I’m baaack!

12 years since I logged in, and the blog is still up, and I can still log in. Nice! I will be too brief about my status update. There’s a LOT in this, and the past 12 years.

Most recently, I worked at Wizards of the Coast as a Director of Software Engineering, managing the managers of software engineering teams that built and supported dozens of applications, APIs and services in support of tabletop Magic the Gathering play.

I returned from a wonderful head-clearing vacation on November 13 and handed in my resignation. The three very good reasons for this were 1) I don’t actually need to work anymore, and 2) my mom and my brother are both in poor health and need my support back east and 3) the bad situation at Wizards is just going to get worse.

Before I could tell everyone my news, that last point was demonstrated with the latest round of layoffs, just before the holiday break.

So what *am* I going to do now?

First, I’ll move back east, and arrange things for mom and brother. I expect that’ll keep me busy through June.

But I also have fun things I’m preparing to work on, do and create, without worrying about money or a job or bosses. Emphasis on fun! More about that as I prioritize and proceed. Picking this blog up again is, in fact, one of those things. This blog will continue its focus on video games, certainly.

But I also want to focus, even more, on tabletop gaming. Particularly but not only role-playing games, like D&D. So, I’ll be adding a new blog about that community and its games and its content and its business and its importance. There’s good connection and sometimes overlap between the video games and tabletop (are you playing Baldur’s Gate 3 yet?!?), but for the sake of keeping context and focus in the content organized and distinct, I think it will make sense to move forward with both, occasionally linking them with cross-references. We shall see.