Things to do while idling on the tarmac

There probably was a pilot or two and a very friendly sounding controller at Van Nuys who saw me sitting around in a Baron 58 at LAX and abroad today on VATSIM.  What I was doing was testing the module version of Squawkbox 4, meaning the version you launch from inside of Flight Sim.  The good news is that me sitting there on the network meant that it worked.  It's a real milestone in the project for me, and while there is plenty of work to do moving forward, we are reaching a point where we can get beta testers running it, and that brings us closer to release.

I know Joel and I both take the development of Squawkbox very seriously.  It's quality is not representative of a company or a group or anything like that, but us personally, and I am doing everything I can to live up to the high standard he's set. 

Joel and I will be getting together online in the near future to talk about the plans as we continue forward towards release.

Recently, Phil Taylor has been posting about some great job opportunities at ACES.  If any of you are programmers, I'd take a look at it.  When you meet these guys in person, you really understand their passion for creating the sim we love.  If you head over to http://www.microsoft.com/careers and do a search with the term "Flight Sim" in double quotes as the keyword, you should find all of the related jobs.

If you want to go start your own company, GamesIndustry.biz put up a very interesting piece on why it's so awesome to have a game studio in Canada.  I guess they just give you money or something.