{"id":27,"date":"2010-03-12T16:37:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-12T16:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dresan.com\/blog\/?p=27"},"modified":"2010-03-12T16:37:00","modified_gmt":"2010-03-12T16:37:00","slug":"playing-hooky-from-gdc-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/2010\/03\/12\/playing-hooky-from-gdc-2010\/","title":{"rendered":"Playing Hooky from GDC 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"two<\/a><\/p>\n

Today I’m playing “hooky” from GDC 2010. I look forward to GDC every year, where I see friends, catch glimpses of new games, and learn more and more about artificial intelligence and games. But for various reasons (cost, cats) I don’t have a hotel this year, and have been driving up to San Francisco from my house in the South Bay.<\/p>\n

It’s fun seeing the gang, especially the always engaging Neil Kirby, and fun watching the speakers, especially the entertaining R.A. Salvatore. But yesterday I spent four hours in the car – two there, two back – a grueling experience in the morning in which I not only missed breakfast, missed the Starcraft talk but almost missed the NEXT talk, and an equally grueling experience in the evening racing home to the Saint Stephen’s in-the-Field Vestry meeting.<\/p>\n

I’d have lot more time in my life if I didn’t work two jobs – one by day at the Search Engine That Starts With A G, and one by night as a science fiction author – and so things pile up. By the time GDC rolled around I was already worn thin working and prepping my novel, and then after the drive up and back each day I was totally exhausted, so at the end of each day I’d just feed the cats and crash.<\/p>\n

So this morning, I got up, earlier this time, in more than enough time to make the first talk … and said, “screw it.”<\/p>\n

What a relieved feeling! Felt like the best decision that I’d made in a long time. I cleaned house, did laundry, played with the cats … and then popped open the work laptop around the time I’d normally LEAVE for work and worked for a few hours. Yes, that’s right … I took a break from my vacation to work. Not that I want to, but there are things that need to get done that take a lot of “wall clock” time but not lots of programming time, so I answered some email, submitted a changelist, fired off a Mapreduce …<\/p>\n

… and then took a two hour nap on the futon in the library with a cat on my chest.<\/p>\n

It was a pretty good day … so far. And it isn’t over yet.<\/p>\n

-the Centaur<\/p>\n

\"ok<\/a><\/p>\n

Pictured: the two-laptop setup I use to keep my work and writing life distinct (just change the cables to give a different computer the main monitor) and Gabby, my very most computer literate cat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I’m playing “hooky” from GDC 2010. I look forward to GDC every year, where I see friends, catch glimpses of new games, and learn more and more about artificial…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7,5],"class_list":["post-27","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-a-maze-of-twisty-little-passages","tag-we-call-it-living","ratio-2-1","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}