As editor of the late Time Inc. title Business 2.0, Quittner once employed Valleywag emeritus Owen Thomas (as well as your current Valleywag). But somewhere along the way, Quittner soured on Thomas.

Thomas jumped to Valleywag and Business 2.0 folded. When Quittner landed at Fortune, Thomas wrote about Quittner's inflated title, covered Fortune's suspension of his blogging privileges, and quoted the Scrabulous-playing columnist saying he had "too much time on my hands."

Quittner seemed to take it personally. After jumping to Time, he used the magazine as his personal burn book, noting in January that a Sony virtual world wouldn't create an avatar "as fat as your average tech-gossip blogger."

Now Quittner's at it again, with a Sims 3 review in which he creates a "Loser" character named "Thomas Woodchuck" and burns him alive (see clip above). As several tipsters have noted, the resemblance between Woodchuck and Thomas can't be missed — nor can the creepiness of teaching his daughter to drown an enemy in the pool.

It seems early to get too alarmed; there are worse things than being called an "unredoubtable... woodchuck" in an anonymous comments, or killed virtually in a videogame. We're just a little surprised Time indulges Quittner's grudge — or that the reporter, after all this time, still holds it.

Owen took the Valleywag reins from our overlord Nick Denton himself and has fiercely worked his Silicon Valley sources for gossip and scoops. In December, Valleywag was merged into Gawker, and when we tried to talk him into staying, he said he misses the management headaches of running his own site. He's keeping mum on his new gig, but we hear it involves the letters N, B, and C and will focus on Bay Area news.

As Gawker's night editor, Ryan lets me sleep easier at night. But it's time for him to rejoin the land of the living and the tech beat is a natural for him. Based in San Francisco, he started his journalism career at mags like Upside and Business 2.0 before the dot-com boom went bust. He joined Gawker last year from San Francisco Business Times. The night gig is by design one for a generalist, but he's come up with plenty of news at the intersection of business and media, such as Bloomberg's premature obituary for Apple CEO Steve Jobs and exposing the underbelly of Arianna Huffington's blog empire. Now part of the larger Gawker family, he'll still have room to write about his other areas of fascination, like military aviation shills and Fox News' slimy PR shop.

And that means there's a job opening at Gawker. I'm looking for a new night editor who's primarily responsible for keeping track of any breaking news after about 7 p.m. East Coast time, as well as getting a jump on the dawn's news stories. Since hours pretty brutal in the U.S., I'm especially interested in hearing from people who live in Australia or Europe. If you're reading this from overseas or are nocturnal by nature, email me.

She called up a Gawker Media employee, who shall go unnamed, to complain about unspecified errors in Owen Thomas' recent coverage. But not from anger (or an overdose of Blueprint Cleanse) but out of love. See, Gawker's going downhill, she claims, and she'll buy a "round of drinks" if her will is done. Thankfully, I'm not taking orders from Rambin.

Owen's cranky streak is one of the reasons we love him. (Other reasons: he's a talented writer who knows the tech beat inside and out.) Around here, unsolicited and unhinged rants are worn as a badge of honor. The only reason, as far as we can tell, that she thinks Gawker is falling apart is that we're not covering her every move. Such is the double-edged nature of fameballing. And, Mary, if you have a problem with one of my writers, rather than calling the ad staff, you should get in touch with me directly.

Denton was impressed with Lacy at the time: She had a big cover story, a book deal, access to hotshot young founders and, oh yes, was "the hottest reporter in the tech world — ever." She passed on the opportunity and now writes for the likes of Yahoo and BusinessWeek.com.

But Lacy can stroke her ego by imagining how well things might have gone — and sending a "shout out" to the scandal-mongering publisher who, in a rare turn, briefly stroked that same ego himself. Fantasyland is the place where bubbles never explode!

As a human being with a soul in there somewhere, I've avoided blogging about the Xeni-Violet scandal. But as a wannabe comedy writer, I found myself obsessively poring over the 1,200-plus Metafilter comments on our report. I'd forgotten why I love-hated Metafilter: It's a boyzone of spiteful, pseudonymous insult comics, but many are snappy with the English language. "Instead of calling it what it is, they're going to clown us with semantics." Red meat for you guys at MeFi: The "homophobic" headline on yesterday's post was added by big gay Owen Thomas himself. Discuss.

Valleywaggers,

As I've told you all personally, I've fired Jordan Golson. It's a sad decision; I will always be grateful to Jordan for contributions like the kicker "That seems easier" and the tag "We read Twitter so you don't have to"; but the parting was, perhaps, overdue.

In its wake, I wanted to reinforce some points I mentioned in our conversations:

1) Valleywag hasn't had any budget cuts. I'm sure the usual bloggers who blog about blogging will find a way to prove otherwise by counting the number of posts about Scoble or something, but they're wrong. Both Melissa and Paul will be posting more than previously.

2) If you read elsewhere that Denton only cares about pageviews now, they're wrong. If we've given you that impression, we're sorry. Here's a straightforward list of our priorities, starting with the most important:

* Covering the news of the day that's vital to the Valley — artfully, distinctively, and completely
* Giving our readers insight and insideriness they won't get anywhere else
* Telling the story of the Valley as a human one, not as a series of dry tech trends or stock tips

3) We have an opening for a Valley-based reporter. To be clear, this is not a replacement slot for Jordan Golson. It is a more senior role, for someone with deep Valley sources and a passion for Valleywag's mission.

Yours,

Owen

Were you there, too? Or just want to add a caption? Leave a comment here or on the photo page.

(Photo of McCarthy and Thomas by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid; Loren Feldman and Owen Thomas by Brian Solis; gallery by Noah Robischon)

Provided by an audience member: "How much did you pay Julia, Owen, to come up here and make Valleywag more sympathetic?"

Update: The audience is now actually liveblogging our liveblogging. We stand by our "slutty, cheap" headline about her panel crashing, including the photo accompanying of the official SXSWi admittance badge hanging around her neck.
As for the rest of the crowd?

Six Apart's Anil Dash thinks it's all of our fucking faults.

Lane Becker of Get Satisfaction says "this was the best SXSW panel ever" —

— and then thanks Valleywag emeritus Nick "Leave Julia Alone!" Douglas for running that hot tub photo years back.

owenthomas: Landed at AUS. What's the plan, folks? I'm on California time and the night is barely legal.

Owen T.
Can anyone tell me how many billions of dollars more Cisco makes than .Mac? Thank you.

Jordan G. http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/02/live-analysis-cisco-earnings-csco-in-line.html

Owen T.
Right. Thank god someone's working while you guys are debating .Mac.
Cisco tipster tells me that if Chambers uses phrase "cautiously optimistic" in conference call, it's time to run for the hills.
Campfire = audience of 4
Valleywag = audience of 100K plus a day

Jordan G.
We should make Campfire public

Nicholas C.
Gawker used to do that
sorta

Jordan G.
publish a transcript of the best moments from campfire

Nicholas C.
they'd pub IMterviews w/ each other

Owen T.
True. But until then SOMEONE FRICKING POST ABOUT CISCO PLEASE KTHXBAI.

Nicholas C.
Cisco earnings QL in