Slow down!

I remember the Rifts campaign I once ran... or attempted to run, that is. There was so much to see and do in the Rifts universe. New areas added all the time, etc. I couldn't resist snatching up every book I could find (most of which are still sitting in the closet; must remember to unload them via eBay someday) and imagining how I might incorporate this latest feature/area/whatever into the campaign. Well, as you might imagine, I went into ferret shock over the entire matter. Couldn't focus on one thing at a time. Wanted to do everything, so nothing got done. I think I actually GMed one adventure with a clear plan of where I was going with it, not counting those already planned out in the books. The rest were at best improvised all the way and at worst never got started. Not surprisingly, the campaign died a slow death.

That's roughly how my boss seems to run this branch of the company. With the added bonus that I sometimes have to explain to him the equivalent of why it would be difficult to have a Mechanoid and a Kittani on the same team.

He means well. He's got some really great ideas. But I wish he could forget about all of them for the moment and pick one project to focus on, because right now we're still getting started with this branch -- only five employees and no clear procedures for anything -- and we've got enough to worry about without implementing a whole new set of features. I find myself strapped for time handling the technical side of everything he tosses at me (multiple websites, digital designs for ads, autoresponders, scripting, technical writing...) and he certainly doesn't have the time to do his share (between clients and investors, he barely has time to check his email).

When most of your benefits are stock options, you have a vested interest in making sure the project at least gets off the ground. I can't fight the nagging doubt that in all the confusion, we'll never get that far.

Beats "Dewey Defeats Truman" any day.

Amusing tale from my brother from college. Just had to share it. (JW, if you want it removed, just say the word and I will.)

He works for the student newspaper, "The Record", at Wheaton College. In his words, here's how the student election reporting went down:

Obviously, we wanted to run a story in the paper, but we knew we would be unable to get access to the results until Thursday morning. This wasn't much of a problem--we just wrote up what we knew of the story, and left blanks or filler where needed information would go. Then Kay Lynn would come in Thursday morning and finish it up before we took it off to print. Easy enough.

The problem is that while Kay Lynn remembered to fix the article, she forgot the headline. So, on the upper left column of the paper, we have a nice lead in: "Elmo wins election."

Someone dies. Slowly.