dahanese.com

Adventures with drunk drivers

Last night, my friends and I went up to Novato to play board games (we're amazing party animals. I'm glad you know this now.) We left around 11:45 at night and got onto the 101, heading south for our home in San Francisco.

Just past the Nave Drive exit, we saw a large white Audi SUV swerving in its lane (and occasionally out of its lane.) There were four of us in my car, and I was driving, and I felt this surge of ABSOLUTE HATRED for drunk drivers. Having worked in Novato for a better part of five years, I've seen quite a few distracted and likely drunk drivers on the roads, and since I had the luxury of friends in the car with me, I asked someone to call 911 and report this driver.

The downsides of not archiving

After Friday's brief stint on Kotaku, I found out that all the blog posts I made during my tenure at my old company had been taken down. I did some digging over the weekend in an attempt to find them again, but seems the Wayback Machine archived last in 2011, when I had 27 posts (if memory serves me, I had over 60 when I left.)

Consumerist covers my United debacle.

First off: Thank you, Consumerist, for covering the note I sent you (and posted here) about what happened on my United flight.

As an update: I never received the email I was promised that would confirm my refund was processing. My sister and her husband were flat out told that regardless of what they were promised, they would not get a refund - they were also told neither would I.

I'm working on disputing the charge on my credit card, but I won't give up so easily because what United did was wrong and lying so blatantly to customers should not go unnoticed.

Consumerist Article

In response to gaming and geek culture’s desperate need to disparage women

Sexism exists. As a society we have come come a long way, but sexism still exists and we still have a lot of work to do to change people's attitudes towards women. I believe I am a strong woman. I believe in judging people based on what they do and how they conduct themselves in the world. As such, I am writing this response because I am completely and utterly sick of people who still feel the need to disparage women because they don’t fit a certain mold (note I say people here because both women and men do this and they equally sicken me.)

Today a man named Joe Peacock wrote an article that was featured on CNN titled “Booth babes need not apply” that went on to discuss women who he described as “6s” in the real world, but garbed in a geek tee shirt or cosplay outfit, became “9s”. He said these women were "a pox on our culture" and "just gross."

United Airlines: unable to fix a seatbelt.

This is a story of how United Airlines stranded me in Chicago, I missed my grandfather's funeral, and then United refused to give me a refund.

The Folly in Making a Definitive Community Manager Guide

I started in the games industry back in 2006 as a Community Manager. Looking back, it was pretty awesome because the role was virtually undefined and as a newcomer to the industry and the title, I had no idea what I was doing and subsequently made everything up as I went along. Six years later, I'm pretty confident that it all worked out.

As someone who lives and breathes communities (not just as for job but in a fairly obsessive way throughout my day) I read a lot about the topic and follow quite a few CMs on Twitter. Today, @SixOkay (Justin, for those who don't answer to handles more readily than real names) retweeted an article stating it had the definitive job guide for a Community Manager. Ever skeptical, I clicked, and now I have my response to what I read.

Before you begin, you might want to take a read at the article: http://socialfresh.com/a-definitive-community-manager-job-description/

Because I’m terrible at good byes, here’s a blog post

Today marks my last day at 2K Games. It’s a big day and saying it’s also an emotional one would be the understatement of the year for me. 2K Games has shaped not only my professional life in a huge way, but also my personal one, making this a big milestone in pretty much every way possible. And while I may be moving on to new opportunities, today I’m spending this blog post looking back on the past six years and remembering the awesome people I met and the awesome things we accomplished.

Pancake's better at marketing than I am, apparently.

Yesterday, we announced the Borderlands 2 collector's edition. Someone on Shacknews asked me how big the loot chest was, and since we have a prototype in the office I said I'd take a picture for him to show scale.

I also had my miniature dachshund, Pancake, in the office, and since she's kind of notorious on Shacknews, I figured I'd use her for scale.

I like using yfrog.com (although it's not the best site, I know) for all my phone-uploaded photos (archiving FTW) so I tweeted the two below pictures of Pancake to show scale and then posted them on Shacknews.

Turns out gamers really care about the scale of their collector's edition loot chests and also love tiny dogs. As of this morning, she had 1270 upvotes on Reddit - someone dug her enough to repost the picture. She was also posted on tumblr and was reblogged quite a bit.

Pancake has now won the right to come to the office with me whenever she wants. Sure, she sits on my desk and whimpers after lunch because she knows she gets a treat then. Sure, she sometimes lets out a bark during a conference if she sees a big dog out the window. But she's probably also sold hundreds of collectors editions... So I think overall, she wins at video game marketing.

Conversations from my workplace.

Walking to the bathroom I saw Rocco peeling a piece of citrus in the hallway over a trash can.

"Tobey, is this a blood orange or is it rotten?"

"I don't know, dude, it's got a ton of white pulpy stuff. That's a lot more than I'm used to. Is it red inside? They are really red inside."

"I don't know, I got it from Marin."

"Break it open, let's see."

"Is it rotten?"

"Dude, that looks like a grapefruit." (I smell it.) "Yeah, that's a grapefruit."

"Well can I eat it?"

"If you like grapefruit, yeah."

...And at this point, the gal in the office next to use started laughing so hard she cried.

forays into photography.

so, as you may know, i'm getting married next week. this is rad and all, but what is WAY MORE AWESOME is that i'm getting a full week in maui, sans blackberry and laptop, to do anything in the world i want. it's a gorgeous place, and it's our honeymoon, so i want to have some kick ass pictures. thusly, about two weeks ago, i began my search to figure out what kind of camera we wanted to get.

we had a few options: iphone with a waterproof case when we go in the ocean, point-and-shoot with a waterproof case, waterproof point-and-shoot, or DSLR and some other option of the above.

i went with that last one.