User:Gaile Gray/Journal

2 July 2008

Austin Adventures

I headed down to Austin, Texas, last week to visit with the fine folks on our North American Support Team. Hey! Did you know we really have three teams that offer support for Guild Wars players?

First, there’s Customer Support (aka the GM Team) -- the kindly individuals who are pretty much the first level of review for everything from “Why can’t I complete that mission” to “How do I vote for myself in the “Xunlai Top Model” competition,” to “I gave my stuff to my brother and he sold it! Please, Sir, may I have some more?”

Secondly, along comes Technical Support -- the folks who get you out of trouble when your video card starts smoking, when you notice latency, or when your system crashes every time you dance in your undies. (Ok, ok, that’s an untested rumor of a internal RAM issue -- a rumour that I shamelessly just started -- and I meant your character dancing, not you! Sheesh! ;) )

And finally, there’s Account Support -- the people who work with Guild Wars and with the PlayNC system and help figure out pesky account access issues, who see in real time why "ABC123" isn’t a good password, or why folks really should take better security measures that having a secret question that asks, “How do you spell ‘cat’?” (And yes, we’ve seen both!)

When the game credits roll for Guild Wars, and you see all those names, you know why: It's a great team. Or a great three teams!

Wednesday morning, fully into the Texas thing, I moseyed into the office and was taken on a tour by Dylan, the GM lead. We sashayed over to their future digs, do-si-do’d by the other teams (met Trollis and Renee, the Tech Team and Billing Team leads), and promenaded back in time to go out to a nice area of Austin called The Arboretum for that oh-so-traditional Texas lunch: Teriyaki and Sushi. (Yeah, well, it was tasty!) I spent the afternoon with lots of other folks – a meeting here, a how-do-you-do there. I had a chance to say "Hi" to Christopher Chung, who was once my boss at ArenaNet and is now president of NCsoft North America. The team was really great at showing me how things work in their respective areas, and before you know it, it was time for dinner.

We headed to this place near the UT, that is, the University of Texas. Think great academics, awesome football, big drums, and hook-‘em horns. The restaurant is called Stubb’s and you can tell from the outside, it's just going to be great inside. Yep, it was marvelous! I'm fairly sure I totally embarrassed the rest of our group of 10 or 12 people by acting like a gawking tourist! I was taking pictures of the bar, the adobe brick walls, the painting of the longhorn steer, the patio, the floorboards and, yes -- a new high (or low?) in Gaile’s Touristy Geek Action -- the ladies room. What can I say? It was adorable, with wooden barn doors and cast-iron hardware for the stalls! Anyway, the whole place had this lovely historic feel to it -- warm, homey, friendly -- the sort of place you hope to find in Texas, but which you think may have been replaced by highrises and mini-marts, and then are so proud to learn that, blessedly, they're still around!

We dined on Texas Barbeque. What did you think they’d serve at a place called Stubbs? Thai? :) I risked uncharted territory when I ordered fried okra. (Okra is the only vegetable that my veggie-loving mother didn’t make me eat, because she herself didn’t like it so she kindly avoided foisting it on the family.) When I explained my hesitation to order it, my hosts said that Mom had undoubtedly suffered steamed okra (a look of distaste went around the room) and steamed okra, according to the experts, is "nothing more than a mass of slime," where fried okra was great! And yep, it was pretty darn tasty, and the smoked turkey and brisket were to die for! As we finished up the feast, I overheard someone saying "Bats." Or "Bats over Austin." Or maybe it was "Bridge-playing bats?" Something like that, anyway. I was all (sly bat reference, here) ears and perked up to say "Bats? You mean the flying ones? Don't tell me you guys seriously have bats here?!" And they proudly assure me that yes, Austin is quite batty about bats. But… well… that’s another story for another day.

8 July 2008

Bonding with Bats

I don’t know quite why, but I adore bats, always have. (Probably an adjunct of my love of cute rodents, like Guilda and Gwen? Part of my near-obsessive fondness for all things Halloween?) Anyway, when the group at dinner mentioned something about bats, I reacted with a whoop: “Oh, I love bats!” And before you know it, Will, Dylan, Bryon, Jennifer, Casey, and I are heading to the Congress Avenue Bridge to see the nightly summertime bat flight.

Bats took roost – literally – when the Congress Avenue Bridge was rebuilt back in the 80’s. It seems that the engineers designed the underside with a pattern of narrow but deep grooves in the concrete, and those grooves proved tremendously attractive to bats, being just the right size to allow them to snug up inside while protecting themselves from predators. The project wasn’t designed to house bats, of course, but what a happy outcome! Good, safe housing for these valuable mammals – about 1.2 million a year – and an excellent dividend to the citizens of Austin and environs, when the little guys consume about 30,000 pounds of insects a night!

We pondered whether to stay above, on the bridge, to go to the small park beneath it, hosted by the Austin daily newspaper the Austin America-Statesman (which seems particularly civic minded). Dylan and I went down the stairs to the park and read all the bronze plaques that tell about the bats. (I noted info about building a bat house. I’m in! Oh and there is a fine-sounding Bat Conservation International Organization, if you’re interested.)

Anyway, the bat flight rocked! As the sun settled into the western sky in a pretty splendid orange-and-golden sunset, those of us standing on the bridge felt the air rustle, and we started to hear subtle murmurings from the special residents. No, not the horror movie stereotype “EEEK EEEK EEEEEK OMG the bat is in my hair I’m gonna diiiiiee!” types of squawks. (Movies get it SO wrong!) The real sound is much more subtle, even in large numbers, soft and sort of Disney-like, really quite adorable. We could hear movement, sort of a soft shuffling, and then, a few scout bats flew out, gave the high sign with their little thumbs up (yes, I saw that!) and soon columns of bats swirled out from under the bridge, in lines of hundreds at a time. They wheeled and turned as a group, heading into the east in a live form that emulated the living smoke in Mary Poppins. (Come on, follow along with me now. :) )

As you watched one column rise, another would flow out from under the bridge, circle in a swirl for a turn or two, decide on a line leader, and head off to the east. Sure, a few renegades headed west, but they were quickly shamed by the shocked looks of the others, and they sort of shifted back into the column and tried to pretend they hadn’t lost their “unerring sense of direction.”

After about 30 minutes, the flight was over, the bats all out on patrol for a mosquito, fly, locust, or other tasty insectoid consumable that would make up just a small part of their single meal of the day. (Mother bats can eat their body weight in a single night.) They would return before dawn, but we had other places to go, so the six of us headed to a charming Irish Pub and kicked back in the balmy Austin night air, talking shop, talking Austin, my hosts showing me a great time I’ll always remember.

15 July

Sleep in the Heart of Texas

Thursday offered a chance for more time with various team members, all of whom were so kind in showing me how things go in their area of specialization, how “the rubber meets the road.” I listened to some ideas about ways we could make things even better on both a small scale and across the board. We agreed to come up with suggestions for tools for the support team that will make their jobs easier and will speed up and improve our ability to help players.

Lunchtime came when I was visiting with the Account Support team. Chris and Renee, Manager and Lead, took me to *be still my pounding heart* Chuy’s Restaurant, where we sat outside on the charming patio and talked about all sorts of things. They had questions; I had questions. We all had ideas. It was a great discussion! But behind the discussion was the Chuy’s Special -- chicken enchiladas like I’ve never had them, in a blue corn tortilla with… I don’t know what, but it’s heavenly. I discretely nibbled my lunch entrée, secretly plotting my dinner. "If I save half of this," I thought, "I shall have Food of the (TexMex) Gods for dinner, too!" I lovingly packaged half the entree and deposited the goods in the NCsoft refrigerator, marking the carton boldly with my name in black, barely resisting a "Touch this and die!" addendum. :)

I spent time with Trollis and Leslie and Lance -- great folks all -- and soon it was time to pack up the laptop and head to the airport for my flight home. Getting into the rented mini-van (I’d never driven a mini-van before in my life – travel does bring one new experiences!) I set my GPS for Bergstrom International and hit "Let’s go!" Except... "She Who Will Not Be Ignored" (the female-voiced GPS bot) told me to head four miles north for an airport that was south of me! I confess, I argued. Out loud. "This doesn’t make sense, the airport is that-a-way" I said, pointing over my shoulder. I guiltily realized (1) the GPS didn’t give a diddly darn what I thought about the instructions, and (2) it would be mighty embarrassing if someone from the company looked out the window and saw me arguing with the mechanical direction-finder in my lap. I slunk out of the parking lot. Yet I rebelled, turned into a dirt road, swung across the highway, and headed south. I assure you at least two wheels were firmly on the road at all times. :D It was easy sailing from there, and I made the flight with plenty of time to spare.

Would that it had been so easy with my connecting flight out of Dallas/Ft. Worth.

Between not having a gate at which to dock (20 minutes), a ramp that wouldn’t connect with the plane door (15 minutes), the flight attendant's incorrect gate information (10 minutes), and a delayed tram system (12 minutes)... Well, even a non-mathematician like myself can see that with 35 minutes for the connection, it’s small wonder the flight took off without me.

The funniest thing -- now that I’m home -- is the fact that they sent me out front to wait for the hotel van and then snuck away. Well, that's how it felt, anyway. ;) After waiting 45 fruitless minutes for the van to come (it was expected in 15), I gave up and headed to the counter to ask for another option. But by that time, every bloomin’ one of a dozen employees had disappeared! A bit on the cranky side by this point, I seriously contemplated whether some of them would REappear if I leapt over the counter and started tapping on one of their computers. "Hey, everybody, First Class upgrades for all!"

Reason prevailed. I decided I did not desire a sit-down with the friendly TVA agents. Instead, I wandered the airport for another 45 minutes before finding the last living employee for that particular airline. A kind baggage handler called the hotel for me, and I was shuttled over and checked into my room an hour after I should have landed, 1600 miles away.

The worst part of the whole drama? At midnight, knowing that 7 hours with no refrigeration in 100 degree heat is a formal Invitation to Ptomaine, I sadly tossed my Chuy’s carton away and, Scarlett O’Hara fashion, shook my fist at the sky as I proclaimed, "As God is my witness, I will never toss Chuy’s again!"

Denouement: Blessedly, there was zero drama the next day and I made it home just fine. I’ve yet to mail my “letter of appreciation” to the airline, but that’s gonna be a doozie!