I should have been a pair of ragged claws

"...There is room in the halls of pleasure For a large and lordly train, But one by one we must all file on Through the narrow aisles of pain." a portion of Ella Wheeler Wilcox's poem, Solitude I currently have my next Azedra (nuclear medicine) treatment scheduled for February 7th at the University of Pennsylvania hospital. I can't say I'm looking forward to it. The treatment itself is nothing troubling - my body will feel a bit off for a few days but the psychological impact of the required isolation afterwards is profound. As I've said before, hugs play a big part in me calculating my self-worth and being happy. As an introvert I don't miss crowds of people and it doesn't take much to fulfill my socialization requirements, but when I don't fulfill those requirements I feel terribly lonely. There's also the feeling of being a radioactive leper, with nurses donning little hazmat suits and ducking between lead panels to talk to me for a few mome...

When cancer lifts its foot off my neck and I have a chance to catch my breath, I wrestle with: "what am I supposed to do now?" Before my diagnosis, my life was defined by the career goals that I set for myself. For 15 years I worked to become a game designer. For 4 years I worked to become the best teacher I could. When cancer hit and I had to quit my job, I saw for the first time a giant invisible highway of people walking and running together toward "work." I feel like cancer ripped me from this infinite caravan and put me on a narrow, perpendicular dusty road by myself.  I didn't realize how much this shared concept of "we are all working" provided a substantial sense of a community to me. Two people may have separate jobs, totally different goals in life, but they are together on that highway and can share their experiences trying to overcome the obstacles in their way. (How many conversations are started with "what do you do" and built o...

When I was a teenager I wondered when America, like Rome, would fall. I did not think the Capitol would be ransacked in my lifetime, and I thought the attackers would be the Russians or Chinese or some foreign army. I can't express how ashamed and enraged I was that so many people were so fooled so completely and took violence to overthrow an election. Please call your senator and representative and ask them to continue to investigate and prosecute those who attacked the Capitol and those who incited and planned the attack. These were not rioters, they were seditionists and, regardless of how rich an powerful they are, they should all be fully prosecuted under the law. If we don't do it now, next time will be far worse.

About a month ago I completed my first treatment of Azedra - the nuclear medicine treatment. The first few weeks were really challenging for me because I was so radioactive that it was unsafe for others to be near me for even short periods of time and I had to isolate in our bedroom.  I found out during that time that I need hugs to hold myself together mentally. Not like "oh, this is nice" but they reassure me that I'm ok both physically and socially. I chose not to hug my wife because I was so radioactive - the last thing I wanted to do is make her sick. But my choice of not hugging my wife until my radioactivity dropped to a safer level made me feel lonely and isolated. It was only when my radioactivity dropped and I was able to get more hugs from Bessie that I felt like my Azedra treatment was complete. As I met my hug quota and was appreciating the other rooms in our house, I noticed something - I felt pretty good! To be clear, feeling "pretty good" with my...

In a week, I will get a shot of highly radioactive material in an attempt to nuke the cancer within me while I survive. The procedure will occur at the University of Penn hospital in Philly. I will be kept in a hospital room until my personal radioactive level is at a level for me to be safe on the street. (I'm actually not sure if that's a law, but it's a really good idea to keep people who are very radioactive from walking around and giving people x-rays without their permission.) I will likely spend 4-5 days in the hospital and be released on Friday. I will still be dangerously radioactive, so when I go home I will need to stay away from Bessie and other multi-cellular organisms that I value. We have a Geiger counter to help figure out what my radioactive level is and how close I can be without hurting her. It will certainly be an awkward number of days, but we could have fun with it. The most likely immediate side-effect from the radioactive shot will be nausea. While I...

I like thinking about the golden disk that was sent along with Voyager I. I loved that Carl Sagan and others thought: "How can we express all of humanity to an alien life with a record?" Given my situation, I thought it would be good for myself to make the music that I can't imagine my life happening without. I gave myself 72 minutes and it's tough to build a playlist that says everything that you want to say. (72 minutes is the length of a CD. They were how people like me bought music when you could still buy music.) So here's what I got:   The playlist is designed to be played in order. I will be futzing with it so the tracks and their order may change. As I shared this with you, I would love to hear other people's playlists. I certainly can't expect "this is my whole life" playlist, but it would mean a lot to me, especially with my upcoming incarceration, to hear what music you're listening to right now or things that you adore or whateve...

I'm at home recovering from my surgery. From all reports and the feelings I have, the surgery went well. My arm is bothering me, but I just had surgery and the pain is nominal and extremely manageable. They used liquid nitrogen to kill the cancer cells, hoovered them out, and then gave me my second bionic limb. I kinda wish I got to see it, but I would probably would have passed out watching it, especially if it was happening to me. So I'm resting and relaxing. I'm checking back in two weeks with the doctor to see how things are going. After that, I can resume treatments to try to stop the cancer in my gut.

 In my draft folder for this blogging system is a post that blushingly explains how well chemotherapy is going for me and tries to recognize how fortunate I was to have few painful side-effects for an infamously painful treatment. Then came along four days where I was so tired I barely got out of bed. I thought - maybe I should rephrase that blog post, maybe I'm not that lucky. Then I woke up on Saturday morning, 3am, with my left arm screaming in pain. I swear I've broken it, but who breaks their arm in their sleep? At 8am Bessie drove me to the urgent treatment center for cancer patients at Johns Hopkins and we got my arm scanned and they spent most of the day trying to find for my arm a sling and a radiologist to give it a proper diagnosis. We left in the later afternoon with a sling, a bunch of prescriptions for pain meds, and little more than assurances that my arm was not completely broken. We found out on Monday that my cancer-filled upper left arm broke the bone and eru...

I start chemo in about 50 minutes. I ate a bowl of cereal over an hour ago, took my zofran to reduce my nausea, then I start on what looks like the most serious advent calendar I've ever seen that has strict instructions on how only the patient should handle the meds because, y'know, it's like legit poison and stuff. Hope you feel better! Thinking about how much my life has changed since early March is how most of you probably felt last March with the coronavirus pandemic and masks and social distancing and an unknown disease. I will say that I have a great envy for those who can now try to step back into normality, take off their masks, start travelling, and resume their lives after a pretty crappy year for a lot of people around the world. I feel like the eternal footman stepped in front of me as I was taking off my mask and said "I'm sorry, but this is not the way you're going. There is another path for you."  I don't intend to complain or moan on t...

 Had an MIBG scan yesterday to see if I would respond to a treatment called Azedra. The scan came back showing that I would likely respond to that treatment. (Need to have convo with docs to determine if we undergo that treatment, but more available treatments are good.) Also from the report, it says that the cancer was "largely unchanged since April 30th scan"! So, hey, that's good!

I think hope, like being a good person, is pretty dumb. Hope often leads to taking a sometimes questionable decision that leads to some greater future and ignoring all the bad things that will could happen along the way. Hope leads us to taking risks in our lives - telling people we love them, trying for a new job, having kids, starting something new. Following our hope invariably puts us in the way for pain, often some of the worst pain - unrequited love, infants preventing you from sleeping can be a hell scape, your dream job turns into a prison. But without hope, what good can happen in our lives? We need it as humans to live and breathe and grow and make and do things we never thought possible. As stupid as it is, having hope and acting on it is probably the best things about humans, even if it is kinda dumb. I finished the last zap of radiation of my current treatment today and right now I'm feeling better than I have since I woke up with my sore shoulder in December. I'm ...

It’s been a tough few weeks. I think the leg surgery has been a huge success - I’m scooting around the house easily, sometimes taking the stairs two at a time as I did before the surgery, and only feel pangs of pain in my femur from time to time. I’m able to go on walks outside that are about a mile long before my leg starts feeling weird. My surgical scars are healing and I’m working to recover some flexibility that will allow me to resume putting on my right sock and sitting cross-legged on the floor, but those complaints are small potatoes to how tough it was the night after the surgery when they had me on barely any painkillers. What completely knocked me on my butt recently is that they changed my diagnosis from pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor (PNET) to metastatic paraganglioma with a MAX gene mutation. Both are mouthfuls to say, but metastatic paraganglioma is a much rarer cancer than PNET. 2 out of a million people are diagnosed with paraganglioma and only 1% of those people h...

To my Hereford high school students who may have wondered why I suddenly disappeared: I was offered a long-term substitute job at Institute of Notre Dame, a Catholic girls school in Baltimore teaching engineering and physics. I'm starting on Monday(?!) going through June, so it's unlikely that I'll be subbing for Hereford anytime for the rest of this school year. To blame for me leaving Hereford are all the students that were in my classes when I was filling in for Ms. Watkins. (Ok, well, most of my students. . . glowers at TJ ) I loved teaching you all and it was the happiest time of my professional career. You are a fantastic lot; hilarious, eager to learn, polite, fun, and basically wonderful. I loved being a part of your lives, seeing you grow day to day, and trying to teach you and get you excited about stuff. Yet as much as I love seeing you all, being a substitute for a day is a bit of a drag, even at a great school like Hereford. You know how substitute days ...

Where to start? Brave New World , the next expansion for Civilization 5 , has been wrapped up and is ready to go. I've was able to fulfill a development dream and design a trade system to be added to the game. Something about caravans and trade ships moving around the screen delights me to no end and I hope other people enjoy it as well. After much discussion with Bessie, I've decided this would be the best time to leave my position at Firaxis Games and work with Todd and Derek at Gopherwood Studios . My seven years (!) at Firaxis have been wonderful and I'm proud that I got to work with such great people on such great products. I will miss my team tremendously; they are my second family and, while I'm not moving away from Baltimore, I'll miss talking to them daily and being a part of their lives. That said, I'm both nervous and excited about working at Gopherwood Studios. I'll be a contractor, largely responsible for pulling in my own clients, a...

I chatted with Todd about Kid Icarus: Uprising and I thought that the conversation expressed a lot about what I think about the game and game design in general. I'm sorry that this is not in a more easily readable form, but I don't have the time or the inclination to polish it up. Todd: So Icarus still as good as you said? Scott: All of Sakurai's games are good Or at least well-made Or complete I don't think I'd recommend it at this point Todd: gotcha. Scott: Flying and shooting is a lot of fun. The bosses are quite good. Walking around is aight. It's not just that the controls are a little wonky, but it's just a bit slower and doesn't feel as nice. Lots of the good and bad rules of Smash Bros apply Like tapping to start running Which is something that annoys me in Smash Bros and sometimes annoys me in KI There are a tremendous number of weapons, but I don't feel inspired to "breed" them Effectively there are maybe 64 different...

I love Dominion , Donald Vaccarino's fantastic game from last year and have been playing almost constantly since I got it. The expansion ( Intrigue ) is out in Europe but not in the states; my pre-order hasn't arrived, but I've been able to play 5 cards from the new set for free on BrettspielWelt . (Look for games that are set "random intrigue".) Here are the cards that are included and my pithy insights into each of them: Card: Baron Type: Action Cost: 4 Text: +1 Buy. You may discard an estate card. If you do, +4 Coin. Otherwise, gain an estate card. Nice new use of estates and overall a quality card. If you have an estate in your hand, he thins your deck and gives you a sizable purchase bonus. If you don't, he gives you an estate. Perpetual motion money machine! Card: Nobles Type: Action - Victory Cost: 6 Text: 2VP; Choose 1: +3 Cards; or +2 Actions There used to be no decision when it came to what to buy with 6 money, and now they're still isn't. Yo...

After wrapping up core development a few months ago, Civilization Revolution (CivRev) is finally being released in the US this week on the Xbox 360, PS3, and Nintendo DS. I have been thrilled by the response to the demo on various message boards; CivRev is quite a different game than most console experiences and it was never completely clear to us how the public would respond. Thankfully, most have understood what we've tried to with the series and embrace it as its own thing rather than Civilization 5. I've been particularly proud of the responses of players who have never played a strategy game like this before. The sort of wide-eyed "there can be games like this?!" response makes me feel like we helped expand what people think of games by a little bit. Developing CivRev was quite a challenge for me because it was the first time that I was a lead in charge of other developers, the first time I developed a console title, and the first time we used Scaleform's GFX...

This post includes complete, fun-negating spoilers. Do not read if you haven't seen Wall-E yet! The first two thirds of Wall-E (until the Captain starts talking) is amazingly great. Pixar's greatest work, including the Incredibles. They have effectively a silent movie with a robot on a destroyed, garbage-filled Earth that is compassionate, warm, and endearing. Before Wall-E, Lucas owned robots. Wall-E makes R2 look like a 8-bit hack. His bazillion-points-of-articulation eyes, insanely clever physical design, and his collection, organization, and adoration of unique human garbage makes him brilliant. Pixar excels here because I believe robot humor is all about making you think the robot is a human, then doing something unexpected to remind you it's not. Pixar's creativity shines brightly through constant surprises. The first 2/3rds played out beautifully because they relied on the roots of Chaplin movies; an instantly beloved protagonist and inventive physical comedy. My...

Picross DS was just released in the US, and if you like puzzles like Sudoku it's well worth your inspection. I've been playing the UK version (thinking that it would never come out in the States) and there are tons of puzzles and a surprisingly good online competitive mode. Picross (officially known as nonograms ) have been around a while; it's frequently part of Games Magazine. Here's a free flash version to try out!

It has taken me three attempts at playing Resident Evil 4 (twice on the Gamecube and now on the Wii) before I finally realized that everyone was right and I was wrong . Resident Evil 4 is a fantastic game. I love the aiming the gun with the remote. While Nintendo did a good job of translating Twilight Princess from a GameCube game into a Wii game, Resident Evil 4 gun battles feel like the game was designed from the ground up to be played with the remote. It's easy to switch between targets quickly and "juggle" a group of oncoming cultists/zombie/crazies through quick kneecap shots. Capcom plays the tension of "too many zombies, not enough ammo" like a violin. Other aspects of the game lack the elegance of the aiming; the inventory screen is obtuse and frustrating by using some rather obscure buttons (the + and the 'c' button). It certainly doesn't ruin the game, but it's a missed opportunity to not use the remote to drag and drop in the inventory...