So, death comes to us all eventually – companies are not excluded from that. Creek Electric, Inc. in now in the Death Spiral race now. The goal is to do anything possible to break that – releasing people from duties doesn’t actually prevent the Death Spiral, it’s what enables it to continue. You reduce expendatures and release people. But by releasing people, you remove the ability to do certain jobs and continue to bid as broad of a spectrum of jobs, which reduces your playing field. They are dead center of it now – it would take ONE big job to fix the problem, and they could pull out. However, I don’t see the call coming anytime soon.
I’ve been reduced to 3 days a week, and of course that’s pretty much unlivable. I’m not sure what I’m going to do at the moment. I’ve got options:
1) Get a haircut, and get a real job. (Just kidding on the haircut part) There’s a couple of openings for some Information Security people at two of the aircraft plants at the moment – Boeing and Raytheon. I’m seriously considering putting in an application at Boeing for the InfoSec position. Granted, that induces a new set of headaches, but, would be a lot of fun IMHO (I like InfoSec stuff – I just don’t like the PEOPLE involved with it most of the time. And it pays decently at most places, and there’s not a lot of people in Wichita that focus on that position.) There’s also a Software Development Manager position at WeatherData, inc. I’ve been looking at too. I’m not sure if I’m really qualified for an InfoSec position at Boeing, though.
2) Screw it all, and concentrate on nothing but the Game Company. Heabo keeps somewhat proding me in this direction. I dunno… that’s risky, IMHO. Though I do feel a little better about the idea because I just got the contract from eGames, Inc. for distribution of Tile Panic! – it will be on shelves in Sept. unless something goes wrong. Flip Panic! is going to be hitting Beta today. However, I might get some better results from it than TP! for a couple of reasons (this game is easy as hell to learn – but, the rules change as you get deeper and deeper into the game, making stuff VERY interesting and challenging. It’s also my most ‘professional’ looking title to date.) Trajectory Zone now has 3 publishers waiting for a demo. I’ve also got this NASCAR educational game contract (~$20k) that I’m waiting on to show up sometime soon.
In other words, I’m on the edge with the game company. I’ve got products and stuff, and more and more contacts. I just worry – will that be enough? I mean, $20k is a good hunk o’ change. The first puzzle game will net around $5k for the lifetime of the product inside of a collection (2 years is the life expectancy) It would take A LOT of puzzle games to make up $42k / year salary. But… it seems to doable now. Just out of reach, but I can bloody well see it!
So here I stand at the cross-roads. And the minute I wrote that, a poem poped in my head (Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”) Hmmmm… that makes me think even harder about going with the game company idea. But I’m gonna require some serious strategizing about getting the company working.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.