Ha ha ha. What a great letter! Great news on receiving the Terrible Grant — VSCA deserves it. Here’s the announcement proper:

What fun.

Brad, how many times did you click to continue before realizing it wasn’t an iPad or eReader or Kindle?

And this is excellent Robotic News indeed.

Whoa! You have a legendary Terrible Grant? With Terrible Power comes Terrrible Responsibility! I don’t know if I’d want to be in your shoes right now!

Wait! Of COURSE I do! Mwahahaha!

-clash

I want to play a game with Clash sometime Brad. Make it happen please.

Now that he’s installed A Terrible Grant, let’s see what he’s hiding in this folder called “Totally Top Secret” …

I’m stuck in Toronto until the 23rd but I did install the CS5 package on Friday night before I left. I immediately found some cool things to do in InDesign that I don’t *think* I could do before, so that will lead to some niftiness in future for sure. There are also a couple of cool new quirks in Illustrator that will make some difference. The big thing though, that almost made me change my flight out for a week, was the mixing brushes in Photoshop. It’s making me re-think the interiors for Soft Horizon so that I can play with paint without getting paint all over me. :D

I have cats, you see, so I can’t have real paint.

Cats are the devil’s creatures, which is why I love them. Their combination of studied insolence, injured innocence, high-handed assumption of superiority, paranoia, gnat-like attention spans, and crafty intelligence.make them perfect simulation substitutes for players. If I can get my cats to like something, I will know the RPG world is my oyster. Their maddening indifference to anything I write keeps me humble in the meantime.

-clash

@ Byron – Next time I am in BC, I’ll be sure to stop in. Maybe I could combine it with a visit to Levi and Laura. Unfortunately the combination of geography – as a SF guy, thousands of kilometers is merely long range, but on a planetary surface, it’s a long way – and my contempt for airport security and airlines makes such a visit unlikely. I will never fly again unless it is in a private plane. Maybe the VSCA corporate jet could be pleasingly mis-appropriated…

-clash

If VSCA has a corporate jet why have I been cargo-lugged between Asia and North America and then all over Asia while Tim… I knew he lived tucked away in the burbs for a reason!… while Tim jet sets about in the lap of luxury. And his first Spirit of the Century character was a pilot and that… inadvertently let to Diaspora…

Damn you Tim! I knew you weren’t to be trusted!

@Clash – well, it’s not my table to offer, but I’m sure you’d be welcomed with open arms and furry catclaws if you ever made it to BC.

I’ve only been on the VSCA corporate jet once, but it was an experience never to be forgotten – if I could only remember it… or why I woke up in Tijuana in an ice filled bathtub… or who that young lady who wore the pillbox hat and nothing much else was… I do remember a minibar filled with 30 year old single malts!

Well, now that you guys have Terrible Power you all can strap a corporate jet to each foot and the devil take the hindmost!

BTW, thanks for the kind invitation which is hereby reciprocated, if you should ever find yourselves in Boston! :D

-clash