posted 08-04-99 07:52 AM ET        

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"...Institute for QA Guys, Jeff was particularly astute in my course titled 'Corporate Liability: Turning the Tables on the Consumer.' In fact, I recently heard he just published a smashingly smart piece on the Net. Makes me proud."

"Once, when he was young, I told Jeffrey that I purposely made him eat bad tasting food and bought him tight-fitting underpants. He asked, 'Why, mommy, because it builds character?' 'No,' I said, 'because now you'll have something to bitch about with your friends at school. And that's good mental health.' I don't think he ever forgot that."

"When we hired Jeff, we said flat out: 'Make our problems with the public go away.' We thought he'd put in 70+ hours/week making the programs better, or something mundane like that. No. Not Jeff. In one bold whirlwind of an article he has proven that we not only don't have problems, but those problems have been the solution the whole time! Now he works from home (besides, he doesn't have a car) and gets more done than any of our other QA guys ever did simply by letting the QA department rot. The QA office is a ghost town! We plan as a next step to cut costs even further by axing the Beta tests. We love it! And the on-line community has never posted so much. Genius!"

"Now, from the Wizards of Hunt Valley, comes Jeff's 15 cassette course, 'The Bugger the Better: A Guide to Satisfying Bowel Movements.' Order today and receive, absolutely free, the in-house Firaxis Bug Kit. Simply take a bugless game, drag its icon to the Firaxis Bug Kit CD, and you'll soon be bitching about the bugs for days on end! Also included on the CD: 'Web Site Degrader v1.0,' guaranteed to hack your favorite gaming web sites and delete abosolutely anything worth knowing! Best of all, representatives from the company will be locked out of the site entirely, virtually guranteeing you the same whining opportunities you now enjoy on all Firaxis web sites! Imagine: Games from solid companies like Bullfrog now brought shamelessly down to a Firaxis level! Oh, gaming never had it so good!"

posted 08-04-99 08:03 AM ET            

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That's better.

This is the Yin I grew to like, a long time ago.

May the chiggers be with you

posted 08-04-99 08:22 AM ET            

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Chagarra,

Ooops. Please disregard my invitation to flame me some more in the other thread.

posted 08-04-99 08:38 AM ET            

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Everyone should really read RC's thread here:

http://www.an.i-dentity.com/ubb/Forum6/HTML/000210.html

it's very funny.

posted 08-04-99 08:41 AM ET            

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This is the first part if you want to get the history:

http://www.an.i-dentity.com/ubb/Forum6/HTML/000074.html

It's called The FIRAXIANS and it's a satirical look inside Firaxis.

posted 08-04-99 08:46 AM ET            

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MikeH II,

Thanks for the link. RC has a gift, I have to admit. Some brilliantly crafted one-liners. My material seems so weak now! BTW, I read your post in the other thread about QA/PR. Good stuff. I think, though, you and Brother Greg are far better voices of reason than I am with my 'history' here. If they should read anybody's posts, it should be yours and some others.

posted 08-04-99 03:50 PM ET            

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Yin, yin, yin... I see that time working with the public has paid off. Seriously, a very funny piece. Glad to see that that slavery to the Civ3 list hasn't kept you from being able to dig into a subject from time to time.

-Darkstar

posted 08-06-99 01:36 PM ET         

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Thanks for lightening my mood, Yin!

LOL

- icosahedron