Looking back on the last 24 years

I spent most of today updating my resume, recreating the HTML version and putting it all back up online. I finally split the list of published titles off into its own document, so I now have a more reasonable two-page resume with a separate two-page list of titles. Feels odd to look at those documents and take in that they represent the last 24 years of my life. It's all up now up if you follow the link over on the right-hand sidebar. Please shoot me an email if you notice any goofs or spelling mistakes. Wouldn't look good for Captain Attention to Detail to be caught with a typo. Drat, I just realized I forgot to create PDF versions. Bah I'll do that when I get back from Death Valley.

While I was doing all these I got an email from a gentlemen named Gaël, who is a classic Macintosh fan. He has been looking for a copy of two games I worked on back in 1986ish called "Utopia" and "Futuria." The story, as I remember it as it was told to me, was that these were two Scott Adams adventures redone by his former partner, William. Supposedly Scott and William had a falling out and William had the rights to these two games. I don't really know how much of that is true or not. To be honest, I don't really remember too many details about the games either. Unfortunately, I also don't have copies of them. Unicorn wasn't to good on keeping up with giving me copies of all the games I worked on.

It is interesting to think back on as these were some of the very first games I worked on. Working on them may have even been the first time I used a mouse to draw. Gaël sent this title screen for Utopia but I don't think it is something I drew. Jack, a programmer, used to paint some of the box covers and I think he may have painted this and then scanned it in. We used something called "Thunderscan" which replaced the printing head on the mac's printer and acted as a scanner. I drew a cartoon on the white board at the time that had a picture of the "sad mac" also knows as the "mad mac" shown when the Macintosh crashed. It was decked out post-holocaust style with the caption, "Mad Macs, Beyond the Thunderscan." Don't judge, it was a much simpler time.

I also in the middle of all this I found out that former Westwood-ian, Patrick Connelly, passed away. I don't have any of the details and I hadn't spoken to Patrick in many years. He was always an entertaining goofball and storyteller. I always though that they should have done a live action sitcom based on South Park, with Patrick playing a slightly older Cartman in college. He would have been perfect for the roll.

Patrick always had a bright and upbeat aptitude with a new tale you just had to hear. The world just won't be quite as bright a place tomorrow as it was yesterday. Goodbye Patrick.