August 22, 1989
The disks are in QA. All of ‘em.
Brian is thrilled. He immediately started hitting me up about doing a sequel.
For Brian, it’s done; but secretly, I’m still surreptitiously fixing tiny little bugs that no one will notice. I’ll slip the fixes in when we do the copy protection, Roland and I will test the hell out of it, and nobody will know the difference.
Tina came in today and I showed her her screen debut. I think she was kind of starstruck by the idea that it was her up there.
It was Robert’s first time meeting Tina face to face (not counting the virtual meeting I’d staged onscreen). After she’d left, we just sat there looking at each other, until Robert said with a sigh:
“It’s just the ephemeral beauty of an 18-year-old.”
I said: “Yes, but she’s 18 years old now.”
There was nothing more to say.
Should I start on a sequel? I could whip it out in five or six months this time, with Lance doing the IBM programming concurrently. I could even write a screenplay on the side… split my time, 50-50. (Uh… sound familiar?)
I don’t have time to think about this. I’ve still got (officially nonexistent) bugs to fix. Tomorrow Roland and I start on copy protection
August 27, 1989
Roland and I stayed till midnight at the office both Friday and Saturday. We’ve been having a blast putting weird stuff into the copy-protection. Taking us back to our hacker roots. Today I’m going to stay home and test the hell out of it on my IIc to make sure none of what we’ve done interferes with anything.
QA signed off on the demo disk Friday, but it’ll be a fight to get Them to let us sneak it by the 12th.
August 28, 1989
Struck up a conversation with Peter Blacksberg, whom I’d seen around but never talked to, outside the Art Dept., where he was making signs with directions to his upcoming wedding. Out of the blue he suggested dinner.
Smart, nice guy, and pleased to discover a fellow smart person. He gave me some helpful advice about Broderbund. He’d heard the story of Brian yelling at Leslie in the scheduling meeting, and suggested I try to avoid identifying myself too strongly with Brian. “Be nice to Leslie. Maybe she’ll think ‘Well, Jordan’s a nice guy, even though his product manager is an S.O.B., so let’s try to get his project signed off.’”
His comment forced me into awareness that Brian’s temper may be doing me more harm than good, and that I should take care to build relationships with other people at Broderbund too. Like Latricia and Sophie. And Bill. And Kevin and Leslie.
As far as I’m concerned, POP is ready to go out to HLS for evals. If QA comes to the same conclusion within the next couple of days, everything is beautiful (as Brian would say).
But until I’ve talked to Bill tomorrow and gotten his word, I’m not counting on it.
It was good spending the evening with Peter Blacksberg. It got my mind off POP and onto new things. Made me realize how much I’ve damped down my curiosity about the world, these last few months, in the interest of efficiency. It’s time to start rekindling it… looking for new people, places, friends. I shouldn’t just rush on to the next project with tunnel vision. I should relax, take a look around.
August 29, 1989
Oh, Lord.
At 10 pm tonight, I was happy. QA signed off on POP today. Brian talked to Bill, Bill talked to Leslie, and we actually got it out a day ahead of schedule. Everyone was ecstatic. Congratulations from all sides. I went to the gym, left phone messages with some friends, cooked up some spaghetti. Everything was beautiful. I was thinking I’d take the day off work tomorrow.
Then I decided to boot up the game on my IIc and play it through one last time, just for the hell of it.
It’s that God-cursed IIc VBLANK routine Roland and I stuck in at the last minute. It works, but it screws up the joystick. I’d checked it on the IIc downstairs, but like an idiot, I’d only checked it in keyboard mode.
There’s no way around it. I’ve got to tell Kevin and Brian, and send new disks down to HLS to replace the ones we sent today. It’ll be anticlimactic and embarrassing, and Brian, Bill and I will lose face. The only redeeming factors are (1) it was me who found it, and (2) it’s something I can easily fix.
Shit. Oh well. It could have been worse.
I got paid for POP today. The $4000 “development fee” Ed Bernstein agreed to four years ago in lieu of an advance. Good thing, too. My bank account’s been running pretty low.
Alan Weiss is all excited about doing POP as a Nintendo title. Henry Yamamoto is interested too. This may actually happen.
Hell. I wish I’d never messed with that VBLANK stuff.
August 30, 1989
Drove into work early this morning and fixed the game. Brian was a little bummed, and Kevin was kind of a pain in the ass about it, but it got fixed. We won’t lose more than a day. Maybe not even that.
My first day off in ages. Corey came into the city and we went to see sex, lies and videotape. Pretty unusual movie. I’m impressed, actually. The heart it revealed wasn’t one of the biggest and warmest I’ve ever encountered, but it was revealed, which is more than you can say for most movies, especially first movies by 26-year-olds.
August 31, 1989
Robert just called from a pay phone on Elm St. He’s At Yale. In New Haven. Wow… For some reason that phone call drove it home. I wish I were just starting Yale. Or even better, that we were both starting Yale together.
It was eight years ago that I did what Robert’s doing. Makes me feel old.
