This weekend we took down our Autumn decor to replace it with wreaths, stockings, mangers, ornaments, and the ilk. Among the retired ornamentation were a few ears of indian corn, which I pressed into service this evening for an amusing experiment.

“Who’s ready for Fun With Science?™” I bellowed at the unsuspecting children. They made vague apprehensive noises, which I took as enthusiastic endorsement. “Today, we see if we can pop indian corn in the microwave!” They perked up a little at this, but not enough to leave the table. I threw one of the ears in the microwave, thought about it for a moment, and hit the “Popcorn” button.

10 seconds. Nothing.

20 seconds. Still nothing.

30 seconds. This is getting dull.

45 seconds. POP!

“Woohoo!” The kids were suddenly quite interested indeed, and all ran to the microwave to watch the ear of corn noisily transform itself into a fluffy white mass. Kernels went all over the inside of the microwave, and we laughed uproariously as the mess grew. After about two minutes, things were slowing down, so I pulled open the door and said “Who wants to try some?”

The kids were once again dubious (and have, by this point in their tender lives, realized when Daddy is trying to use them as guinea pigs), so I grabbed a piece and gobbled it up. The kernels were smaller than regular popcorn, but were otherwise quite good. Everybody else soon got into the spirit of it and stripped the cob. “It’s even more delicious with salt!”

I count this experiment a success.

As a follow up to my note on the furor over Electronic Arts’ labor management practices, here’s a posting with a recent internal email from Rusty Rueff, one of EA’s flock of Vice Presidents. Pertinent bits:

As much as I don’t like what’s been said about our company and our industry, I recognize that at the heart of the matter is a core truth: the work is getting harder, the tasks are more complex and the hours needed to accomplish them have become a burden. We haven’t yet cracked the code on how to fully minimize the crunches in the development and production process. Net, there are things we just need to fix…We’ve started a Development Process Improvement Project to get smarter and improve efficiency. Just as we have revamped the Pre-Production process, we are now creating a Product Development Map that will provide earlier decision-making (on SKUS and game features), improve our consistency of creative direction, and lessen the number of late in the process changes, firedrills, and crunches…Most important: we recognize that this doesn’t get fixed with one email or in one month. It’s an on-going process of communication and change.

It sounds as though the pressure the unhappy employees have brought to bear has been helpful in getting the senior management to take a look at some of these issues. I hope they’re able to bring off the changes they’re talking about, as there are a lot of good people in the company who are taking a beating because of the way the company manages projects and personnel. Thanks for taking the first step, Rusty.

My friend Daniel has posted a new poem called Rainboy this evening that I think is among his best work. Go read it! (Link to Blogspot’s annoyingly ephemeral “permalink” now fixed.)

The good news farm is currently having a bumper crop. The latest harvest included this handsome gourd: Chris proposed to his English honeypie, Becky, over Thanksgiving, and she has accepted! The current plan is to have the wedding in England during the summer of 2005. We’re delighted for the happy couple, and Kathy and I are excited at the prospect of having a good excuse to go to England for the first time in either of our lives. (Liam, on the other hand, is already worried about riding the plane.)

Here’s a photo of the beaming duo from back in August, which I think really captures something fundamental about their relationship:

We recently had the sadly-infrequent pleasure of visiting with Kathy’s parents and sister, who drove down from Wilson, New York to spend the week with us. The kids skipped most of their school week, and I took off a couple of days from work to enjoy skipping around the Texas hill country with them.

We loaded up the locations of a few geocaches near Canyon lake before driving out there one afternoon to have a picnic and play some miniature golf. Kathy’s mom especially enjoyed hunting for the caches, finding a cleverly hidden that the rest of us were having no luck whatsoever with. They’re thinking about a GPS for Christmas now.

We also introduced them to The Grist Mill, one of our favorite nearby eateries, and went wine tasting in Gruene. While Kathy’s dad has historically tackled huge building projects during his visits, we managed to limit his list to installing some lights and fixing our water heater this time. (What a treat to actually have a hot shower!) He also enjoyed breaking in his new camera, and got this shot of an army helicopter lifting off from the practice field at Texas State University as we drove past. Some Lazer Tag, shopping, a visit to the Bob Bullock Texas History Museum and the Capitol, and a good deal of romping with the kids rounded out the visit nicely.

Thanks for making the drive, folks!

Tonight I took Abigail to see The Princess Diaries 2. It was pretty much as good as anything of recent vintage that starts with “Disney” and ends with “2” — which is to say not at all. There was one shining moment, however: when Anne Hathaway’s character is crowned queen at the end, she holds a scepter in one hand, and The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch in the other. Seriously, I think they stole the prop.

There’s been some interesting press on my Electronic Arts, my former employer, lately. A New York Times article summarizes things nicely. More interesting reading includes EA Spouse, Joe Straitiff’s Journal, and an open letter from the International Game Developers Association.

My time at EA was remarkably free of the sorts of excessive demands documented here until the end of my tenure, when I got transferred onto a team that was actually making games rather than just supporting them. I count myself blessed that I had the option to leave as that vortex was starting to show the first signs of sucking me in. Several of my friends stayed with the company, and have been feeling pretty ground down with little hope for respite, as their current projects are on an overly aggressive schedule.

I would guess that the companies’ labor practices are unlikely to change significantly until their hands are forced. There are always fresh-faced college graduates who are willing to sacrifice their personal lives for the glamor of the industry. And unfortunately, the game industry is showing no sign of anything that will shake up the distribution model in the same way that iTunes and its brethren are starting to do for the music industry. It should be interesting to see how this all plays out over the next few years. For the sake of my friends, I hope we see a happy ending.

Two items:

• Have you ever gotten to work and realized that your shoes don’t match? At least I have the excuse that yes, in fact, I did dress in the dark today.
• Helpful hint, formulated shortly after answering the door a few minutes ago: If you’re a male, and wish to sell me something, don’t give me a limp handshake and then compliment me on my eyes. I will most certainly not buy a magazine subscription from you under those circumstances.

Last Thursday, Kathy and I went to Wurstfest, an annual “Salute to Sausage” and German culture festival in nearby New Braunfels. We had a good time snarfing down schnitzel and potato pancakes, browsing the carnival rides, and watching the leiderhosen-clad septuagenarians dancing to old Teutonic favorites. Musical highlights: Kerry Christensen, an incandescent accordion-playing yodeler, Terry Cavanagh and Alpine Express, a really fun and diverse ensemble, and getting to hear The Chicken Dance three times (and do it twice) in the short hours we were there.

On Saturday, I met up with Ben and took the kids to the Austin Celtic Festival. Predictably, their favorite parts were the SCA combat demonstrations, though the “knights” didn’t let the children whack away at an armored adult as they had in years past. They did, however, have a shooting gallery, where for a dollar players could man a longbow or crossbow and shoot leather-tipped arrows at a line of combatants, who would fall down in Oscar-worthy death throes when hit. The candy-flinging trebuchet was also a big hit with the young ones, as was the reenactment of the Black Knight seen from Monty Python’s Holy Grail. There was a fair bit of good music here too — I have a soft spot for rock bands with bagpipes — but we heard most of it only incidentally as we tried to keep the four kids from wandering off in seven different directions.

As fall has walked in on little cat feet, and the weather in Texas has been cool enough to enjoy being outside without having a river immediately available to jump into, I’ve taken to walking to work when time permits. It takes a bit longer than biking, but is better exercise, and encourages contemplation more than does the same path astride my two-wheeled steed.

Now, because I have a knack for taking anything carefree, beautiful, and wholesome and spoiling it by overanalyzing, I decided to bring the GPS with me this morning to see what sort of distance I’m actually covering and what sort of time I made. Results:

• Time: 22 minutes, 38 seconds
• Average Speed: 3.8 miles/hour
• Distance: 1.42 miles

A little better speed than I expected, and when done twice a day, it’s a pretty nice addition to my nominal fitness regimen.