Journal

Friday, February 07, 2003
Right. We're not yet working, but we're nearly there: the FAQ submission thing is down, there's various new passwords and so on to learn, and I got an e-mail this morning from Webmistress Julia Bannon, letting me know that on Sunday this blog will be two years old, and would I write something commemorative. I suppose I will. But two years... It seems only yesterday that I was trying to write short essays about what goes on backstage in making a book... and then the book went on to win awards and bestsell and be published all over the world, and I discovered the joys of having some way to simply tell people what's going on directly.

Two years isn't very long in real time, but in Internet Years, this probably makes this blog the equivalent of one of those hunchbacked houses so old that the window glass has run like liquid and swollen on the lower half. (Jon Singer says this is not true and does not happen and it's just that when they put the glass into the window originally they put it with the heavy side at the bottom.)

And a correspondent who may wish to remain anonymous let me know that:

the inimitable Bran Ferrin--who was head of the Research and Development department, actually--left Disney a couple years ago to start his own company. Apparently, he's now building ergonomic war rooms, of the sort that allows the military to play war games and have their cappuccino, too. I'm sure
it's a very hot commodity right now.

Disney subsequently, in the maniacal genius of their ongoing self-destruction, went about systematically dismantling one of the most unique R&D teams in the country, and anyone left apparently reports directly to the current president of Imagineering, Don Goodman
.