Dreams come crashing down 
As any of the two readers of my blog rightly know, I dream of making video games. Well, today I encountered an extremely large setback. According to a recent survey by International Game Developers Association, game developers lead shitty lives. This survey, titled Quality of Life in the Game Industry: Challenges and Best Practices is 90 pages long, but you have to login to read it (registration is free). It is some depressing information though:

• Only 3.4% said that their coworkers averaged 10 or more years of experience.
• 33.8% of respondents are between 25 and 29, only 18.4% over 35.
• Crunch time is omnipresent, during which respondents work 65 to 80 hours a week (35.2%). The average crunch work week exceeds 80 hours (13%). Overtime is often uncompensated (46.8%).
• 44% of developers claim they could use more people or special skills on their projects.
• Spouses are likely to respond that:
  • You work too much... (61.5%)
  • You are always stressed out. (43.5%)
  • You don't make enough money. (35.6%)
• Contrary to expectations, more people said that games were only one of many career options for them (34%) than said games were their only choice (32%).

One of my favorite statistics is this:

Less likely than the population as a whole to have children. 76.9% of respondents (and 82.9% of female respondents) have no kids.

Now, if this is a conscious decision, that's one thing, but it does beg the question, is this statistic due to the fact that game developers just can't get laid? If so, do I really want to be one? Working 65-80 hours a week, every week, only to come home and not get any lovin'? It does raise some concerns. However, one good statistic in all of that information is that half of the developers expect to leave the industry in the next 10 years:

34.3% of developers expect to leave the industry within 5 years, and 51.2% within 10 years.

... which means, there might be an opening for me! Sure, I can see how miserable their lives are, and I want to share in that misery... for some reason I still think I want to make video games... what's wrong with me?

Kill Bill meets The Star Wars Kid 
If you don't know who the Star Wars Kid is, I don't know where you've been... but you better catch up fast. Ghyslain (as he used to be known) was goofing around in the A/V lab at school, choreographed some moves, and forgot to take the tape home with him (read more about him)... The next day, some mean kids, found the tape, watched it, and posted it on the internet in an effort to humiliate the poor kid. Now, I have to admit, as sad as this story is, The Star Wars Kid has some moves... and in his latest adventure, he's off to Kill Bill.

It's Monday and I just got a new computer 
Okay, so it's Monday, and Monday is hard enough to get a handle on, without having to set-up a new computer... but hey, it's part of my job and I get paid so I really can't complain... but yet I do. Funny how that works. And what pisses me off the most is that all of my rockin' favorites are gone, so all of those cool things I had to share with you are gone. Things like:

• The banana gaurd—Are you fed up with bringing bananas to work or school only to find them bruised and squashed? Our unique, patented device allows for the safe transport and storage of individual bananas letting you enjoy perfect bananas anytime, anywhere.
• The Anit-Panti—Anti-panti is the answer to all of this underwear nonsense–thongs, g-strings, low-riders, briefs, boy-cut, bikini–the list never ends. With anti-panti you don't have to choose... Anti-panti–make your thong be gone!!!

I can't make up stuff this good... and I had tons of it. Now it's all gone, and I can't complain to ITS and say, "Listen, thanks for the new computer, but all of my time-wasting favorites are gone." So, the only option is to hunt down all of the good stuff the internet has to offer, and find it again. For you. That is after all, why I'm the Buffalo Bandit.