Happy news! I was invited to be a panelist at the South by Southwest Interactive conference next month, as part of their ScreenBurn track. I’m on a panel called “Funologists live and in person: Guerilla Game Research.” I’ll share my experience starting some low-budget user research cycles for Second Life,…

The Thursday night Linden Lab whisky tasting has degraded in the traditional way. I’m surrounded by tipy nerds, discussing the glories of JQuery. One of my co-workers is wearing a shirt that reads “The Age of Consent Tour 1997″. Nerdcore rap blares from the QA office. Life is good.

Oh yes. The IRC Rap Battles continue at Linden Lab, creators of Second Life. Bridie Linden is in town, and we decided to bitchslap some suckah MCs… Bridie Linden: I got so much chips I swear they call me Hewlett Packard I got so much chips you can have a…

With the recent news of Yahoo’s potential acquisition by vile Microsoft and its prior layoff of 1000 hardworking geeks, there was a bit of an air of piracy in the office last week. Linden Lab is going into another round of recruitment, focusing on web developers, QA folk, and other…

In my new role as a user experience goon at Second Life, I’m often called upon to participate in rap battles with other employees. Because we’re all busy, rap battles tend to be text-only and asynchronous, conducted over IRC, twitter, or instant messenger. Past themes have included: My prowess as…

Quality Assurance Internet startup (new job): A team of dedicated professionals Academic library (old job): The screams of our users