John Ratcliff's Weblog

It's 85 degrees outside and it's March. In fact, it's been that way all weekend. Last weekend it was snowing. Lord help us what it's going to be like in June when it is *supposed* to be 85 degrees! I think I'm not sick any more. This weekend I did a bunch of stuff with the DeMolay chapter on Saturday, did yard work on Sunday, and Sunday afternoon went boating and read. I just finished the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Walter Isaacson . It was very satisfying and only reinforced my high opinion of our most fatherly of founding fathers. I have come to the conclusion that I need to slow down. I need to stop trying to do so many things. This all stems from my giving a talk at GDC where I geared myself up into a frenzy of preparation. Today I received the feedback from my talk. My score was around a 4 out of a possible 5 rating. The comments were generally positive with lots of complaints that I talked too fast, talked from a script, and my videos didn...

Since I wasted a post the other day bitching about how I was sick of being sick, I now feel compelled to make a post that states that I am feeling a little better today. Feeling a little bit better is a lot better than feeling a lot worse, so I will take it. Whether this leads to a full recovery or just a minor rise and dip in the cycle I have been locked on remains to be seen. All I know is that it is 75 degrees and sunny outside today, I have the top down on my car and, dammit, I want to feel great! I just wrote up a new career bio that I sent to some outfit running a conference. I haven't written a new professional bio in a while and this one, while lengthy, does touch on a bit of everything I have done, so I will share it here with my blog. ------------------------------ John W. Ratcliff is a long time game industry veteran. He began programming game based educational software for Milliken Publishing Company in 1982. At Milliken John developed ten separate educational pr...

I have been in a continual state of semi-sickness for about a month and a half now. I'm starting to get really tired of it. Traditionally I feel generally healthy and I am not usually prone to this kind of thing. For the past six weeks I have experienced a wide array of problems with my throat, tonsils, and nasal passages. At one point I had raw open sores inside my mouth and directly on my tonsils, preventing me from speaking or eating without a great deal of pain. I have been to the doctor twice, first he prescribed antibiotics, which did nothing, so he then prescribed a stronger round of antibiotics which, again, did nothing. My Doctor friend told me that it was quite likely viral since it didn't respond to drug treatment. Now, over this weekend, I developed extremely strong cold/flu symptoms. I was unable to breath through my nose, sneezed so often I thought I was going to lose my head, and felt generally miserable. I spent the entire day Saturday laying in bed; this too i...

I'm back from GDC and I figured I better make a post or I will just forget everything that happened. Not that a whole lot happened anyway, but I still want a record of the event. Let's see..how far back do I go? Last Sunday Troy DeMolay chapter held our regular meeting; and we certainly had a lot of business to discuss. We set out our upcoming plans which included a pancake breakfast fundraiser, a service project with the Shriner's children hospital, a talent competition as a fundraising opportunity, an upcoming movie night, our day of devotion at St. Cletus church, our fun day at the City Museum, our special ritual practice day at Wentzville Lodge, the Shrine Circus, a Rainbow Girls Dance, and conferring the entire initiatory and DeMolay degrees on our own. Wow, that's a lot of stuff! I spent many hours working on the newsletter, but I cannot provide a link here until I remove all of the personal information from the document. On Monday I flew to San Francisco. I was o...

Yikes! I just realized that a draft copy of a post had 'leaked out' onto my blog. I am writing up a recap about my trip last week to GDC , which includes a visit to a Freemason Lodge, a dinner at a Moroccan restaurant with my friends, some other trivia, and my thoughts on reading Benjamin Franklin's autobiography. However, I am not finished with it and sometime today, instead of hitting 'save as draft' I must have accidentally hit publish. I'm heading off to my tennis match now but if I find the time and inclination I will finish it up later this evening. For now, I am going to include a link to the March newsletter of the DeMolay Chapter my son is a member of. On Sunday, before I left for my trip, we had a big DeMolay meeting and did a lot of planning. The biggest item being that we made a commitment to perform our own initiatory degree *and* DeMolay degree in the months of April and May. I have been using a piece of publishing software I bought at Walmart ...

Brother Tom Accuosti said in response to my last post: Take a pill, John, you're over-heating. Don't forget that the OT is essentially the same as the Torah; how many Jewish communities condone slavery? Rather than blaming the Bible - and truly, one must also remember that somehow millions of Christians manage to not develop the blood-thirsty and reactionary practices that you're describing - perhaps you might want to look at sociological components for groups that are all too willing to take "permission" for such actions in their peculiar interpretation of ancient scriptures. I'm just saying, you know? As always, I really appreciate it when Brother Tom comments on the rambling things I say in this edge of cyberspace. And, perhaps I should take a chill pill. Any time I do make a post with an emotional edge to it, it is usually because I happened to be in a mood at the time which quickly passes. Then again, if I only made posts when I was calm, happy, and rela...

I have avoided talking about this topic ever since I became a Freemason. After all, I promised to be prudent, temperate, and discrete. I also promised that I would respect the religion of others. All that said, a man has his limits and I feel compelled to make comment. One of my biggest pet peeves is when people insist on referring to the Bible as the 'Holy' Bible. There is a particular irrational system built within Freemasonry that I have largely ignored. We are 'told' that it is open to men of all religious faiths, so long as they profess in a belief in God. I met these criteria, especially since I particularly like the term 'Great Architect of the Universe' since that phrase has a close affinity with my personal belief. Personally, I believe in a form of Intelligent Design since I believe the Universe itself to be a creative and intelligent entity. The fact that I am, myself, a creative and intelligent entity within Universe I find of particular significan...