Federation Commander

Hello everyone!

New to the forum, but long time reader! (over used, but true in this case)

This is in regards to Star Blog update on 11 June 09.

It took me a bit by surprise.

I understand differing viewpoints on many "hot" topics, and even more so I try my best to accept them with grace.

So as to not sound like I'm whining, or writing an angry response; I'd like to first say that I respect this company and the people involved with it to no end. You have provided me, my family, and friends with countless hours of entertainment and stories to tell years later.

With that, I was sad that a company that I support would make a "subtle" veiled attack on my heritage.

I've made the jokes as well, many people with French ancestry have (my mothers full blood). I mean come on, they're funny!

But, I feel it may be innapropriate to have on a company's website for one of their products. I can live with it, and will. But would like more consideration from one of my favorite gaming companies in the future.

I'm a proud American citizen. I served six years in the Idaho Army National Guard for my country. I don't think my blood lines (poor gene pool) should reflect poorly on my character.

Thank you for listening. I hope to continue seeing excellence in both the products and service provided. I will always be a loyal customer.

Jayden

The Star Blog kind of veers between being a company blog and a personal one. Since the company is very much SVC and Petrick (being the primary public faces, with Jean rapidly ascending), there isn't much of a distinction between persons and company.

I disagree with some of the current-events related opinions in it, especially since the election, but I also don't have to read it . Frankly, I usually don't anymore. (Nor do I expect people to read mine, if they don't share my views.)

That's a shame though, since the Star Blog has been another way to see how things are going within ADB. But "C'est la vie".

The "my day" blog on the legacy board is usually more timely and since it is a personal blog, I expect to see things written in it from a perspective I don't share - the data also there is important enough to continue to follow.

pickledteak, I do appreciate your loyalty to the company and your polite post about what you see as a problem. While I wish you had taken the issue up by email (always the best course when you have a criticism of the company's actions), at least you didn't come out in "attack mode". I will certainly mention this topic to SVC.

Humor is such a difficult thing to pull off and it will never please everyone . Many times jokes are told (or comments are made) here and on the legacy board that I know other female types would get very upset about and their significant others would be eating cold kibble on the back porch if they told that joke within hearing. (You see the door marked "Airlock"? Go through the paired doors and your food is outside . . . " ) For me, I just roll my eyes, realize the person probably never meant to hurt anyone's feelings, forgive him for what (to me) was a failed joke, and move on.

Doing a blog day in, day out, especially when you are working on a product with a hard deadline, can be very difficult. SVC is a fast writer and very inventive. SPP writes far faster than I. (Well, to be truthful, probably everyone writes faster than I do.) When I covered for the Steves when they were at Origins, when they were moving ADB, Inc. and again when they were in Austin moving the mezzanine from the old building, I realized how very, very hard it is to write something interesting, work-related, and concise for days on end. I don't know if anyone would read a blog that consisted of:

"Today we worked on CL #39 and muttered every time we saw an email with an attachment from Jean. The attachment meant she finished proofreading another page of CL and found enough nit-picky errors (more than four) that she scanned the page with all of her purple marks, comments, and circles (she proofreads using purple; SVC, blue; Leanna, red; and SPP, green) and sent it to us as a JPEG. Sorry, must run, " The Purple Witch" has sent another page of corrections. (Yes, capitalize Bridge a zillion times, lower case on hellbore a dozen times, how did I spell "mass" as "masss", and make that comma a semicolon . . . )"

One day it might amuse, but the next day and the next? For we will be working hard on that product every day between now and Origins and that blog could be a repeat blog every day--just change the first three examples (the fourth one always happens sometime on one of the pages I proofread each day) and that is what is happening.

Will, I'm sorry you don't read the StarBlog as much any more. There are a lot of interesting things written in there. Just looking at last month, there are reviews on the new ST movie, reports into what has happened at ADB, Inc., information about what to look at and consider when writing things or proposing things for the company, and an excellent essay on Memorial Day, written by Ryan Opel, one of our F&E staff members. Still, you have the right attitude and practice what I preach at the library, "If you don't like that book, just put it down and move on to a different book." You are right about SVC's "My Day" in that it is more focused on what he does each day. I pick up a lot of clues in what is going on there in the office from those entries.

I'm a rapidly ascending public face? ACK! Images of me as an escaped helium balloon come to mind!

Well, I guess I better float off and do more proofreading. I caught up a bit yesterday and I need to get everything sent to me done today.

I had talked to Jean about this issue recently, and was going to wait until after Origins to say something about it - but since the thread was posted up already, I feel that I ought to add my .02c to it.


While I was not born in a part of la Francophonie, I am from Ireland - a country which owed much of its educational heritage to France, during the time of the Penal Laws...

...laws which were finally undone through the efforts of Daniel O'Connell, a man who had been sent to France for part of his early education, himself.


Further, I'm now a resident of Canada, a country with French as one of its official languages, and in which the continued legacy of the various francophone peoples found within persists to this day.

(And as it happens, Newfoundland, now a part of the Canadian confederation, had its own Catholic emancipation pursued in part through O'Connell's efforts.)


But even if none of this were the case, I still found that certain aspects of the blog entry were somewhat difficult for me to take as 'just' an attempt at humour - not least the 'gene pool' comment which pickledteak mentioned in the opening post.

It made me feel very uncomfortable.


I'm sorry if it's a bother for me to post this, but I feel like it needs to be said, for what little it's worth.

Jean, I appreciate your reply and apologize for not sending an email for this. In the future I will. And thank you for explaining what the Star Blogs intent is. I suppose I haven't looked at it in that light.

You're right about humor being difficult. I myself have failed many times with a joke I thought that darned hilarious offending someone else's taste.

Now that it has been brought up, and addressed... lets get on with game talky. Far more entertaining!

Good hunting everyone!

I am locking this because the message was tactfully send, and graciously received. Anything more will surely detract from that.

A few things....

1. I did NOT write that. It came from the guys who do FYEO, guys who make about ten times as much money writing military history as I make designing games.

2. It's all true, by the way.

3. I have no idea how Jean got it or why she posted it. I don't think I sent it to her; if I did send it to her, I sent it to her a very long time ago (certainly not any time this year). It's actually not legal for us to post it since it's copyrighted to somebody else.

4. That was written (not by me, as I mentioned) a very long time ago. I cannot remember if it was Gulf War I or Gulf War II, but I think it was Gulf War I, meaning its 15+ years old. I DO have a copy on my computer and every now and then I find it and read it because it's funny (the best humor is the truth), and sometimes send a copy to a friend. Frankly, I cannot remember the last time I saw that document, but I'd almost swear it was two or three years ago.

5. Not that there's anything wrong with posting funny stuff (humor always hurts somebody) but I just wanted to be clear that I did not write it and cannot remember having told Jean to post it. Maybe I did, but if so, it was a year or two ago and I don't know why it would have stayed in her file so long. (Then again, I got an email the other day that took six weeks to get through the internet, which was kind of strange.)

6. I'm just baffled and wondering what wires got crossed. I gotta believe Jean thought I wanted it posted, but I don't know what I said that made her think that.

7. I told Jean to delete it (because it's copyrighted, not because it's upsetting to anyone; if history upsets you, deal with it).

We did some digging.

Sometime last fall, there was a crisis shortage of blog stuff. I emailed Jean a whole pile of junk found in my computer. Apparently, I included the france thing by mistake. (Again, it's not wrong, it's just not mine to post.)

I forgot I sent it. Jean kept in in reserve until we were so busy with CL39 we didn't have time to blog.