Category: Personal

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A Ziff-trospective, Part I: The Lombardening

In my most recent post over at 1UP, I started musing a bit about some of the good times I had in my ten-and-a-half years at Ziff Davis Media. With EGM having closed just shy of its 20-year anniversary, there’s a lot of this going around, I understand. Shoe and Crispin did plenty, in written and verbal form; Mielke wrote The Compleat Milkography, Vols. I – XXIV; Greg Sewart rebutted with a different perspective; and C.J. reposted some classic musings of his own. And that’s just a small sampling.

Look, I never claimed to be a trend-setter.

The thing is, I’ve noticed some gaps in others’ accounts. Some gaps that need filling. And by God, I’m just the man to do it.

Plus, I have pictures. Incriminating pictures.

And so, I present to you the first in a four-part series: A Ziff-trospective, Part I: The Lombardening.

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Pretty much any story anyone tells about Lombard includes mention of it being the most suburbiest of suburbs. And oh dear lord, it is. (Or at least, it was the last time I was there.) But do you think that mattered to a 22-year-old kid, fresh out of college, new to Chicago, and starting his first day of work at a videogame magazine? No. No, it did not.

It was June 24, 1996. A bit more than a month previous, in anticipation of moving from my hometown of Cleveland to Chicago, I had answered an ad in the Chicago Tribune for “Writer / Game Player” with a resume (thin) and writing samples (laughable). Both, I learned later, had been promptly lost, but my cover letter had stuck around on someone’s desk long enough to make some sort of impression. So I got asked in for an interview, impressed the hell out of everyone by showing up in a tie, and found myself reporting for work at the offices of Sendai Media the following Monday.

Let me tell you what I saw the first time I walked into this place. You drive up on the outside to a very plain, very institutional-looking, brown-brick building. Three floors, darkish windows — pretty much the epitome of the anonymous late-20th-Century office building. (Come to think of it, here: see for yourself.) You open the doors into a modest, tiled lobby, facing a bit of ugly abstract art that’s inexplicably blocked off with velvet ropes. You go up an open stairway to the second floor. Straight ahead is Reception, but if we’re going to EGM (and we are), we’ll turn left. Swipe your card and open the door. Continue reading “A Ziff-trospective, Part I: The Lombardening”

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Speaking of RSS Readers

FeedsI’m pretty sure I’ve tried every single RSS reader for the iPhone at this point.

When I first got my phone, I was fairly new to this whole blog-aggregation thing. I’d dabbled a bit but hadn’t come to rely on it. But with Mobile Safari being slower (and more squintastic) than I’d like, I knew I’d need to get on the RSS train, and fast.

I looked for suggestions. I’d heard so many negative things about the free NetNewsWire that I skipped right over that one. A friend had recommended the not-free Feeds, but when I saw the awful green color I knew he must have meant Web Feeds, which also shows up on your phone as just “Feeds.” So I picked that one up and set up my feeds.

Let me be clear: Web Feeds is a very nice program. Slick and fast and constantly improving. But it was almost too good — that is to say, I started using RSS more and more for work purposes, to catch up quickly on important topics for the various columns and news items I’d been writing. And here’s the problem: Web Feeds didn’t have a way of sharing articles. At all. Which made it a little tough to track down the important things I’d found while away from my desk.*

So I tried out NetNewsWire, which syncs with Newsgator online and thereby allowed me to tag articles for later review. I used that for a couple weeks, before I realized that some blogs I read regularly had disappeared, as though they weren’t being updated…even though I knew they put up something like 40 posts a day. So that went right out.

Right around that time a bunch of readers popped up in the App Store that purported to sync with Google Reader. So I tried them. I tried them all. The verdict? Continue reading “Speaking of RSS Readers”

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An Actual Conversation, About Cats

My brother Matt: I was just trying to get them together.

Me: Jacob and Samantha don’t like each other. He tries to mount her.

Matt: I can see how that would be a problem.

Me: It puts a strain on their relationship.

Matt: I don’t know why, it does wonders for mine.

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And Now, a Story

Back in the day, when my dad was still working funerals regularly, occasionally they would get a family from Brecksville who wanted to have the funeral mass at St. Basil the Great.

Originally, this church was right next to Bosa’s Donuts, right down on 82, just east of Brecksville Rd. (It’s since moved to a newer, bigger location.) Occasionally, after setting everything up for the funeral, the gentlemen would duck out for a quick cup of coffee and a donut at Bosa’s.

One day, my dad and two employees headed over to refresh themselves. They all sat down at the counter, and the young, adorably cute waitress came up to take their orders.

“What will it be today, guys?” she asks.

“Hmm,” says the one employee. “I’ll take a cup of coffee, but I’m not really feeling like a donut today. What else do you have?”

“Well, we’ve got bagels, English muffins, and toast.”

“What kind of toast?”

“White, wheat, rye, raisin…”

“Oh, raisin toast. That sounds great. I haven’t had raisin toast since I don’t know when. I’ll take that.”

So this cute waitress turns to Employee Number Two. “How about you, honey?”

“You know,” he says, “raisin toast actually sounds really good. I’ll have that too.”

So this adorable waitress turns to my dad. “And what about you, sweetie? Is yours raisin too?”

And my dad, without skipping a beat, says, “No, but it’s quivering a little.”

Continue reading “And Now, a Story”