Southern California Earthquake

Opinion: Getting A Business Off The Ground - Taking The Gamble And Losing

Somehow this thought manifested into the notion that starting my own studio was a great idea. I went in guns blazing. I found a lawyer, applied for my business license, turned a part of my house into the "studio", and brought in office furniture and equipment. I even hired my husband, Rob, an awesome programmer who at the time was working at a AAA studio. I had enough money to pay us both, pay the bills, and basically keep us afloat for a year -- as well as a few contracts waiting in the wings (what could go wrong?). As you can imagine I was pretty excited. I was even more excited when only a couple of weeks into the new venture, we had been approached by a very big studio in Japan to work on revamping a very big AAA title. The job had trickled down to us based on the fact that I had previous dealings with people in Japan and Rob had a skill in a specific area that was harder to come by. "I knew he was a great investment", I thought to myself as we began talks with the studio. The teleconferences started and they were very nerve wracking! We were talking to the big-wigs of the studio, and much of our conversations were being translated to Japanese for the lead programmer and other members of the team. Everything they said was also being translated into English for us. The meetings were lengthy, but they were very reinforcing. We had managed to make a fantastic impression. They even asked us to do a second title for them. It all seemed to good to be true, but it was very, very real. We spent the next few months signing NDA's, writing up proposals, and dealing with budgets and milestones, and every single week we would have a teleconference with Japan. In the meantime, I had Rob begin work on the project to give us a good head start. Missing a milestone was NOT going to happen on my watch! In fact, by the time the heads of the studio department had arranged to fly over and have a final in-person meeting with us before we signed the final contract, Rob had already completed milestone one by himself and was half way through milestone two. It was about this point when I realized what a huge gamble I had made. Incredibly, despite being very new, we had actually been turning down work. Rob had spent all his time completing the first couple of milestones, and because I was so focused on talking with Japan, I had failed to put into a place a safety net, something for us to fall back on if this deal fell through. I started getting nervous, really nervous.

RT @ 6.0 to 6.5 earthquake is likely in Southern California in the next 18 hrs, please tell (cont)

RT @: 6.0 to 6.5 earthquake is likely in Southern California in the next 18 hrs, please tell friends & family to prepare;

RT @: 6.0 to 6.5 earthquake is likely in Southern California in the next 18 hrs, please tell friends & family to prepare;

RT @: 6.0 to 6.5 earthquake is likely in Southern California in the next 18 hrs, please tell friends & family to prepare;

RT @: 6.0 to 6.5 earthquake is likely in Southern California in the next 18 hrs, please tell friends & family to prepare;

Seismogenesis and Earthquake Forecasting, The Frank Evison

The Southern California Seismic Network (SCSN), now a joint project of Caltech and USGS, has been in operation since then and recorded more than 400000 both ...

Directory of Northridge Earthquake Research

... of Southern California Geological Sciences Department Northridge Earthquake ... Emergency Supplement to the Southern California Earthquake Center Daniel ...

Earth science in the urban ocean, the Southern California continental borderland

Barrows, AG, 1974, A review of the geology and earthquake history of the Newport -Inglewood structural zone, Southern California: California Division of ...

Earthquake prediction, an international review

Castle, RO, Leveling surveys and the southern California uplift, US Geol. Surv. Earthquake Inf. Bull.. 10, 88-92, 1978. Chi, SC, RE Reilinger, LD Brown, ...

Evolution of Ridge Basin, southern California, an interplay of sedimentation and tectonics

1902a, The Quaternary of southern California: University of California ... 1908, The California earthquake of April 18, 1906: Carnegie Institution of ...