My Life as a Company Bigwig, Part II

Note: these are my recollections as I remember them; my memory could be faulty. I also intend no malice, insult or libel against anyone mentioned; I hope none is taken.

(Part One can be found Here)

By request, Here's some more random gems from Ye Olde Days of ICE...

Rick, a generally good guy, was our Art Director. He was also color blind. He also had a computer phobia. As we migrated more to using Macs in the late 80's, his determination to lay out covers by pasting up text manually became more of an issue. Finally we hired him an assistant to do the computer work.

During this time we were expanding quite a bit, and moved our offices to a swank location right on Charlottesville's beautiful Downtown Mall. We also suffered periodic cashflow problems (as did nearly every RPG company). At one point, we needed a receptionist, and another alter ego was born: Preston Eisenhower IV. (Kurt Rasmussen, who, to his chagrin, had been our real receptionist before -- turned out that boy could touch-type! -- had graduated to be a full-time bookkeeper). That was fun for a little while, since I could do editing and writing at the same time. However, soon I had to take over as Production Manager, where I was at one time presiding over a department of at least ten people (some part-time UVa students).

Then Rick left the company and I also assumed the duties of Art Director. Around the same time, in 1989, we bought a brand-new Mac IIci, a machine with a color monitor and an entir 8 megs of RAM. We hooked it to this monstrous box housing a huge (we thought) 300 mb hard drive, and soon we were actually laying out covers in Quark and having the film done electronically. We were on the bleeding edge of technology!

We also had a regular Friday Happy Hour. This mandated that Kurt, Bill Covert (Bill had many roles at ICE, starting as afternoon trash boy and moving up to production and bookkeeping...) and I all pile into a car, go to the nearby Safeway, and buy a whole lot of beer. Depending on the company's financial straits, we bought more beer. I have many fond memories of Happy Hour, especially i the summer when we would hang out on the balcony overlooking the Mall.

Also, as an aside, two people came to work in my Production Department about the same time: Jonathan Eddy and Will Hyde. Jonathan came from Wisconsin, as was apparently one of the founder of the Onion; he had this mane of curly hair. Will came from some prep school in VA and looked it. They became fast friends. (Oh, and we all became obsessed with Twin Peaks.) Eventually though, Will and Jon moved to Seattle, and founded the Stranger, the weekly paper that made Dan Savage's fame and fortune. (Back n the day, they would send me copies of the Stranger, and I asked If I could have a date with Dan; Dan apparently said sure if I flew him out here. Ah, the missed opportunities. When I met Dan a couple years ago, he smiled and said "My boyfriend's name is Terry." Sigh.)