That's right - today is Year 5 of employment here at GameSpy. Or at least the business entity that DBA's as "GameSpy Industries". Originally (back in 1999) it was "Critical Mass", but then Mark Surfas (founder and then owner) sold the name to some Canadian company. Then in last March we merged with IGN & became IGN/GameSpy. Then a few months later they truncated GameSpy & we were left with "IGN" . But I'm still at the same Irvine company with the same great people & we still call the Irvine office "GameSpy".

What a ride it's been. I wonder if I'll get something cheesy? a watch? desk set? clock? pen set? light-saber? amazon.com gift certificate? or maybe, just *maybe I'll finally get a t-shirt for a project that I worked on??? Naaa.. I've got a better chance of convincing HR to allow me to cash out 100 of my ~200 unused vacation hours.

*It's a long running "joke" that while I have worked on a number of client software projects at GameSpy, I have never recieved a "project t-shirt". In an industry that is based on a twisted economy of product branded t-shirts, one could argue that I have been severly undercompensated in this regard. ;-)