Those who know me know I worked for Apogee/3D Realms for over 16 years (from 1992-2009).  I was fiercely loyal for any number of reasons, one of which is the way the owners treated me during my time there.   I worked at two different offices during my time there.  The first one from 1992-2002, and then the second from Nov 2002 to May 2009.   I liked both of the places I worked at, but insofar as the actual OFFICES go, the best thing about either of them was the lobby floor in the second building.   At first I didn’t think much was going to come of it.   However, after a few trips to the new place to see how construction was going, I found myself seriously impressed with what I saw coming together.  It was a giant Nuke logo on the lobby floor right inside the door.   It was bloody beautiful.  It was also meticously planned out.  It was a tile floor with the Duke Nukem “nuke” logo laid out in small tile squares.  Here’s a few pictures of it being put down.

Here’s a picture of the final product, which the total costs of construction were over $10,000 – I asked for this article, but the guy who handled that couldn’t remember the exact price, but did say it was over $10,000.

The giant Duke Nukem logo on the floor was something that was always a discussion point. From UPS drivers, to business people, to vendors, even to personal friends. Everyone was impressed by the lobby – that logo was really impressive.   It was a central point where folks would congregate, and even play hackeysack on it!   Everyone loved it.

Flash forward to May 6, 2009.  Around the circle is where we held the meeting led by George Broussard & Brian Hook telling us that 3DR was closing down.  It sucked.  Single worst moment of my entire professional life – I still don’t like that event, never will.  But the circle was there, and on May 8th, the last day that 3DR existed as a dev studio, we took a fairly famous picture of the entire company (minus one guy who was out of the country at the time).   You’ve all seen the known picture many times before, I’ll post this alternate take.  

Once the reality of that set in, and we started prepping the company for shutdown, I started wondering what the heck would happen to the floor.  Since the company would eventually vacate the offices, the floor was unlikely to survive through the next tenant, whoever that might be.  I inquired about it, and was told that the floor couldn’t be picked up.  If you look at the third picture at the top of the page, you can see all the coordinates and tile work that was done to put it together.  Getting it together and looking smooth on the floor took a lot, and it was always intended to just “be there”.    Removing it off the floor would be impossible without damaging it so severely, you might as well just leave it there, and build a brand new one.   I mean seriously – look at picture #3.  You can see how many small pieces there were.  All the glue to keep them together was extensive, pulling them apart would break the majority of the tiles.   You’d be destroying it yourself if you tried.  So it was left there.

One great memory I have of the logo floor is my daughter who was born after we moved in running around on it.  She loved – I MEAN LOVED to run around the nuke logo.  Whenever she came to pick up daddy from work, or visit or whatever, she’d run around the circle quite a few times.   By the time the office was shutting down, she mostly had grown out of that (as she had just turned 4), but I convinced her to do it again, and I videoed it because I knew I’d want to enjoy that memory later once the pain of the closing passed.  Here’s that video from May 9, 2009:

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

 After I was moved out of the 3D Realms offices, I didn’t come back, mostly due to the fact that the separation was very painful.  It took me awhile to come to grips with that, it took Gearbox and the release of DNF I think – I wrote about that here.  Doesn’t mean I LIKE it, mind you.   I did come back from time to time as my friends Bryan & Steve were still hanging on there, and for whatever reason I needed to see ‘em it was just easier to go there.   The last time I can recall doing that was November 7, 2010, when I had to pick up something, and we took a couple of pictures, ones I called “Last Call”.  One of them is here:

That was pretty much it.  What was left of 3D Realms finally vacated the building in early 2011 somewhere.  Was the last time I saw the nuke floor except for the odd time I’d drive by the offices, and go in the parking lot for old times sake. You see, these offices were only about 7 miles from my house, and there were a few businesses near here that I made use of, so I would have a legitimate reason to go over this way.  It wasn’t just me completely wallowing in the past so to speak.  I’d peek in from time to time, there wasn’t anything to see, but the nuke logo was still on the floor.

As I would drive by the office due to the fact it was on a main street, I saw a for sale sign a month or so after the guys finally left the building for good.  Was sad.  I took a picture of that at the time, but can’t locate it now.   It was around here that I stopped bothering to come by.  I hadn’t worked there in awhile, my remaining friends were located in new offices (no I will not say where that was), and a for sale sign was the final straw.  It was gone.   Stayed that way for a bit (the sign), and then eventually the sign went away, and it sat that way with no sign and no residents for QUITE some time.

In early March 2012 I happened to drive by (think I was taking my daughter bowling), and I noticed that there was construction activity at the offices.   It made me wonder who the heck owned the building now given Apogee Software, Ltd (aka/dba 3D Realms) had nothing to do with it anymore.  So I poked around in the public tax records of the area, and discovered that it was indeed sold on May 26, 2011 – to Goodwill Industries of Dallas.   They were making changes to the building, adding on – but I bloody have no idea why, I don’t know anyone from Goodwill.

I wanted to get out and look at the floor, but as you can see, there was active construction, and while these two pictures don’t show it, there were construction workers there.  I’m sure they wouldn’t like me poking around, so I just drove off.   I did end up back there a few weeks later, on April 13th when nobody was around, so I got out of my car and looked in the door.  Saw this:

The logo was gone.  The floor was a plain, boring floor again.  Not that I expected for a minute that Goodwill would keep the Duke Nukem logo on the floor.  That would have been silly, unless someone in the office was a big Duke Nukem fan.  Still, actually SEEING it gone brought a bit of a lip quiver to this photographer.   The site was vacant at the time, so I did look around in the materials on the ground, and even in the dumpster.  Had I any idea there might have been something in there, I was prepared to go dumpster diving to retrieve a piece of the floor.  No luck.  Couldn’t see anything.   Drove off again.  It’s probably lying in a dump somewhere buried amongst other trash and whatnot.

That brings us to today, May 15, 2012.  I was driving by coming back from a trip to Sam’s Club, and noticed a bunch of construction workers there.  I had a few minutes to kill, so I parked in the Aldi’s parking lot next door, and walked across, and asked the two guys working on the exterior door about the nuke floor logo.  They both told me they weren’t sure, but did say that the construction supervisor was in the building, and I could ask him.   So I entered 1661 Northwest Highway for the last time ever, I wager.  I approached the construction supervisor, and identified myself as someone who used to work here when the last tenant was in the building.  I basically asked him what happened to the floor.  I explained briefly about us putting it down on the floor, and that we couldn’t get it off the floor without destroying it.  He shook his head with what looked like a bad memory flashback, and told me it was taken up and tossed out awhile ago.  He also added, “Yeah, that was a real bitch to get off the floor, too!”

Hahaha.  Duke went down with a fight!  Gotta love that.

I thanked him for his time, and took off.   At this point, I cannot imagine any scenario where I’d want to go back there.   I thought that this is the last time I’ll probably look for information on the old Nuke logo floor, I thought I should write about all of this.  So here we are.

But I can’t leave the story on that sad note.  I have something really cool to report on as well.

THE NUKE FLOOR LIVES!

Look at this:

How the heck is that possible if it was torn up and taken to a dump?   Well, you can thank Duke Nukem fan John “MrBlackCat” Martin.  He took it upon himself to reconstruct the floor for his game room, which itself was really impressive.  Anyway, on a game forum we frequent, I had posted a thread there with an abbreviated version of some of this story, and apparently it touched John, he sent me this message privately:

I wanted to be sure you saw this particular post as it has a bit to do with you… as you were always the public face of 3D Realms forums, and therefore part of the games that inspired the theme of my game room.   I read you posts and am glad you got your closure… still sad the way things went. 

I have always wanted to do the nuke symbol in my game room but never had that last little push to priority until I read in the Old 3D Realms office thread. Sad, but inspiring.  3D Realms has influenced my game room greatly and this is my personal tribute and reminder of the Gaming Greatness that was Apogee/3D Realms.

John sent me a couple of construction completion photos, two of which appear above.  I say I was blown away was an understatement.  I know 3D Realms had it’s following even after the fall of the company, and even after the game came out and was well, “not well received”.   This guy certainly was one of them.  He told me  this about the actual making of it..

“I worked on it probably 18 hours day… I cut the entire thing on a Dremel Jigsaw, one piece at a time. I just didn’t have another way to do it.”  

Anyway, his room kicks ass on it’s own, and then he goes and adds his replica of our Nuke floor logo and it’s just stupid good.  Check his room out with the floor installed:

John, if you sell your house and leave it for someone else to get, I’m gonna come over there and kick your ass, dude!   I can’t stand to see the floor logo go a second time!  hahaha.  :)

John’s replication of the Nuke logo is quite cool, and is a real touching tribute to the fallen friend I used to have in my former employer.  I also thank John for not talking about it publicly until I could get this article together.     I always loved that logo on the floor of 3D Realms’ offices.  I wish I was still there, and I could have my son run around the circle, but alas, that’s not possible.

Hope the old 3D Realms fans enjoyed this little recall.  If you have anything to add, or any questions, make use of the comments below.

God bless you,
Joe Siegler

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.  (Jeremiah 29:11)

And here we go.  The first in about 200+ Doctor Who reviews.  I’ve loved the show for a long time, and the 50th anniversary is coming up in about 19 months from the writing of this text, so I thought I’d have a go at writing something about all the stories.  I don’t expect to write like 1,000 words+ for each story, that’d take bloody forever.  But I will say something about them all.   Some remembrances of the past, and one of my favorites, the references to the old series from the modern Doctor Who (and backwards once I get there).   I do also intend on actually WATCHING the story before I write about it, so it’s not a collection of “Am I remembering this right?” thoughts.  I do not plan on recopying the story’s plot here.  There are numerous websites that you can go to read the story’s plot – in fact, I’m linking to them in each review.  When I’m done with the series, I might turn it into some sort of eBook or something.  Will have to see if I make it that far.  Heh.   I have no set schedule for these, I’ll post a new one when I have the time and the inkling to do one, but I plan on finishing by Nov 23, 2013.  Anyway…

General Thoughts

The first story of Doctor Who went out on November 23, 1963 on the BBC, and was the first in a seriously long lived Sci-Fi show.  The basic concept was gold, and has allowed it to remain strong 48 years later.  A mysterious man and his granddaughter are in London, and attract the attention of two school teachers, and they set off on a series of adventures, that in the beginning had a quite caustic relationship between the Time Lord and the humans.

This story has always been considered essential viewing for me.  Or at least Episode 1.  Every November 23rd for the last 10 years or so, I’ll rewatch the story again.  Kind of my own anniversary “thing”.  Kind of geeky, I admit, but hey.  There’s worse things to be stuck on in life.

Story Facts

• The Doctor: William Hartnell
• Susan Foreman: Carole Ann Ford
• Ian Chesterton: William Russell
• Barbara Wright: Jacqueline Hill
• Episode 1: “An Unearthly Child” – Nov 23, 1963
• Episode 2: “The Cave of Skulls” – Nov 30, 1963
• Episode 3: “The Forest of Fear” – Dec 7, 1963
• Episode 4: “The Firemaker” – Dec 14, 1963
• Director: Waris Hussein, Douglas Camfield (uncredited)
• Script Editor: David Whitaker
• Producer: Verity Lambert
• Writer(s): Anthony Coburn, CE Webber (Ep 1, uncredited)
• Production Code: A

Story Notes

• This was the first thing ever aired on the BBC after coverage of President Kennedy’s assassination, which had happened the day before.
• Likewise, due to the massive Kennedy coverage, this episode was repeated so people could have another shot at seeing it.
• This story was repeated as part of the “Five Faces of Doctor Who” series of repeats in 1982, right before Peter Davison’s stories started airing.
• There were a few versions of this story.  The known aired one, and the original “pilot” version.  The pilot was the actual attempt to film it, but due to several mistakes, and a desire to change the tone of Hartnell’s performance, it was reshot, and the reshoot is the public version.  This pilot has been released a few times over the years.  First on VHS in 1991, then again on VHS in 2000.  Was finally on DVD in 2006 as part of the DVD release of Unearthly Child.
• Derek Newark (Za) later played Greg Sutton in the serial Inferno.  Alethea Charlton (Hur) later played Edith in the serial The Time Meddler. Eileen Way (Old Mother) later played Karela in the serial The Creature from the Pit, and appeared in the film Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 AD.  Jeremy Young (Kal) later played Gordon Lowery in Mission to the Unknown.  Finally Jacqueline Hill returned in 1980 and played Lexa in Meglos.
• There is a reference to the Tardis not changing it’s shape here – the implication is that thsi was the first time it didn’t change.  Granted, that’s from watching the show later on, and having 40+ years of history behind it.  The fact that the Tardis didn’t change shape here is referenced during many stories in the show’s future, and Attack of the Cyberman actually saw the Doctor fix this for a time, although the things the Tardis turned into were quite “not properly chosen”.

Future References

Given this was the first overall story, it was referenced several times, most strongly in 1988 for the 25th anniversary.

The series overall is referenced in Episode 2 of the story “Remembrance of the Daleks” from 1988.  In that story, Ace has a television on, and runs out of the building she was in.  As she is leaving, the TV narrator is heard to say “This is BBC Television.  The time is a quarter past five, and Saturday viewing continues with an adventure in the new Science Fiction series, Doc…”    It’s probably the ultimate meta reference the show has ever had.

The school that Ian & Barbara from this story (Coal Hill School) also appeared again in “Remembrance of the Daleks”.   Also, in the first episode, Ian lends Susan a book on the French Revolution.  That book (albeit looking differently) is still in the lab when Ace and the Seventh Doctor show up there some years later.

This particular series was referenced a few times in the future.  In specific the Foreman scrapyard was shown again in the 1985 serial, “Attack of the Cybermen”, and again in 1988 in the aforementioned “Remembrance of the Daleks”.    As an extra bonus, when the sixth Doctor sees the “IM Foreman” sign, he calls Peri “Susan”.  When the Foreman scrapyard was shown in 1988, the name was misspelled as “IM Forman”.

My thoughts on Story

As I said above, Episode 1 is truly essential viewing.  It contains many of the basic show elements that would still continue on into 2012.  It has an atmosphere that was immediately lost in Episode 2, and the odd “feel” of Episode 1 was never really recaptured again.   Episode 10 of “The War Games” sort of has that feel, but not nearly as well executed.    Once they get into Episode 2, and we spend all of our times in the 100,000 BC part of the story, it’s not nearly as good to me.  It’s not like Episodes 2-4 are awful, they’re OK.  But given how outstanding Episode 1 was, the other three are a letdown.  For the longest time, I would watch the first episode, and then stop.  It was such a change, such a difference that it turned me off.  Later on, I realized that was part of the point – that we were supposed to be shocked at how different the “Tribe of Gum” stuff was.   Over time I softened on that stance, but still feel Episodes 2-4 aren’t nearly as good.

The Doctor’s general attitude towards his companions was one I liked.   This attitude of the Doctor towards his human companions changes a lot during this story, and the next two (The Daleks & The Edge of Destruction), and to some extent story 4 as well (Marco Polo).  By the time we get to the fifth story (Keys of Marinus), he seems to actively like his companions.  I felt the show tried to recapture this a bit with the caustic relationship between Doctor #6 & Peri, but that kind of attitude didn’t fly in 1985 as much.

Much of Episodes 2-4 is the Tardis crew trying to figure out how to get back to the Tardis.   A lot of the dialogue is stuff like “Za is leader!”.  It’s really banal dialogue, which fits the setting, but I could never get into it.  The Tardis crew spend a few episodes trying to trick the primitives, as well as show them how to make fire.  Not heady Sci-Fi adventure stuff, there.   I read somewhere that the entire budget for a single episode was about $4200 or so (depending on what currency conversion was in 1963).  Some of that shows on screen.  In specific, at the end of Episode 4, when the crew is being chased back to the Tardis by the primitives, the chase through the jungle was just the actors standing there with others brushing leaves and whatnot by their faces to make it seem like they were in the middle of the jungle.  The effect is odd, knowing that fact.  I wonder if I would have felt different about it, not knowing that.  Still, the overall effect comes off well, I just don’t like the plot/story for Episodes 2-4 terribly much.

Overall, I give the story a 7 out of 10.   Episode 1 is a 10 out of 10 (might be a “But this goes to 11″).  However, 2-4 are about a 5 or so, so I averaged it out to 7.

External Links

• Wikipedia
• Tardis Index File

Purchase Links

• Amazon.com DVD (as part of the “The Beginnings Box Set”)
• Amazon.co.uk DVD (as part of the “The Beginnings Box Set”)

UPDATE Apr 10: I got a reponse from Amazon in reply to this blog post.  See the bottom of the post for that update.

If you buy a lot from Amazon.com you get to learn their system and how certain things work.   My first order of any kind with Amazon.com was on June 24, 1997.  It as for this book.  I’ve ordered a lot since then.  All kinds of things.  Clothes, food, electronics, media, both physical and digital, both of my HDTV’s…  You name it, I probably bought it from there.  To that, I’ve learned a lot about their system and how they ship, warehouses, location tracking, etc.  Now I don’t claim to know everything, but I know Amazon.com fairly well.

Which is why today I ran into a scenario that was quite puzzling, and one I didn’t know the answer for, couldn’t find an answer for in their help area, and as far as I know has no answer.  That’s why I’m writing here, to see first if anyone knows anything about it, and second (if not), to try and draw some attention to it.

Amazon has a cool feature regarding printers and printer ink – they have a special section for it, and they call it the “Ink & Toner Finder“.   If you tell Amazon.com what printers you have, then they will remember that, and tell you what ink is compatible with your printer(s).   Anyway, they remember the printers you either bought from them, or told them you have.   When you search for toner, you’ll get told whether or not it’s compatible with your printer.  Here, take a look at this:

I was looking for ink for my Epson printer, and it correctly identified that the ink works with that printer.  It also takes the time to tell me that it doesn’t work with the other three printers on my account.   Thing is, I don’t own two of them anymore.  The 1210 & the 4315 are printers that I never actually OWNED, I borrowed them from someone for a time.   That is the entire reason for this blog post.

There is no way to edit this list of printers!  I’ve had a good look through my account info, there’s nothing in the help area about it.  So I googled around a bit for it – looked for the phrase “Will This Work with Your Printer?” in one try.  There appears to be no way to address this issue.   So I wrote Amazon.com’s customer service and asked them about it.  Their guy didn’t know, either.  In fact, this was the first truly awful customer service experience I’ve had with Amazon.com in the 15 years or so that I’ve been ordering from them, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

I’m truly puzzled that there is no way to edit this list of printers, two of which I never owned in the first place.  If anyone reading this knows of a way, please let me know.  I don’t think there’s an answer out there, but if I find one, I’ll update.

Bad Customer Service

One thing Amazon.com has always been good at is customer service.  I’ve emailed them for customer service issues countless times in the past.  So this time was no different.  I emailed them and asked basically, “how do I change that list of printers”?   This was about 10AM or so in the morning.  Around 5PM, I was taking a nap, as I was up super early (3:30AM) this morning, and was woken up by the phone ringing.  It was Amazon.com customer service calling me about the printer issue.  The guy on the other end of the phone was bloody clueless.  He appeared to have no idea what the heck I was talking about, despite my having explained it in the email I sent to them originally.   I got so frustrated with this guy that I said “Ughhhh… I have to go, I’ll deal with this later”.  The real reason was that I was thinking “Look, you idiot – I already explained this in my email, why do I have to repeat the contents of my email three times, and you still don’t get it?”  Hung up on the dude.  I then found out after my head was clear (as he did wake me up) that he called my house THREE times, and my cel phone TWICE.   Dude – WHY?  Why are you calling me that many times for an email query?  I didn’t ask to be called, I didn’t want to be called.  You reply to an email customer service query with an email – unless said customer asks for the phone call – which I did NOT.   This guy annoyed the heck out of me – and is the first time I’d give a completely unsatisfactory CS report on Amazon.com in 15 years.  Congratulations Mr. Incompetent Customer Service Agent.

As an amusing ending to this – in 100% of the times I’ve contacted customer service in the past, I get an email a short time later asking me to rate my custmer service experience.  I have not gotten one for this.  Gee, I wonder why.

UPDATE APR 10:  

After I wrote this post four days previous, I was still frustrated, and didn’t feel like going through the general customer service contact methods again.  I took a wild stab in the dark, and Emailed Jeff Bezos (Amazon Founder/CEO) directly and pointed him to this blog post.  Now I’m no fool.  I know he doesn’t directly read these things (he might sample some), as a company CEO acct would get too many emails for the actual CEO to read them regularly.  Still, I figured someone would be paid to read them, and I might have a shot of it actually getting dealt with.  Turns out that is the case, as today I received this email from them.

I’m Jonathan Norberg of Amazon.com’s Executive Customer Relations. Jeff Bezos received your email and asked me to respond on his behalf.  I’m sorry to hear about the inconvenience you experienced. I’ve conferred with the team that created the Ink & Toner Finder, and I’ve been informed it works off the same database as the Amazon Recommendations. In other words, since these items were marked as items you owned in the recommendations tool, they were listed in the Ink & Toner Finder as well. (It’s also possible that at one point you entered them in the Ink & Toner Finder and they were added in the recommendations as well.) I’ve removed the two printers you mentioned, and I can confirm it took care of the issue.  If you’d like to read more about how to improve recommendations in the future, you may want to check out the following link:  http://www.amazon.com/help/recommendations -  In the meantime, we’re looking at ways we can improve this experience for our customers, and we appreciate you taking the time to write to us about this. Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.

I can confirm that they indeed took out the two printers from my account that I didn’t want there.  That part was cool.  It wasn’t obvious how to remove printers from that list.  What WOULD be helpful there is at the bottom of the box of printers that pops up is a simple link that says “Edit this list”, and send me over to where I need to go to manipulate that list.   Even after reading what they told me, it’s not obvious how to remove a printer from the list.   For now it’s a non issue, since they removed the printers from that which I didn’t want there.  But if I get rid of one of the two in the future, I’ll probably be confused again unless they update the tool between now and then.

What I would have liked though was them addressing the issue of the customer service agent calling me five times in the span of 10 minutes when they were never asked to call me.    That part was unresolved/unremarked – I was more irritated at THAT than their ability to fix the printer issue, to be honest.

Still, they did take care of the original reason all of this got started, that’s a good thing.

While this won’t affect the majority of users here, some probably will want to know about this.  Available now is a new v1.1 (technically 1.1.0.40) update to the iCloud Control panel for the PC.  It’s odd that it calls itself a “Control Panel” as such, given that it’s function turns your PC into an iCloud enabled device, such as an iMac, or an iOS device as such.

There is no changelog with this new v1.1 version, nor are there any visible changes once you run the program, other than the version number in the upper right hand corner.  Cosmetically it seems exactly the same as the previous version.   It has most likely been updated due to the fact that iOS v5.1 was just released.  If you are using the original v1.0 iCloud Control Panel, it’s probably best that you update anyway, even in the face of an unknown changelog, if for no other reason than to be updated with possible bug fixes and whatnot, or just to keep up with iOS 5.1.

You can download v1.1 of the iCloud PC Control panel at Apple’s site here.  You can read (a little) more about the PC Control panel here.

First off, a quick comment about why this post is on my personal blog.  I run a Rangers fan site/blog at rangerfans.com – and I’ve been prepping a new version of the site for the last two months or so.  I completed it earlier in the week, and had it ready to go.  On Wed the 29th, I launched it – or tried to.  You see, the server I have it on is a bit old, and underpowered.  I’m putting too many things on it, and it’s time for a change.  I’ve ordered a new server, but any of my attempts to get the new site up and going on the old server crashes that server, so I have to put my plans to launch the new Rangers site on hold until the new server is in place, which should be around Mar 20 or so.  I was really disappointed by that, because I wanted it in place before Spring Training games start on Sunday, but given I apparently can’t, I didn’t want to NOT write about baseball either, and since this blog DOES work right (it’s on a different server), I thought I’d write here for the time being.  Once the proper site is working again, I’ll copy any posts from here over there.  With that out of the way…

When we last spoke

This won’t be a professional article like you might see on Dallas Morning News, or mlb.com, or espn or something like that.  This is just a Rangers fan blogger getting out some thoughts that have been built up since the World Series ended.

When the 2011 season ended, I was pissed off.  As were a lot of Rangers fans.  I don’t want to revisit the way Game 6 ended, as for me, that clip of Nelson Cruz in right is as grating to me as the clip of Joe Carter’s home run off Mitch Williams in the 1993 World Series is.  It’s just a dagger in the heart video clip that I never really want to see again.  I was mad, I basically shut down from all baseball activities for awhile.  It took me some time to get over that.  While I kept up with news somewhat, I mostly tuned out – I didn’t seek things out at all.   I even went so far as to sell off my copy of MLB 2K11 for the Xbox 360 early.  I usually sell it off somewhere before the start of Spring Training in prep for the new version in March, but this year I got rid of it much earlier than usual.   I think it was somewhere around the turn of the year where I started saying things like “You know, a Rangers game would be good tonight”.  So as hard as I turned off baseball after the World Series, it just came back on.  For some reason, I found myself a bit more eager for the 2012 season to get started.  Not because of the possibility of “Three Times a Charm”, but more because of the fact that I just missed baseball more.

A Few Mini Rants

I’m still without cable TV, and I have to say the lack of MLB Network is BLOODY WELL KILLING ME!   I mean, I didn’t realize how much of a lifeline that MLBN was in the last few offseasons.  Perhaps that has something to do with my increased desire for this season to get started, because I wasn’t still in baseball mode due to MLBN being available all the time.   I wrote a letter to the Commissioner’s office (even though I know it will do NOTHING) asking that MLB Network be turned into an actual network.  Right now it’s just one channel.  Make it a REAL network, and send it out on some over the air channels around the country.   If they want to grow it even further, make it available to cord cutters.  Or, get 100% of the content (except the games, I’d understand that) to be streamed online live.   It seems odd, I can’t just pick up and watch MLB Network on mlb.com.  Or get ‘em to add those cool video apps to Xbox 360, iPad, or Playstation 3.  There’s gotta be a way to get MLB Network without paying an addtl $70 to Time Warner Cable just to have that.   Even if I had the desire to hook up Cable TV or Satellite again, I’m not sure if I’d want to go through all the hassle and extra cost just for that and about half a dozen other channels I’d actually care about.  We’re doing mostly well with just an antenna (far better than I thought), but I really do miss MLBN a lot.

To that, I do wish MLB would get it’s head out of it’s ass and deal with the blackout rules.  The thing that bugs me the most is the fact you can’t watch local games with something like MLB.tv.  The reason that’s always stated is they want you to watch the local programming on your channels.  OK, fine.  I understand that.   The solution to me is easy.  Broadcast the commercials.  MLB.tv goes to this blank screen during commercials that says “MLB.tv Commercial Break” or something like that, and you look at a static screen for like 2.5 minutes during the break.  I never understood that.  Show the commercials from the local market, and let locals watch the shows on MLB.tv.  That way the TV stations that are the purported reason for the blackout still have their advertising protected.   I know a lot of cable cutters like myself would RUN SCREAMING WITH WALLETS OUT if the local restriction were removed.  I can’t tell you how fast I’d buy it if that were the case, because I can’t measure in time increments that small!

Actual Baseball Talk

OK, I think I’ve channeled my rage at losing the off season into those first few paragraphs.  However, I didn’t intend my first post of the 2012 season to be an all out rage-fest, so I’ll get to baseball, and offer my thoughts on various events of this past offseason.

The Core

The majority of the 2012 squad is mostly the same.  Not all the same, mind you – but for the most part, it’s the same crew that went to the series last year.  The biggest changes are at the top of the rotation and closer.  The rest of the major pieces are the same.  That’s a pretty nice consistency, but whether it can translate into a third trip to the World Series in as many tries obviously remains to be seen.  I’ve seen many references to “Third Time’s a Charm” during the off season, and I really hope so.  I’d rather not go there at all, then go there and lose again, coming dangerously close to becoming the Buffalo Bills.  

Departures

The biggest departure is obviously C.J. Wilson.  Wilson bolted for his native Southern California after not being given the contract he wanted from Texas.  Texas offered him a contract, but it struck me as the kind of offer that makes it look like we tried, even though we really didn’t.  I initially thought the attempt to make him a starter wouldn’t work, but it did – quite well.  I ate some crow on that, but I also kind of figured that if he got to free agency, he’d be gone, that he’d either end up with the Yankees or the Angels.  I didn’t see the Angels getting Wilson AND Pujols, but that’s another story.  He’ll probably be more comfortable in Anaheim than Arlington.  I also am pretty convinced his post season utter failure in 2011 probably contributed to his not being here now.  I doubt it was solely responsible, but it had to have SOMETHING to do with it.  I’m a little unclear whether he’ll do really well out there, or end up out there like Gary Matthews Jr did.

The other departure that isn’t as talked about, but is also important I think, is that of Darren Oliver (to the Blue Jays).  Given Oliver developed into a quite good lefty reliever later on in his career (as opposed to the “eh” starter he was earlier in his career), I’m a bit surprised the Rangers didn’t try harder to keep him.  There was stated interest on both sides about him staying.  As I write this on March 2nd, I can’t recall if we actually made him a formal offer.  The biggest surprise to me was that it mostly left us shorthanded on the left side of the bullpen.  As of today, Mike Gonzalez is still out there, and there’s been stated interest from both sides, but the Rangers appear to be holding firm on the “we can’t add any more salary”.  It was talked that we were moving Koji Uehara to make room for Gonzalez, but Uehara is still here after vetoing a trade.   All this non movement opens up a possibilty for Michael Kirkman, I suppose.   I think lefty bullpen might be an issue, I guess I’ll have to revise this thought once we break with the 25 man roster.

The other off season departures are less of an issue, really.   Taylor Teagarden had unproduced himself out of a viable roster spot here, Andres Blanco was kind of “there”; and is probably easily replaced, Endy Chavez seemed servicable, but given the OF logjam, he probably didn’t have a shot.  Matt Treanor was a guy I really liked, but he too was behind the eight ball with Napoli’s breakout season, and Torrealba under contract too.

New Fish

The biggest new fish for the 2012 season is obvious.  I’ll talk about him last.  There’s more than just a guy who shows up wearing what looks like a marijuana T-Shirt in an airport.  There’s a few other things.

Joe Nathan as the new closer is probably the biggest change other than the obvious one Yu know about (See what I did there? Har).   Nathan’s a bit of a gamble to me.  His injury has been well chronicled – it cost him the clear closer job with the Twins.  He did return last year, and was pretty decent in the second half of the season.  While that’s a strong leadin, I do have to wonder if it will hold up over here.   It’s not a question of whether he will be the closer, he was anointed the closer from the moment he signed, so it’ll probably be sink or swim with him out there.  Not unless he totally “Mark Clark’s” the thing, and needs to be replaced, like Frank Francisco did a few years ago.  BTW, I can’t stand “You/Yu” jokes.  That’s probably the last one I’ll make here.  I had to do ONE.  :)

Brad Hawpe is a 1B/Outfield minor league invite that hold some interest to me.  He was a guy who had some success when he was with Colorado, but isn’t quite the big name he used to be.  I followed him for awhile, because he helped me out with home run totals on fantasy teams a few years back.  I like the name, but I can’t see him making a huge impact, unless we have to bring guys up from the minors due to injury.  Or trade.  He’s probably here to be a AAA insurance policy type of player.  Still, I’d like to see him up in the big show somehow.

The other guys who are inbound are all guys I don’t expect to make any kind of impact.  There’s always a bunch of those signed who are in spring only and then never heard of again, or released.  This year’s crop is Brandon Snyder, Joe Beimel & Conor Jackson.   There’s others that are smaller names, but these are the more notables from that group.

Then there’s Yu Darvish.  Impossible to talk about the 2012 edition of the Texas Rangers without mentioning him.  I say the hoopla surrounding the inbound player who hasn’t yet played an official game with Darvish is greater than the other two that I can recall in my own time (those being Chan Ho Park & Alex Rodriguez).  I imagine the hoopla when we originally signed Nolan Ryan back in 89 was a big deal too, but that was before my time.  Even with these guys being recalled, I cannot imagine that anything has been more impactful than the arrival of Yu Darvish, and all the throng that comes with him (one of which isn’t his now ex-wife, who would have been up there on the hot baseball wives list).  The video of press conferences, and seas of Japanese photographers are insane.  Once we get to Arlington, I’ll be curious to see how they handle all that extra throng.  The photo wells at Rangers Ballpark aren’t exactly gigantic.  There’s no way even a fraction of the people we’re seeing in Surprise will fit in the four photo wells in Arlington.  Mostly the photo wells aren’t 100% used anyway, so I suspect they will be now.  It’s definitely a circus.

But that will end once the season starts, and he actually pitches.  Whether Darvish can break the mold of previous experiments that ranged from “eh” to “awful” with names such as Hideki Irabu, Chan Ho Park, Akinori Otsuka, Yoshinori Tateyama, Koji Uehara, & Kazuo Fukumori remains to be seen.  However, given how large of a truck of money they drove up to this guy’s house, combined with the amount of scouting I’ve read the Rangers did on him – one expects the Rangers don’t think he’ll end up on that list.  There’ also Daisuke Matsuzaka to consider.  He was expected to come over here and dominate, and he didn’t.  Darvish has a different feel to me.  Perhaps it’s a homer feeling, given I really WANT him to succeed based on the amount of money put into this.  I don’t THINK so, but I am a Rangers fan.  It might be more accurate to say that I seriously hope he does well, and makes it worth it.  I’m leaning towards saying that he will, but given the past (mostly) failures in this department, I do also reserve judgement.   I’ll be curious to see how he’s drafted in Fantasy Baseball drafts.

Other remarks

There’s plenty of other issues in play here besides the biggies like Yu Darvish in play.  I’ll try and hit some of them.  As I write this sentence, I’m 2,330 words into this article, and I haven’t even touched on things like Josh Hamilton, Center Field, Neftali Feliz as a starter, and all that other stuff.  Not too bad, I think.  :)

Josh Hamilton:

He’s had an interesting offseason.  Was caught drinking in public again.  As any alcoholic will tell you, you never “get over” that, you deal with it for the rest of your life.  Unlike the last time, there aren’t incriminating photos of him with women who weren’t his wife.  He came out and admitted to it, and given my belief in his beliefs, I suspect his remorse was quite genuine.  Nothing from that event will appear to affect him directly on the field, this is an off the field thing.  Those can be separated.  I’d wager given Josh’s past, it probably won’t be the last time either.  Thing is, will the Rangers have him around long enough to find out if there will be a next time?

That brings us to the other issue.  In the press conference in Surprise to talk about the relapse, came the famous “I don’t owe the Rangers anything” remark.  Probably not the most well chosen words, but this being the age of information where every single letter is dissected, room for interpretation isn’t usually allowed.  People glom onto that.  An attempt was made to backpedal shortly after that where Josh explained what that meant.  All the pro commentators did seem to latch onto that comment in the spirit in which it probably was intended.  But the casual “Why don’t we get some pitching in here” kind of fan won’t.  They’ll just see that as Josh slamming the Rangers.  I don’t – but I also have a feeling that Josh won’t be here next year.  I’d really like for him to be.  I like the guy’s putting of his faith out front a lot.  You don’t see that with many players, but with Josh, it’s always out there.  I like that.  He’s a great player, too.  But he does have a drug, alcohol, & injury bitten body.  As healthy as he appears to be, one wonders how many more years he will have.  He’s 30, which isn’t ancient, but given how many years he didn’t play, he should have more years under his belt.  He doesn’t.   If he stays, it will probably be because they decided to go with a shorter contract, say 2 years, maybe 3, as opposed to the 5 or 6 he probably wants.   I think this is all dependent on how the 2012 season goes.  I don’t think it’s an automatic that he’s gone after this year, but I’d say there’s a fair chance he’s not here in 2013.

Center Field: 

2012 will be the 14th season played since I started this site.  In all that time, center field has been pretty unsettled.  While Borbon has gotten the nod the last few seasons, I think it’s more a case of “well, someone’s out there” vs “He really earned that”.  Josh Hamilton also had it for two seasons in a row, but I don’t think most people consider him a true center fielder.  That too was more of a “Well, someone’s got to be there”.   The way I feel, Julio Borbon is gonna get his last shot here to get the job.  He was doing pretty decently last year until injury, and then lost the job.   If he goes out there and is decent, he’ll probably get the nod, but if he falters, there’s plenty of other options available (Craig Gentry for one), including one that’s somewhat expensive for a mostly-rookie (Leonys Martin).   If Borbon does get the Game 1 nod to start in center field, it will be the first time in bloody ages someone has had that assignment for three seasons in a row.  A quick check of the records shows these names going backwards from 2011: Julio Borbon, Julio Borbon, Josh Hamilton, Josh Hamilton, Kenny Lofton, Laynce Nix, Gary Matthews Jr, Laynce Nix, Doug Glanville, Carl Everett, Bo Porter, Ruben Mateo, Tom Goodwin, Tom Goodwin, Damon Buford, Darryl Hamilton, Otis Nixon, David Hulse, David Hulse, Juan Gonzalez, Gary Pettis, Gary Pettis, Cecil Espy, Oddibe McDowell, Oddibe McDowell, Oddibe McDowell.   You have to go all the way back to 1986/87/88 to find someone who has had the starting center field job on opening day three years in a row.  It’s been QUITE unstable to say the least.  Some of the possibilities we have could farm out long term, but my gut feeling says that unless Julio Borbon dominates during the spring, the streak will continue.   I personally would like to see Craig Gentry step up and earn that job.  I have always liked him.  He reminds me somewhat of Rusty Greer.   What I think will happen will be Borbon will open, and probably get supplanted during the season at some point by Craig Gentry or Leonys Martin.  The flip side is that if Borbon does play well, it wouldn’t surprise me to see him traded and have one of the other options step in out there.

Neftali Feliz: 

We try again for the third year in a row to move one of the relievers into the starting rotation.  It’s worked so far.  Feliz will be following CJ Wilson & Alexi Ogando into that path.   I’d be lying if I said was confident in either of those two stepping up and getting it done.  But Feliz is more of a question mark.  Sure, he can gas it up, but that’s not the kind of thing that works for a starter unless you’re Nolan Ryan or Randy Johnson or someone like that.    I’m hopeful he can put it together, because we’re taking Alexi Ogando OUT of the rotation, and putting him back in the pen.  I’m a bit surprised by that, to be honest.   I figured Ogando did well enough to stay in, but that’s not what’s happening.  I really don’t have a handle on how Feliz might do as a starter long term.  Need to see him actually go out there and pitch – and something more meaningful than the first 2-3 starts of the spring too when you’re only expected to go an inning or two at most.  Which wouldn’t be a stretch for a former closer.  This is too up in the air to call, I think.

Mitch Moreland:

In 2010, Mitch Moreland seemed the heir apparent at first base.  A young kid with great power, a lefty that was a decent defender.  Then in 2011, he almost fell off the map.  Felt like Chris Davis Part II.   Great prospect, didn’t put it together.  Then during the off season, we found out Moreland was playing hurt, and caused problems trying to overcompensate for the injury, pretty much making him next to ineffective as a hitter.  When that wasn’t known, most fans I know of (including myself) had written him off.  But if he can bounce back, that will work out nicely.  I do like the kid, I hope he works out, because I don’t believe there’s a future stud at 1B in our system that’s anywhere near ready to take over if he fails when healthy.   There was talk of Prince Fielder, and I have to say I liked that talk a little, but once it came out what the Tigers paid for him, there was no bloody way.   This one is more of a “I hope he gets it together, because I want to like him” thing.   Yes, we have immediate short term options at 1B if he doesn’t come through, but nothing internal for a long term solution at that high a level.

Mike Napoli:

Mike became a fan favorite in 2011, acquiring instant rock star status in Arlington.  I don’t think most fans were expecting much of him when he arrived, so that’s probably why it happened so fast.  I’m a bit surprised we couldn’t come together on a long term contract.  He’s only signed through 2012, and then he’s eligible for free agency after 2013, so there’s still time.  I suppose if he repeats anything close to the second half of 2011 in 2012, he’ll be in line for a bigger payday than the $9.4M he’ll make this year.  I’d like to keep him, because catcher has been pretty unstable since Pudge departed almost a decade ago.  Sure, there’s been “supposed to be great” prospects that weren’t (Salty, Teagarden), some guys that were pretty good for a short period of time (Yorbit Torrealba, Gerald Laird, Rod Barajas, Matt Treanor, ), other kind of “just there” guys (Einar Diaz, Max Ramirez, Adam Melhuse, Sandy Alomar, Todd Greene), and then the forgettables (Guillermo Quiroz, Chris Stewart, Miguel Ojeda, Ken Huckaby, Danny Ardoin, Chad Kreuter), but nothing that actually materialized at the major league level for any long term length.  I was really thinking Mike Napoli would be the long term option.  If we get another season like 2011, I say we make a real effort to get it done.  Give him what he wants, he’s popular, and he’s pretty decent.  We could use some stability behind the plate.

Starting Rotation:

Read a few cool stats about the Rangers starters in 2011.  They tied for the lead in the AL with 99 quality starts.  The starting staff had a total of 994.1 innings pitched, fifth in the AL.  That’s quite an accomplishment given the horrendous pitching the franchise has been associated with in the past.   Of the starters from last year, all but one are back for 2012, that being CJ Wilson.  If you look at CJ’s numbers for 2011 in the chart below, they’re pretty good numbers.  They’re not impossible to replace, but that’s directly where Yu Darvish steps.  I suspect at a minimum most people will expect him to match CJ’s numbers for 2011.  It’s a huge unknown, given how well, unknown Darvish is in MLB in terms of how he’ll actually pitch in real games.  Beyond that, here’s the numbers for the whole rotation for last year.

That’s 73 wins for the starting five, a pretty respectable number for sure.  There were also five other games started by guys who weren’t these five.  They were Dave Bush (3) & Scott Feldman (2).   Bush didn’t win any of his games (as he ended up with an 0-1 record), and I’m not sure about Feldman at the moment.  Either way, the starting rotation had some nice numbers.   A few thoughts..  Way too many home runs allowed by Colby Lewis.

The other thing is that Ogando’s going back to the bullpen and Feliz is coming into the rotation.  I talked about that above, but if you apply the same comparison with him as I made with Darvish, can we expect Feliz to match Ogando’s 13-8 record?  I doubt Feliz will have that super torrid streak in the first half that Ogando did, but who knows?  It’s not impossible, obviously, but I can’t see it happening, to be honest.  :)

Overall, I have no reason to believe that Derek Holland, Matt Harrison, and Colby Lewis will do anything else than what they did in 2011, so I’m gonna bank on them repeating.  The variables are Darvish & Feliz.  If they just MATCH the numbers of Wilson & Ogando for last year, we’re in great shape.  If they do better, then hey – it’ll be amazing.  I’m feeling mostly confident in the rotation, if not completely confident.

The bullpen:

Our bullpen has some potential to be awesome, but for now, it’s all mostly potential.  If you look at the possible candidates for the bullpen based on what I’m thinking before any spring games are played, we have this lineup:

• Joe Nathan - The new closer.  If he pitches like he did in the second half of 2011, things will be fine.  If he doesn’t, well, then we don’t have much in the way of backup in house except moving Feliz back there, and that kind of stuff destroyed Joba Chamberlin, I think.  I would hope the Rangers wouldn’t do that.  Unknown, but with a big upside.
• Mike Adams - When he came here last season, he was lauded as a total shutdown guy.  Initially, he was bad when he FIRST got here, but turned it around.  If he comes into the season with a proper head of steam, we have a good one here.
• Koji Uehara - Came over here from Baltimore mid season with a reputation much like Adams.  However, he wasn’t that good.  Not atrocious, but not that great.  Word was that he was tired at the end of the season, and should fare better in 2012.  We tried to trade in him the offseason, but he vetoed that.
• Scott Feldman - Was our opening day starter just a couple of seasons ago, got hurt, and when he came back, there was no slot for him in the rotation.  He’s a rather well paid long man.  He’s probably also second in line for a starting gig or a spot start if we need it behind Ogando.   No problems here.
• Yoshinori Tateyama - According to what I’ve read since we signed Darvish, he was signed partially in prep for a possible signing of Darvish to have a countryman here.  Not that he wasn’t without merit – but he tailed out at the end of the season, and was left off the World Series roster.  Not sure what to make of him.  Definitely not confident in him, much like a friend of mine (hi Jeff) was never confident with Darren O’Day.
• Michael Kirkman - While his numbers have never been spectacular at all, he probably has a pretty easy path to a bullpen slot, merely because he is the only left hander in the pen at the moment.   Had we traded Uehara, we probably would have resigned Mike Gonzalez (who is still a free agent as of today), but unless Kirkman stinks it up in spring training will be in the bullpen.
• Mark Lowe - Acquired while on the DL with Cliff Lee, he’s been a serviceable, if not spectacular bullpen guy.  No problems here.
• Mark Hamburger - Might make the pen, pitched a bit in 2011.  Doesn’t bother me, but I don’t have a ton of track record to base an opinion on here.  Probably not a lock, has to earn it, might end up in AAA as well.  Will depend on how the spring goes here, I’m sure.   This is a guy that makes me wish Josh Lewin were still here; he’d have fun with the name for sure.

If everything works right, Ogando, Adams, & Nathan will be a great back end of the bullpen.  We have a pretty good long guy, and decent rest of the guys.  Why we let Darren Oliver go is still beyond me, and I’m hoping the lack of lefty (for now, anyway) doesn’t come back to bite us in the backside.

The Offense

Saved this until later in the report, because well, we know what’s gonna happen here.    We have an offense that can hit the ball.  Assuming everyone stays healthy (mostly Hamilton & Cruz), we should pound some runs again.   While they’re not all power guys like Napoli, Cruz, Hamilton, & Beltre, we have a lot of guys who can just hit the ball all over the place, led by Michael Young, who shows no sign of slowing down hitting wise.   Michael Young goes into 2012 at age 35 with 2,061 career hits.  If he stays around his usual average of 200, he’d need to play to age 40 to get to 3,000.  Not unrealistic at all – would love to see that, but that’s not a chat for the 2012 season.

My guess at a starting lineup based on the current possibilities are:

1. Ian Kinsler – 2B
2. Elvis Andrus – SS
3. Josh Hamilton – LF
4. Michael Young – DH
5. Adrian Beltre – 3B
6. Nelson Cruz – RF
7. Mike Napoli – C
8. Mitch Moreland – 1B
9. Craig Gentry – CF

Gentry is the only real guy I don’t expect a ton of offense out of.  But overall, it’s a solid and balanced lineup, assuming everyone does what they’re supposed to, and stays on the field.   David Murphy is still here too, and will be the fourth outfielder, and roving OF guy.  No idea who the 2012 version of the utility/25th man will be, as all the usual suspects for the last few years are out of the system, I believe.  That will probably come from one of the gaggle of NRI’s.     Mike Olt, maybe?  Brad Hawpe is an interesting idea, too.  Hard to tell, it’s way up in the air.

To Summarize

I’m very much looking forward to the 2012 season.  I wish we’d have a different TV broadcast team.  I wouldn’t mind Josh Lewin coming back, but he took a job with the Mets radio, so that’s not an option.

Overall, I expect the Rangers to win the division, although it will be a bit closer this year, I think.   I don’t want to predict the playoffs before we have even played an official spring training game, but I have a feeling the Rangers will three-peat as AL West Champs.  Let’s hope it’s a three peat in the Fall Classic as well.   The only thing that will stink about getting back to the World Series again is that we’ll have to bloody well see the Cruz Game 6 thing again.  I don’t want to see that!

I didn’t set out to write a book here (I’m now over 5,000 words), but it just kept flowing, so I went with it.   Baseball season is back, and I can’t wait for it to get going for real.

Well, I’ve decided to make the move. I have switched from Firefox to Google Chrome. I’ve always had Chrome on my system, as someone who does websites, you have several. On my system, I have IE, Chrome, Opera, Firefox, & Safari. In years gone by, that was a requirement, as you needed to check how your sites looked in different browsers. Going into 2012, that’s less of an issue. For the most part they don’t have the egregiously different displays that they used to. Still, old habits die hard.

Recently, I’ve started having slowdown problems with Firefox. It was’t awful, but I was still dealing with some long standing issues hanging around the browser for awhile. Sometimes it would just stall out, and when you quit, it’s still running in the background, things of that nature. Nothing of the order where I had to stop browsing because of it, but enough little annoyces, that they built up over time.

Then yesterday, I saw an article where Google might be pulling funding for Firefox down the line. It’s all speculative, and I’m not foolish enough to think that Firefox will up and disappear at all, but that article got me thinking. I’ve had a lot of little nit picky issues with Firefox. Not any one enough to make me want to change software, but put ‘em all together, and it got me wondering if I should look at Chrome again.

So yesterday I decided to take another look at Chrome. I initially decided not to use it, because there were several plugins I had which there was no comparison for in Chrome. If I switched awhile ago, Chrome would cramp my style a bunch insofar as my browsing goes. So I stayed with Firefox, which wasn’t a bad thing.

I noticed the importer for Chrome does a great job at importing not just the bookmarks, but the login sessions and passwords and other info from Firefox. It was pretty quick. Granted, I had to fiddle with the bookmarks a bit to get them to come up the way I wanted them to, but they were all there. My online travels today were in Chrome. Didn’t go to Firefox today except when I was researching plugins. It was stupid faster than Firefox was. Loaded faster, ran faster, displayed faster. I knew it was a fast browser, but I never really sat down and delved into it like that. Was impressed.

The overall “look” to the browser isn’t that terrible dissimilar to Firefox. A few FF revisions ago, they went minimalistic like Chrome has been for awhile, so it’s not a complete shock to go to Chrome.

So I started looking into plugins, which was the big deal for me. Jotted down all the Firefox plugins I was using. There were a handful that were specific to Firefox, and were not relevant. Went down my list of plugins, and found there were 10 I was actively using in Firefox, so I wanted to see what was out there for Chrome. First choice is a Chrome version by the same developer. After that, something similar. I’ll get into my specific plugin choices later, but suffice it to say with one exception I found something I could use.

Given I was leaning towards Chrome anyway, I decided to make the jump when I had such a good rate of coverage on the plugins. That’s where I am now. I’ve changed from Firefox to Chrome mostly because of speed issues. I’ve got my battery of plugins up and running, except for one. I’ll address that in my plugins story below.

Unlike some people who make these kind of moves, I’m not gonna trash Firefox, and claim it sucks, because it doesn’t. Served me well for quite a long time. Just found that for me and my feelings towards a web browser, Chrome works better. There you go.

Here’s my plugins I was using in Firefox, and what I did with ‘em.

1. Adblock Plus -> Essential plugin. They make a Chrome version, so that was stupid easy to bring over.
2. Add to Amazon Wish List Button -> I use Amazon’s Wishlists a lot, and you can add just about anything to one. Amazon makes a Chrome version, so I just installed that.
3. Web Developer -> This is a plugin that I’ve used for awhile. Shows you a lot of fiddly low level CSS/HTML stuff about web pages. They make a Chrome version, so I installed it. It visually looks a lot nicer than the Firefox version, too. Also, Chrome itself has a lot of built in tools for this kind of thing, but I’m used to Web Developer, so I installed it.
4. Google’s Advertising Cookie Opt-Out -> Google made an official plugin which let you permanently opt out of some of the doubleclick advertising cookies. I was using that. Looked around, and they have a Chrome one too, so I installed that.
5. Easy Youtube Downloader -> They don’t have a specific Chrome replacement, but someone else had one that did the same thing, so I installed that. Don’t use it often, but when I do want it, it’s nice to have.
6. Echofon -> It’s my twitter plugin. This is the one thing that I’ve yet to find a good replacement for. I poked around at a few Twitter plugins for Chrome, and I don’t like any of them. I prefer Echofon, so I opted to install their Windows specific client. Looks the same way as the Firefox plugin, but I’d prefer a Chrome plugin.
7. FEBE -> This was a plugin for Firefox that backed up your entire profile. Bookmarks, config, plugins, everything. Chrome does this for you (save for plugins), so it was not necessary in Chrome.
8. Garmin Communicator -> I have a Garmin GPS, and it gets new maps and updates via a browser plugin through their site. That same plugin works in both Firefox and Chrome, so I didn’t have to do anything, it just used the existing stuff on my computer. That was cool.
9. Paste Email Plus -> This was an app that let you paste existing snippets of text into any text box in a browser that your cursor is at. With the work I do (both pro & hobby), you type things over and over again alot. These guys don’t make a Chrome verison of their plugin, so I had to go find a replacement that does the same thing. I did, it’s called “Insert Text”.
10. Rapportive -> Gives you some extra info about the person whose email you are reading in Gmail. Had it installed in Firefox, and didn’t use it too much, so I just left it out in Chrome, even though they do make a Chrome version.

That’s it!

There was a time when you were five years old,
and you woke up full of awesome.

You knew you were awesome.

You loved yourself.

You thought you were beautiful, even with missing teeth and messy hair and mismatched socks inside your grubby sneakers.

You loved your body, and the things it could do.

You thought you were strong.

You knew you were smart.

Do you still have it?
The awesome.

Did someone take it from you?
Did you let them?
Did you hand it over, because someone told you weren’t beautiful enough, thin enough, smart enough, good enough?
Why the hell would you listen to them?
Did you consider they might be full of shit?

Wouldn’t that be nuts, to tell my little girl below that in another five or ten years she might hate herself because she doesn’t look like a starving and Photoshopped fashion model?
Or even more bizarre, that she should be sexy over smart, beautiful over bold?
Are you freaking kidding me?

Look at her. She is full of awesome.

You were, once. Maybe you still are. Maybe you are in the process of getting it back.

All I know is that if you aren’t waking up feeling like this about yourself, you are really missing out.

NOTE: I did not write this text.  It originally appeared on a blog called “Pigtail Pals”, and was written by “Melissa”.  The picture, however is my own daughter.    Go check out the original here.  The text was reprinted with permission.   Thanks, Melissa – this text was full of awesome!

Steve Jobs died today.  Here’s some news on it.  It certainly adds weight as to why he didn’t make an appearance at the iPhone 4S presser yesterday.

I didn’t write either of these two remarks, but I echo them exactly.  Thanks to Chris F for these..

“For a man I never met, Steve Jobs had an undeniable and unmeasurable impact on my life, my career, and my daily affairs. Rest in peace.”

“Saw the Steve Jobs news when I loaded up apple.com on my iPad to get info on the iPhone 4S and iOS5. That says so much about his impact.”

This one below is mine, though.

The filename of the image on apple.com of Steve Jobs’ RIP msg was “t_hero.jpg“. Tells you what someone there thinks of him.

I had to cut cable TV earlier this year due to money issues, and from about May till September I was operating with good old rabbit ears in the house. When they worked, it worked great. But I was getting fed up of the constant moving of the rabbit ears, or the twiddling of the dial to get this channel or the other. There was some sort of interference inside my house preventing them from working well enough. Once in a blue moon, I’d get lucky, find a sweet spot and get everything, but it didn’t last long. I was unwilling to go on the roof for an antenna, so I was thinking about the attic.

I’ve been around TV for a long time, and my “head” tells me that to get better reception, you need to get a bigger antenna. I figured with a large tree in my neighbor’s house, as well as it being an attic, I was looking at something large up there. Specifically this (Antennas Direct DB8 Multidirectional HDTV Antenna). I was looking at getting the DB8, when a friend of mine who was going to help me by mounting it in the attic suggested I might get by with something smaller. He recommended the antenna I’m writing about now. I was initially skeptical (again, the bigger is better) attitude. But I read through a ton of reviews, and there were a lot of happy people. At the time I bought it, there were 220 reviews on Amazon with an average star rating of 4.5 out of 5. That’s actually a higher review than the DB8 I was looking at. So I started reading, and was thinking perhaps I’d go with this.

Then while we were thinking about how to run cable, I remembered when my wife and I got the house 9.5 years ago (as of Sep 2011, when I’m writing) it was wired for Cable TV. I dropped the Cable TV, but the wires were all still there. Which meant that there was a cable run there already. So I decided to run a test. I took the same stupid $6 rabbit ears I was at the time using (RCA ANT111R Basic Indoor Antenna), and took ‘em into the attic. I found the cable that went to the jack by my TV, and plugged the rabbit ears into it. Rescanned, and wow. Not only was my interference gone, it was picking up a lot more channels than I knew about. The most I got with the rabbit ears inside the house was about 35-40. It was more here. So I figured with the rabbit ears doing that much better, perhaps I didn’t need the overkill DB8, and opted for this antenna, the RCA ANT751R.

Did my research beforehand. Hit up antennaweb as well as tvfool for compass directions. Personally I think tvfool has way better antenna resources than antennaweb, but that’s a side story (look at this report from tvfool showing the location and range of everything from my area). I got it installed in the attic (you can see a picture of my installation in the photo gallery here on Amazon). The mounting was fairly painless, although I will say what others have said. It’s quite a value that the antenna comes with the mounting brackets and the pole in the box. Not all antennas do. The one thing that was missing was the wood screws needed to actually bolt the bracket to whatever you’re attaching it to. The instruction manual even says to use a couple of wood screws (not included). Given they gave you the more expensive pole in the box gratis, you’d think they’d throw in a few wood screws, but that’s a minor quibble.

Once I got it up there and hooked up, I reran a scan on the TiVo. I was bloody well amazed at what it found! The total number of channels it found was 79. Granted, several of those are inactive, or are otherwise things I don’t care about. There were also a couple of channels it found which were on neither antennaweb’s or tvfool’s reports. Since I live right outside of Dallas, the majority of these kinds of channels are spanish speaking something or other. Given that’s not my language, they’re of little interest to me. What WAS of interest to me are the major networks (PBS, ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, & one local “old UHF” channel that broadcasts Texas Rangers games).

All of these channels are quite strong. Even with the large tree outside and being in an attic, the average signal strength of these channels (according to the signal strength meter on the TiVo) is around 80-85 or so. PBS is a bit low (mid 60′s), but the same friend who lives about 3 miles away from me says that PBS is his weakest signal too, but it’s not an issue unless there’s some epic storms out, but we’re probably not watching much TV at that time anyway. At least one or two of the channels that are of lesser concern to me are quite strong – I had a couple of them as high as 98 on the meter Oh, before I forget, in the Dallas area, the majority of the antennas (especially the major networks) are in the same general area, as it’s the highest point in the general D/FW metroplex. According to tvfool, I’m anywhere from 28.2 to 30.7 miles from the transmitters (except for a few rogue close ones that are about 8 or 14 miles), and they all are 80-85 or so in an attic mounted, non powered antenna.

There is no signal booster on here. It’s just the antenna that was in the box hooked up through a cable run that used to be used for Cable TV into my TiVo box, and then on into my HDTV, which is this, BTW. The quality is astounding. The signals are rock solid, and I have to say, I’m quite happy with my purchase of this antenna.

While the old rabbit ears worked “OK” enough (especially for $6), it wasn’t quite a universal solution. I’d have to fiddle with the antenna depending on what I wanted to record. Given I TiVo everything, having to worry about where the antenna was pointed meant I was back to the pre-TiVo days of caring what the broadcaster’s schedules were. Didn’t like that, so I looked into what became this choice of antenna. I’m quite happy with it. I suppose the only negative I could say is that the antenna is sold as an outdoor antenna. When I was putting it together, I felt like it wouldn’t hold up to extreme winds, and things of that nature outside. It works great, but if left outside to the elements, I’m not sure how well it would hold up. But as an attic antenna, it won’t have to deal with any of that, so it should last a good long time up there.

I was initially concerned that this being a “cheaper” antenna wouldn’t function well enough as one that was into the $100 range or so. I was wrong. This works really quite well for me.

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. (Proverbs 3:5-6)

Today is August 31, 2011. It’s a day that’s fairly odd for me emotionally. It’s in some ways the end of the road for the biggest single “event” in my working career. You see, today’s my last day at Gearbox Software.

But before I get to that, let me rewind the clock a bit. Going back to early 1992. I was living in Philadelphia then, and I was big into the BBS scene. Ran first an Apple // BBS, and then a PC BBS. Both operated under the name “The Arsenal of Freedom” (a Star Trek: TNG Episode title). Given the time then, I used to carry Apogee Software shareware games. They were very popular back in the day, titles like Commander Keen, Crystal Caves, the original Duke Nukem, things like that. Then on May 5, 1992 Apogee & id released Wolfenstein 3D, a game that pretty much blew away everyone who was playing games at the time. There was nothing like it, and I like most everyone else called Garland to place an order for the full game. I was part of Apogee’s SysOp program, and I’d dial into the Software Creations BBS to check for releases, etc. It was somewhere around this time that I found what was supposed to be an “adult/porn” version of Wolfenstein 3D v1.3. I reported this to Scott, and he and id issued a statement saying it was false. This must have stuck with Scott, as a few months later, I came on board as an Apogee beta tester. During that time, Scott was asking if anyone wanted to move to Garland to work for Apogee. At that time I was working for the computer repair department of Bell Atlantic (about 70,000 people), and decided to move to Texas to take this job with Apogee (about 15 to 20 people or so at the time, mostly order takers). So on December 4, 1992 I hopped on a train at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia for the two day train ride to Dallas.

Me as Heinrich Krist in Rise of the Triad

That began my career in the videogame industry. Started initially answering phones and then worked my way into online support, customer service, & Community Management. Funny thing is during all my time at Apogee (Dec 14, 1992 to May 22, 2009), I still had the same job. Never promoted, the tech behind the job evolved from BBS’s & and your CompuServe/Prodigy’s of the world to the Internet, and websites, FTP, and finally at the end your Facebooks & Twitter. But it was still the same job. One I loved dearly. One that I thought I was going to be with for the rest of my life. I really loved that job. Scott & George (and Steve Blackburn) did a lot for me personally. Professionally, how could you not like the job? I worked at a videogame company, but I didn’t actually MAKE the games, so it was more fun than I’d say some of the developers, because they had pressures I didn’t. I was a developer on one game though, Rise of the Triad. One of the mappers. There were so many great moments in the making of that game, I could probably write for bloody ages just about that. But that’s not what this is about.

I was at Apogee (later 3D Realms) for the creation of many a great title. Duke Nukem 3D was probably the single most well known game. There was the aforementioned Rise of the Triad. Also Shadow Warrior, Death Rally, Balls of Steel, Monster Bash, Raptor, Terminal Velocity, the list goes on. All told, the company I worked for had their hands in something like 75 games or so over their lifespan. In all that time I made friends with an enormous amount of game developers, both with people I worked directly with at Apogee, and folks I knew through other companies. While it’d be impossible to list everyone, I’ll cherry pick a few, and hope I don’t piss off the ones I didn’t mention.

Steve Quarrella, Lee Jackson, Bryan Turner, Tom Hall, Joe Selinske, Richard Gray, Jim Dose, & Scott Alden. There’s a ton of others who I was friends with, hung out with, talk on Facebook with, or whatnot, but these guys are some of my closest friendships from Apogee. I also want to point out Shawn Green, but if it wasn’t for Shawn moving on to id Software from Apogee when he did, I likely wouldn’t have had the job I had there for all those years – I directly replaced him at Apogee, and he was “Employee #1″ (not counting Scott’s own family).

So the years went by, and during my time at Apogee I got married (1996), had two kids (2005 & 2009), found God (2007), and generally had a happy career there. Made a lot of friends, had a lot of fun. But I’ve got to talk about the three words that have been with me professionally for ages…..

Duke Nukem Forever

He tasks me! He tasks me, and I shall have him!
I’ll chase him round the Moons of Nibia,
and round the Antares Maelstrom,
and round perdition’s flames before I give him up!
(Khan Noonien Singh)

I worked at Apogee on Duke Nukem II (I was the original voice of Duke Nukem in that game). Worked on all of Duke Nukem 3D, got married, and when I returned from that, work was just getting started on Duke Nukem Forever in December 1996. Yeah, 1996. Much has been written about Duke Nukem Forever, it’s problems and all that. I’m not here to write the story about Duke Nukem Forever. That’s for another time. But I will say this. I was there from Day 1. I saw everything. A lot of folks who (how shall we say) don’t like me will tell you that I didn’t have any impact, that I didn’t know anything. That’s a lie. I did. I just didn’t talk about it. As my job as PR/Support/CM at Apogee, I was “the company guy”. I’m not about to go spouting off info about the game that was unauthorized. But I worked there through every employee, through every change in the game, I saw most everything ever tried at some point or another. I saw all the mistakes, all the successes, and I can tell you this. There were definitely some problems with the game, both personal and technical over the years. There were internal power struggles, arguments over how to do this that, or the other thing. But despite all that, everyone who ever worked on the game (except for maybe one artist who lasted a single day – haha) wanted nothing more than to put out a kick ass followup to Duke Nukem 3D. As time wore on though, it became a struggle against the passage of time. Time breeds expectations, and the passage of time meant that the game became an industry joke, and the expectations would only be satiated by an event on the scale of the second coming of Jesus Christ. There was no way Duke Nukem Forever could have led up to the expectations that were being stacked up against it. The almost total media blackout over the years was especially hard for me. First in that I was the person charged with keeping the community together, and the online guy, it was hard being the “face” of Duke Nukem Forever when I was forbidden from talking about the game. I hung a LOT on “The game will be fun, it won’t matter how long it took”. I genuinely believed it, because I was playing the game all that time. I knew the fun parts. I knew the problems, but I chose to overlook that on the grounds that the fun bits would win out in the end. But it was hard being the guy online and having my hands tied from talking about the game. Took a lot of slings and arrows during my time at 3DR because of that one.

So we move forward a bit, and we get to 2008. 3D Realms hired Brian Hook as a producer, a move that when it first happened, grated most everyone that worked there. I know myself and Bryan Turner didn’t like the idea. Hook was fairly unlike the culture at 3D Realms at the time. However, the one thing that Hook did was not give in. He (as well as Trammell Isaac, the art director) didn’t take shit from people. They were both determined to get this thing pointed in the right direction. And they did. I saw all the old versions of the games, and the one being worked on in the latter days of 3D Realms was good. It was right, it was a fun game, it looked good, it played well, and dammit, was the version that we should have released (on our own, that’s not a slight against Triptych or Gearbox, I was talking about 3DR on it’s own). 3DR always had internal projections for release dates. Had 3DR survived (in it’s old form) the game’s internal release date was April 15, 2010. I had no doubt we would have made that. There was still work to do, sure, but things were moving in the right direction. It felt GOOD to be working on DNF again, the feeling of “do I want to tell people about my association with that, I’ll just get mocked” were gone. Had Hook been hired before he was, i suspect the entire chain of events with 3DR, Triptych, & Gearbox would have never happened, and I’d still be at Apogee/3DR.  Hook turned out to be one of the better decisions made for DNF.  Pity it wasn’t made earlier.

Team DNF on the last day of 3DR as a studio - May 8, 2009

So it was quite the shock when George Broussard & Brian Hook gathered the entire company in the lobby of 3D Realms in the late morning of May 6, 2009 for a meeting that had the words out of George’s mouth (and I quote), “Basically we’re closing down the studio”. It went on from there, but I have to say, that fucking sucked. It was the single worst professional meeting I’ve ever had in my life. There were a few doozies in the past (the one after the guys who founded Hipnotic/Ritual left 3DR was ugly too), but this was worse. It was my livelihood. It was a job I never expected NOT to have. And I was just told it was gone. Spent most of that meeting just in a daze. They explained the situation to us – some of which I saw come out at Shacknews a few days after that. It was a mess. The developers’ formal last day of work was May 8, 2009. The guys hung around the offices for a time after that working on resumes, portfolios, etc. That next week, Randy Pitchford and a few guys from Gearbox Software came down and made a hiring pitch to the dev team. I listened in, because I mostly didn’t have much else to do, but if you don’t know Randy, he’s QUITE the motivational speaker. At the end of his talk I was ready to march out the door with him back to Plano. That didn’t happen, and my actual last day of work at Apogee was May 22, 2009. Those last two days I spent reworking the product line so you could buy them from Apogee’s new online store, and they’d work in Windows. You can still buy those today from Apogee. No DRM, work in Windows, etc… The last game I did was Rise of the Triad. That was my favorite game released during my time there, and after I finished with that project, I was last out the building. I wrote a goodbye story there that night about it, and included it on the Rise of the Triad bundle. If you’ve bought ROTT from Apogee since May 2009, go look in your installed game directory for a file called goodbye.txt and goodbye.jpg. That was my “Goodbye to Apogee”.  UPDATE: I forgot I also hid them on the 3D Realms website, you can see the picture and the story via the provided links.

Except the “goodbye” really wasn’t. Given I never wanted to leave, that goodbye wasn’t the one I wanted. I was unable to say goodbye the way I’d like given my job was ripped away from me. To some extent, I wish I was still there. Apogee/3DR was a big family to me, I miss the job still.

Then six days after my last day of work there, my son was born. Was a heck of a time. The day before he was born, I interviewed at id Software for a job, but then they were bought out by Zenimax, and the job I interviewed for was deleted due the merger. So that didn’t happen. The couple of months after that were frought with many different thoughts. My career was seemingly over, but yet I had a new baby. I had a lot to be thankful for, and I still do. So I continued looking for work, and had the odd part time & contract job here and there. I still had tons of friends, and I found out a lot about what was going on with Duke, specifically the Triptych guys. There was a comment by several folks during that “3DR is closing” meeting that some would want to work for free on the game and keep the studio going. So what Triptych did isn’t a complete surprise to me having been in on that meeting.

In the summer of 2010, I had talked with Randy Pitchford, and given we worked together at 3D Realms back in 1997, I have the ability to talk to him. I had an inkling that DNF might not be as dead as thought, so I pinged Randy and asked him about work. While there was no job for me then, I did ask him this. “If you guys do end up putting out DNF, I wanted just one thing. Stick my name in the credits somewhere. Let my name go out with the game in SOME capacity, given how much time I spent around it in the past”. So he said that wouldn’t be a problem, and some time passed. In August of 2010 I got an email from Steve Gibson and Randy offering me a contract for part time work with Gearbox doing Community stuff, and helping out with constructing some historical bits from the past. I started a few days before the Pax announcement in 2010. It was quite amazing for me to see the project revived like that.

So, I was “back in the saddle” so to speak at Gearbox. Working online at Duke forums, and on Duke Nukem Forever. Not quite in the way I wanted it to be (meaning no 3DR), but I was grateful. As the game got closer to release, the word surreal came into my head more and more. That it was possible the game was finally coming out was just astounding to me. Speaking of credits, there was one night towards the end of DNF’s dev time where George and I did up the credits section for 3D Realms one night. What a blast of memory from the past to come up with everyone who ever worked on Duke at 3DR. You can see that in the credits in the final game.

The contract with Gearbox allowed me to do one huge thing I was unable to do in 2009. Say goodbye on my own terms. I still never wanted to leave Apogee/3DR. I know the company still legally exists today (and never went away), but there’s no need for a “me”. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t entertain a thought in returning some day. But 3DR would have to revive itself, and I’m not sure what they’re planning there, to be honest. So that’s not a realistic option.

I had a lot of fun during my time at Gearbox. I was a part timer working from home, so I wasn’t at the Plano offices regularly. I went up there several times to help out with various bits. One of my favorites there was the day we spent recording interviews and podcasts for the historical series of stuff. Enjoyed that experience a lot.

Me with Jon St. John, the more well known voice of Duke Nukem

However, the greatest moments for me during my time at Gearbox were two single events. First was the release party in downtown Dallas. It was combined with a “Community Day” for Gearbox Software, and it was a lot of fun. Spoke with several fans during that time, got to mingle with true Duke fans. It was a blast. I finally got to meet Jon St. John face to face for the first time. The two voices of Duke finally meet! But the most fun was the release party later that night. Saw a lot of folks I hadn’t seen in awhile, but EASILY the greatest moment of the party personally was when the band “Say Hello to the Angels” played the Duke Nukem theme (aka “Grabbag”) live. Not just because of that song, which was badass, but.. Lee Jackson was there too. Lee was the original author of the song many a moon ago, but that fact was mostly hidden over time. The majority of people never knew that. When the song was over, Randy Pitchford was on stage talking, and Lee and I were down front about 3 rows of people from the stage. Randy noticed Lee, and pointed him out as the person who wrote the song, and the entire venue started applauding Lee. INCLUDING the band from the stage. That was clearly my favorite moment, because I had a hand in putting Lee & Randy together over the Duke theme and credit and whatnot. So for my old friend to get the public adulation for that song – FINALLY after all these years was my favorite moment of that night. The open bar was great, too. hahaha.

The second greatest moment was the midnight release party. Went out with some other Gearbox guys to a Gamestop in Plano. We hung out with fans for about an hour before the game was released. Then I sat in an autograph line and autographed people’s games, and whatnot. That was a moment that was a blast for me. Never thought it was going to happen, so i savored it really well. There were a handful of other 3D Realms guys there with me so it wasn’t just me as a “3DR guy”. But the event was important to me.

The game was out. With the release came closure. Closure is the most important thing that Gearbox gave me. Oh, the money from the contract was important, it’s helped support the family by paying the mortgage and all that. But for my own head I think, the closure I got from the guys at Gearbox for getting the game out the door was huge, and went a long way to soothing over some still raw feelings about the fall of 3D Realms.

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention the Tripytch team specifically. In the days before Gearbox got involved, these guys wanting to work for nothing to keep the game going laid the foundation for what Gearbox offered me. They too deserve thanks for helping me out, although they didn’t do it as directly as Randy & Steve at Gearbox did. I knew just about all of them from having worked with ‘em at 3D Realms, so I’m grateful. Hey Kristin, thanks for the mugs!

That brings me back to today. Today is my last day at Gearbox. It brings to an end that long chain of events that started way back in 1992 when Scott Miller asked me to come work at Apogee. Moved to Dallas from Philadelphia, and despite a time when I was working part time jobs for other companies, I’ve had Duke Nukem in my life professionally until now. 1992-1993 for Duke Nukem II, 1993-1996 for Duke Nukem 3D, and 1996-2011 for Duke Nukem Forever. Not to mention the other Duke games, but Duke has been hanging around me for bloody ages. Tomorrow I’ll be professionally away from Duke for the first time ever, really. I’m OK with that. A year ago or so, I wouldn’t have been. But I am now. That’s because I’ve been able to say goodbye on my own terms. Today is the last day of my contract with Gearbox, and I will always be grateful to Randy & Steve for offering that to me (and Chris & Adam for having to deal with me most directly). I was allowed me to see the game get finished, come out, and participate in the release parties and all that. I have a copy of the game in my hands, and I’ve played through it several times. It’s fun. But then that doesn’t surprise me. I knew it would be.

3D Realms Group Photo - June 11, 2001, DNF Release Party

So today I say goodbye to Apogee/3D Realms & Gearbox. It’s the end of the line for the biggest time in my life professionally. There’s still some more Duke Nukem Forever to come, the DLC later this year, and all that. I’ll enjoy that, as will you. Unless you’re a hater.

I’ll still be a fan, I’ll still play the next Duke game, maybe participate in Gearbox testing for the next one and all that – who knows? But today I consider my career in the game industry over. Unless there’s some surprise I’m unaware of, or some other company that wants to hire me I don’t know about. I’ve had fun, but I get the feeling there’s something else out there for me, so I’ve decided to look elsewhere for work. Will have to see what it is. Maybe it’s still games, maybe it’s stocking shelves at Target, maybe it’s preaching the Word of God. Who knows? Whatever it is, I know I’ll have my wife and kids with me, who are more important than any darned videogame I’ve ever been or could be involved with. Having said that, I can’t wait to see what Gearbox comes up with for a new Duke Nukem game. Will be a lot of fun, that’s for sure.

A big thanks to Scott Miller & George Broussard for bringing my onboard almost 20 years ago.   And also to Randy Pitchford & Steve Gibson for giving me the closure I apparently desperately needed to close out that portion of my life.   And also to my wife who’s had to bear the full brunt of what I’ve been through since the fall of 3D Realms.  I owe her big time.

God Bless you all, and to all the Duke fans, thanks for being around. Hope to run into you guys somewhere online.

Joe Siegler
“Always Bet on Duke”

P.S. To those of you who have made a habit out of hating on me due to some professional whatever from the past. I forgive you guys too. Guys like Yatta, CultureShock & especially Lengis/EngimaHood. I’ll pray for you guys, because hate is so destructive. I used to be consumed with rage over the various issues between us, but not anymore. I’ve learned to draw great strength from the peace that comes from the Holy Spirit. I’m reminded of Matthew 5:44 with you guys… “But I tell you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you”. May you three guys come to know the spirit of the LORD so you can have inner peace about everything. God Bless. Amen.