Or, How to Quit Your Job, Launch 2 Websites and have a Baby in 10 Months

That's right, we're bad, we're bad -- site #2 for Team Enemy Kite is now in beta-bug-busting mode: 2.5 months start to finish. That's 2 custom built, Web 2.Ohhish, community-focused, social-wiki style sites within 10 months of leaving CNET. And whatsmore, I truly think this is the BEST site from concept-to-design-to-code that I have worked on todate. And that's saying alot, cause I worked with some pretty radical dudes on MP3.com and TV.com from 2004-2006. I guess it just gets better with each site ya'launch.

*Takes 2 To Tango*

Huge, huge, huge respect goes out to Dave Snider, the wonderkid css-designer-manager of this Enemy Kite duo. I cannot ever imagine having to build a site with another designer/web monkey (neigh, I out-and-out refuse to) -- you just don't get that type of intelligence, determination and skill from normal people. Normal Dave is not. Dave (aka Captain Cascader) designed and developed front-side code for this site in less than 3 months. Dave didn't just stay late at the office, he lived there -- often for 4 or 5 nights in a row -- taking homeless showers in the shared hall-bathroom's sink, often brushing his teeth, occasionaly cleaning his desk of trash. The man is a monster for getting the job done.

Back in 2000 when I worked at Sapient I rember the designers plastering the walls of the office with printed design mockups -- the whole flow. At MP3.com and TV.com Stephen Blake made awesome mocks and saved them to a central web page for us Coders to create. On Boompa.com Dave created a similar web mockup repository. Comicvine... 3 mocks for the entire site, which we didnt even use. Dave and I worked so fast and the overall design concept kept changing daily to the point where Dave would design in Photoshop and instantly develop the CSS moments later.

Also, how many designer/css/product manager types do you know who use CVS and MySQL from the command line? No GUIs for this guy. Thanks Dave for getting me to build this site.

*My Better Half*

My wife, Alyx, had a baby on Sept 4, 2006. She had already put up with my crazed schedule on the Boompa.com launch while she was preggers -- throwing up, back aches, sitting alone at night while I was at the office -- and now I asked her just 2 weeks after giving birth to let me go back to that 18 hour a day schedule for comicvine.com. Particularly this last 4 weeks have been brutal -- she works from home 3 days, goes into gametrailers.com on 2 days -- while I worked all night and came home at day-break to take Ingrid off her hands. Sleep deprivation -- both of us. Thanks Babe for believing in this project.

*Meatloaf, Regina Spektor and Energy Drinks*

Per usual I take this time to give a shout out to Meatloaf who's ballads of love and loss have always driven me on site launches. But what a treat that for this site launch the Meat had produced Bat Out Of Hell III for Dave and my listening delight. What a delicious feeling it is to rock out to Meatloaf at 4a.m. with energy drink cafenated blood courseing through our veins. And of course Regina Spektor had a new album too, and I love her voice.

Drink of choice: Rock Star Cola! What a great taste AND non-ending ceiling-staring narcotic-buzz it gives you just as you finally get into bed at 7 am after having drank a 40 of it 10 hours earlier. Also liked Jones energy drink for its cheap price and acceptable taste. Monster Energy drink though expensive and nasty had the most usefull-manageable speed high of them all. This site was built using copious amounts of energy drink; yummy in the tummy.

So Long To Tom The Mouse

In out final week we had a tiny fluffy baby mouse that would skitter about the office in the middle of the night. Dave admitted he was terrorfied that Tom would jump into his mouth when he slept in his sleeping bag on the floor. Sooo Operation Mouse Trap began and ended in less than an hour. I took a small tuperware container and propped it up with a pringle potato chip -- within the hour -- "plop" the tuperware fell over and holy-shit my trap actually worked! The mouse and chip where trapped under the tupperware. Well I played with the mouse for a couple hours and then let him out in the bushes where he prolly ran into our neighbors building.