What's in a name?

Probably should mention the origins of the "Out of Sync Squirrel" name for this blog.

The "Out of Sync Squirrel" is a small ceramic squirrel that I keep on my desk at work. From here on out, it shall be referred to as the OOSS.

To explore the origins of the OOSS, I need first to delve into a brief description where I work and some happenings that occurred.

I work at a small-medium game development studio in Andover, MA (about 20 mins north of Boston). On our most recent title which shipped at the end of last year, we had a sizable multiplayer component (play over LAN, GameSpy, or XboxLive). When developing and testing network code, the game will often crash due to the different players going "out of sync" with each other. These bugs are tricky to hunt down, as there are so many variables inherent with the testing of a multiplayer game (who was doing what, when, who has what connection type, etc...). When they are finally found, it takes a programmer some time to sort through all of the data from the QA testers and discover the source of the problem - then to fix the problem in code.
Now, i'm neither a QA tester or a programmer. I, for the most part, had little to do with this whole process. However, I noticed that one of our programmers, Gloria (one of the 3 female programmers in the world, by my understanding [name changed to protect the innocent]) was not having fun with all of the Sync issues that were coming her way. To cheer her up, I placed one of my ceramic squirrels on her desk, staring at her from above her monitor.

Gloria immediately took to the squirrel, assigning it tasks to aide her in her work, and the squirrel gradually became the greatest networking programming mammal known to man.

Nowadays, this squirrel rotates around the office, assisting wherever there are sync issues. The OOSS, and his little brother, the scheduling squirrel, are dear to our hearts at the office.

Why is this the name of my blog? Because it's a really cool name.