A Hemiannual Retrospective.

This week marks the six-month anniversary of being told I had the job, by the way. Just like that - dropped into the middle of a long conversation about travel. "Oh, you've got the job, by the way". I believe I may at that point have been stunned and said something along the lines of "Oh. Good." as opposed to the sensible thing to say, which would have been "thank you" or somesuch.

Yessir, I am smoooooth. It's been an interesting six months. I've learned a lot! For instance, my leetspeek has improved immeasurably, as has my lolspeak. im in ur sloopz, grafeeteeing ur OBBz. I've also learned how to insult someone in Dutch, which will come in handy should anyone from the Netherlands ever annoy me. So far it hasn't happened, but there must be at least one annoying Dutch person, and when I meet them, I will be ready. I've also learned how to find out what insults mean in languages I don't speak (which, the world being as wide and varied as it is, are a lot of languages). This is thanks to the myriad complaints sent in which read along the lines of "he said THIS, which means [big fat meaniehead] in [obscure language]". Obviously, we'll want to check these before taking action, since it might actually mean something along the lines of "I admire your shiny magenta hat, and would like to know where you acquired such a dashing sartorial item!" Which is not really something I'd want to suspend someone for.

Along those lines, I derive great pleasure from receiving a chatlog attached to a complaint in which someone who has just said something particularly foul in a language that isn't English also says "it's okay, I won't get banned, OMs don't speak [language], neener neener." This is funny because one of the advantages of having coworkers located all over the world is that odds are pretty good that someone is going to speak a language that isn't English. I do, for one. (No, I'm not going to mention which languages I know. Just don't cuss people out in any language, and we'll remain friends. :-D )

In a non-cursing line, I've also had conversations with pirates from all over, who also speak languages from all over, as you'd expect. It's fascinating. I like words quite a lot, and learning new ones is always fun - so if you speak a language that isn't English, I'd love it if you dropped me a line in comments here and let me know how to say "Hello!" and "Thank you!" in it. I always figure those are the two most important things, since most everything else can be accomplished roughly through mime. I suppose those can, as well, but I do like to be polite. *bows gratefully*

I've also learned about people. I have had previous employment in which I interacted with people, sometimes via text, but never entirely via text, and I have to say I quite like it. I find people overall are very good about making themselves clear - rare is the petition where I need to scratch my head and squint to work out what someone is saying! That may just be a result of the overall intelligence and awesomeness of Pirates Who Puzzle, though. Not that I'm biased or anything. You guys are seriously cool, though. I remember one pirate who petitioned and sent me tells to let me know that someone else had set all of her stall prices incorrectly and was essentially giving things away for free - he'd tied up the queue as much as possible and was going to give her back everything he could, but he was worried. He'd never met this pirate. He could have just taken advantage of the good deals and made a killing, but instead he looked after her. I really think that 99% of you would do the same thing.

I guess that's why I'm proud to do what I do. Yes, there's the awesome office. Yes, my colleagues are brilliant. Yes, the game itself is responsible for huge quantities of my fun. But mostly it's because through the game, I have ammunition whenever I meet a cynic who is convinced the world is going downhill fast. I can say "actually, I work for this online game, and the people who play it care about each other and look out for each other. They're smart, funny, and they make piratey objects out of tinfoil and clay at the drop of a hat. My colleagues are the type of people who believe that inciting people to make piratey objects out of tinfoil and clay is a valid job choice. Things are okay. Check out this website."

It's been a good six months. Thanks, mates.