painful to comb it. But I swear it was thicker before! I hear that propecia can fix it but on the one hand, I'm married. Who gives a crap how I look? ...

One day we noticed we were running out of space in our current building. We also decided that, as a software company, we should try to buy a building so that we would have something to borrow against if times were ever bad.  Right now, times are really good.  So now's the time to prepare for the future. So we find our dream building. Brand new. Just built. Great location. Ponds and nature stuff all around. Near the highway but not right on it. And we got it for a decent price.&nb...

Once JoeUser goes through its speed/architecture overhaul we plan to offer premium accounts for users. One of the features will be photo albums. Here's an example of what they'll be like from what we are about to launch on WinCustomize.com: http://frogboy.wincustomize.com/photos.aspx The adding of photos is really the key though. It's incredibly slick -- a built in ActiveX control (soon to be Java) enables me to see thumbnails of images that are on my hard drives and select as many as...