Interview

Aspiring game designers have just been handed the motherlode of thought and wisdom with the Critical Path project, a series of short interviews from virtually every big name in gaming. Freely hosted online, the elegantly designed interface allows video game fans to sort through clips by tagged topics or interview subject to experience what ultimately amounts to a few hours of footage in a sort of hive mind around the state of gaming and design. At launch, the site hosts 121 clips ranging in length from 30 seconds to two minutes.

The newest Oriole, 30-year-old infielder Omar Quintanilla, arrived in Cleveland on Saturday afternoon with his New York Metsduffel bag slung over his shoulder. He'll be getting a new bag from the Orioles, who acquired the career .218 hitter for cash Friday. He made his debut Saturday night in the eighth inning as a defensive replacement at second base. The guess is he may get his first start Sunday or Monday in Cleveland. Here's an interview with Quintanilla conducted shortly after he arrived in the Orioles' clubhouse What's the last week been like?

Nothing makes a generator look more tempting than a days-long power outage in a 100-degree heat wave. Arnold Friedlander's Winn Electric Contracting in Timonium was so flooded with calls that staffers are still working their way through the backlog of requests for estimates and installations. Selling and setting up home-standby generators — the non-portable kind — is a regular but usually small slice of the company's work, which ranges from lighting to computer wiring. Then the damaging derechoblew through the region June 29, leaving about 675,000 in the Baltimore area without power, some for nine days.

A rocky marriage involving a former Orioles pitcher seems to be coming to a close ­ - for real, this time. Kris Benson, who pitched in Baltimore from 2006 to 2007, and his wife, Anna, have filed for divorce, according to an interview Fox News conducted with Anna recently . According to Anna, she caught Kris in an affair with one of her friends, who Kris was supposed to be advising financially. In 2006, during Kris' stint as an Oriole, Anna caught Kris cheating and decided to file for a divorce.

Ed Reed's interview on 105.7 The Fan last night rambled on for more than 20 entertaining minutes, so there were a few interesting comments that couldn't be squeezed into my story published in Thursday's newspaper . Reed on fans who criticized him on Twitter: "The fact of the matter is that people don't understand that football players are regular people just like them. And half of them don't understand the business. And most of them just want you to entertain them. There's a lot of good fans out there, but there's also a lot of bad -- I don't want to say bad people, but a lot of people who just want to try to get on your nerves and stuff like that, man. I'm not the kind of person to hold my tongue.

With 12 career return touchdowns, Ed Reed has earned a reputation for being a tough man to get a grasp on. And this offseason, far from a football field, the Ravens safety has been equally as elusive when it comes to his playing status. Reed wiggled away again Wednesday night. Appearing on Baltimore radio station 105.7 The Fan, Reed, whose cryptic comments on Twitter over the weekend have been scrutinized by national media and curious fans, was noncommittal about his status for the upcoming season.

Since he was a young boy growing up in upstate New York, Blaze Sanders always said he wanted to be an astronaut. He's doing his best to live up to his dream. Sanders, who has a degree in electrical engineering from Johns Hopkins University, worked as a civil servant for NASA, at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. But he wanted to move faster with his various dreams for space exploration and even space commerce — dreams that involve air bag lunar-landing modules, robots and a business plan for collecting space junk, fixing satellites and space sky diving.

After 35 years in state and local government, Beverley Swaim-Staley announced in April that she would step down as Maryland's secretary of transportation, effective July 1. Appointed by Gov. Martin O'Malley in September 2009, Swaim-Staley was the first woman to head MDOT, which has a $3.8 billion budget and more than 9,000 employees. She previously served as deputy transportation secretary, perhaps most memorably in 2001, when she supervised Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

As law firms across the country cut back, Offit Kurman has grown. Rapidly. The firm, founded in Towson 25 years ago, doubled its revenue from 2008 to 2011 — a period that included the worst-in-decades recession — and added dozens of employees as it expanded its reach across the Mid-Atlantic. Now Offit Kurman employs about 170 people and expects to keep growing, said Ted Offit, managing principal of the firm and one of its founders. A lawyer and certified public accountant, Offit, 56, lives in the Glyndon area of Baltimore County with his wife, Risa.

During the entire duration of my odd email exchange with "PASSIONGAMER4CHANGE," I was never completely sure whom I was talking to. If 60 percent of statistics are made up, then 40 percent of all Twitter accounts are owned by someone who is not who they portray themselves as. "PASSIONGAMER4CHANGE" is a character (probably), who masterfully satirizes what's going on in the video games world by portraying a disillusioned fanboy through Twitter (@RPGsbebroke) and Tumblr (rpgsbebroke.tumblr.com)