Well, Monday was my birthday in New Zealand (and thus, I suppose, my actual birthday) and it was fairly low-key. A slowish start with my still not feeling to chipper, and I took some anti-sick supplies with me to work to make sure I didn’t succumb. Work was dishing out the cheques for the month, doing a bunch of playtesting and the usual odds and ends. When I got home I basically flaked on the futon and tried to rest. Eventually I went and picked up Anastasia from her exam, talked with her for a while, wrote a couple of emails while talking to some people online, then went to bed. Very low-key, actually.

Tuesday, my birthday in the US, provided no real celebration as such (that will come later), but it was certainly an interesting day nonetheless. Thank you to everyone who sent me emails, Facebook gifts and messages and generally sent me well wishes in some form. I know that 23 isn’t exactly a hugely significant birthday by any stretch of the imagination… about all I could think of was that now I was going to end up with What’s My Age Again running through my head a lot more often. Anyway – coffee, email and a trip to the bank later, I was on my way to work. Work was probably what made the day so interesting, actually. Apart from engaging in phone-warfare with Lea about whether or not I was going to be picking her up from an airport somewhere, I wrote up and recorded the voice-over tutorials for the game we’re developing. So for the next who-knows-how-long while this game is being developed, it’ll be my voice with the placeholder voice-work! How cool is that? I’ll probably have to do some bits and pieces again later as they get people to tweak the actual tutorials into shape, but I got most of it down. The whole process was quite fun, although I did have quite a few breaks where I just bust out laughing… Afshin (our composer and resident sound guru) and I had quite a good time recording all of that the whole experience was quite novel. Anyway, given that Anastasia had another exam this morning, she spent the whole evening studying at IHOP (thanks to Leith Taxi Service) with her friend Rachel. I generally chilled out and talked to people in another timezone and got some more birthday wishes. ^^

Today was a bit of a shocker, really. Our friend Lea got into a car accident and needed picking up. Thankfully she wasn’t hurt, but was pretty shook up. Anastasia and I went out and got her, made sure everything was sorted out with the towing company and so on, then took her home with us to chill out and help her unwind. This involved dinner, some sake and for some reason I was overruled and we ended up watching the remake of the Omen, which isn’t particularly good in my opinion. Anyway, it seemed to do the trick and Lea isn’t too much the worse for wear, although the same can’t be said about her car.

Happy Halloween, folks. ^^;

Well, this week has been an entertaining ride for me as I gradually tell people back in New Zealand about my haircut, showing my family via webcam wherever they may be and that kind of thing. James at work commented that he was sure my hair will provide several young girls with wonderful wigs. Which it probably will. I had a lot of hair. ^^; Nik reckoned I looked like a Jedi or Round Table knight, which is one of the funnier reactions so far. My sister Siobhan, one of the greater proponents for my getting a haircut, was surprised at how far up I had taken it. She was thinking shoulder-length (ish), as were a few other people that I talked to this week. I guess I might grow my hair out again when I’m in Japan, but I don’t know if I want to or not. The next thing I want to do with it is dye it dark blue, but that’ll be after graduation!

Anyway, the rest of this week was filled up with a bunch of errands and quite a lot going on at work. We’re starting to hire a bunch of new people and that means rearranging computers and things at the office, arranging for people to work with the new people, show them what they’ll be working on, train them up, that kind of thing. I also drove Lea to Orlando at the start of the week, as she needed to fly back to Trinadad for a family emergency. I’ve talked with her online, she seems to be doing ok. This week at work we also had a table at the Engineering Careers night at UF. It was quite interesting being on the other side of the table for me… previously I’d been the one wandering around, looking at companies I might want to work for. Anyway, it was pretty intense this week. I also looked into how much it would cost for flights to come back here after Christmas…. short answer is “a lot”, but not necessarily prohibitively so, so I guess I’ll need to make up my mind about what the heck I’m going to do.

After a long week, I did manage to have some chill out time on the weekend, although not as much as I might have liked. When I talked to Siobhan I got to open my birthday present from her early (since it had arrived during the week and I had resisted temptation) – she got me a dragon sock puppet, which is hilariously awesome. This may become a continuing thing, and with her in Ireland I suspect my next one will be a leprechaun…

Well, not too much for most of the week, we’ll get to the interesting part later. This week I spent some time looking after Anastasia and Lea in various ways, both of them haven’t been feeling particularly well and I had some groggy mornings and a runny nose a bit as well which made me hope fairly fervently that I wasn’t getting Anastasia’s cold! I persevered however, along with the aid of a hefty dose of Vitamin C. I spent some time watching anime with Anastasia and Lea this week over some dinners and evenings, which was very pleasant. I like watching anime, as anyone that knows me will know… and I like spreading this love of anime to all of my friends as well, if possible. I’m like a crack-dealer, but for anime. ^^ Before Lea buggered off down to Fort Lauderdale to spend time with her family, she, Anastasia and I went out to the Bento Cafe for dinner and went to see The Seeker: The Dark is Rising. I enjoyed the movie on the whole, there were some good actors in there that I recognised, but it did feel like there were a few pieces of the puzzle missing for it to be a really great movie. I don’t know if that’s because of the kid they got to be the main actor, or if it was something to do with the work it was based on in the first place. Not sure. Still, it wasn’t bad and was worth seeing.

Work was fairly productive this week, a lot of document writing and data entry, a whole bunch of game testing as well. I had to draw up job titles and descriptions for everyone in the office to submit to some Florida governmental initiative… something to do with us moving into a new office in a little while, I think. My boss also managed to somehow get his computer infected with several trojans, over a dozen viruses and something that was sending out spam emails to all over the internet. All I can say is this: turn on your windows updates, make sure you have anti-virus installed. After two and a half hours of wrangling with it, it wasn’t working and needed more work… so eventually a few files were restored, but it was still infected with a few things. Who knows when that computer will see enough down time to be fixed properly…. never, at this rate.

Right, now on to the part that many have been waiting for, for years in some cases. After a long day on Friday, I chilled out with Anastasia for a little bit, then showered and tidied up before driving down to Tampa. This weekend was Anastasia’s grandmother’s surprise retirement party…. the party was the surprise, not the retirement. ^^ It also marked the weekend that I cut all my hair off. After growing it for four years and keeping it long for another one, the time had come to chop it back. I figured I would get it done for graduation, but have a couple of months to get used to it (and let Anastasia play enjoy having longer hair than me again). So, yesterday afternoon I went in to see Shane, the hairdresser that Anastasia’s family uses… and off it came. Packed up in a little bag, I’m going to mail it off to donate it to Locks of Love. Anastasia video taped the whole thing on her mother’s camcorder, having enough fun to fill up all the people who couldn’t be there to delight in it happening. At some point I’m sure the video will end up on YouTube or something, then everyone else can have fun with it, too. Anyway! The party was a success, good times were had, t-shirts were handed out and afterwards we went back to Anastasia’s mother’s place to crash. I actually had a lot of trouble sleeping and ended up reading my book for quite a while instead. This led to some consciousness problems today, but it ended up alright. Friends of the family, Eric and Pemma, were in town from Austin, Texas, where they usually live. We caught up with them for the afternoon before driving back up to Gainesville.

All in all, it was a pretty eventful week and weekend. I don’t recognise myself in the mirror any more… or rather, I look like I’m 17 again, which is completely tripping me out.

A few big things happened this week. Firstly, I saw a newspost about a Princess Bride game being developed.

Oh.

My.

God.

How freakin’ awesome is that? I mean, seriously? The Princess Bride, despite having one of the lamest titles of all time, is actually my favourite movie of all time. Unbelievably quotable and just generally awesome, anyone who knows me will be able to recognise the absurd number of times that I quote it, either directly or in spirit. I make no secret of displaying my affection for and emulation of the character of Westley. I can’t wait to play the game. ^^

The other big thing to happen this week was Anastasia had her birthday! Happy Birthday to my lovely Anastasia, I hope that this coming year will be one that you enjoy, despite the trials and tribulations that will undoubtedly be a part of it. It started with a birthday hurrahwhen midnight ticked over, then out to dinner at Harry’s later on the actual day. The following day we went out with all of Anastasia’s sorority sisters that wanted to wish her a happy birthday. There were a few people I hadn’t seen for a while, so that was good fun talking to them again. ^^ All in all, I think Anastasia ha a good birthday, which is what it’s all about really, isn’t it?

So, this week at work was fairly ho-hum, did some playtesting and some other stuff, just getting into the groove of game development. I’ve also been talking a bit more with some friends about possibly putting together our own game development company down the line. The more I work at Artificial Studios, the more I think about making a real career out of game development.

Other than that, it was the usual running errands, watching anime and so on. Anastasia was feeling a bit unwell yesterday and today she was laid out, so I’ve been on look-after patrol, making sure she’s got DVDs to watch, plenty of fluids, etc, etc. Making sure Lea is on top of where she needs to be as well means I’m definitely the looking-after person in the house lately, but that’s all good. I like being able to be the support crew.

It also gave me a good excuse to get the Pride & Prejudice (BBC version) DVDs. ^^

Well, this week at work we hired Barrett, our new Associate Producer. As far as I can tell, he’ll be doing the same kinds of things I’m doing, only full time and paid more than three times as much. There are perks to being permanent staff, I guess! Anyway, Barrett’s a good guy, very friendly with a good attitude, so I think he’ll fit in well. Setting him up involved a little bit of computer juggling, but got everything worked out in the end. It also means that Barrett and I can do multiplayer playtesting as part of our things to do, although the focus won’t be on the multiplayer for a while yet.

This week also saw me with some bad headaches and generally not feeling well, which was fairly unpleasant. Lea and Anastasia are slowly coming down with something as well. Well, not so slowly in Lea’s case, she was flaked out on the futon during the middle of the week in dire need f our cough mixture. Lea is more and more becoming a fixture at our house, really she lives with us and her apartment is now referred to as her “expensive storage unit”. But that’s all good, we love having her around and I’m sure when Anastasia decides to move into a bigger/nicer/different place in Gainesville, Lea will be at the top of the list for flatmates. I actually started this week by going to one of Lea’s softball games (which they won), and that was a lot of fun, as I hadn’t been to a softball match for ages.

Another little package from Amazon arrived for me this week as well – the next volume of ElfQuest. Now, years and years ago I was introduced to ElfQuest by my friend Ryan in primary school. I remember going around to his house and reading ElfQuest with him and talking about the characters and the world they lived in. It has always had a special place in my heart as a brilliantly drawn and thought-out series of graphic novels and really was my introduction to that medium. While my father collects comics and I enjoy the serial nature of those, the more infrequent ElfQuest draws me in a way that comics don’t. For people who like great art (particularly the colour collectors editions that I’ve been getting) and an intelligent, developed story, I would thoroughly recommend ElfQuest. And hey, if you’re near me I can always lend you my volumes to get you hooked! I don’t know if I’ll be able to find all the subsequent stories after the original Quest in hardback editions or not… I’d like to get them that way if I can, as I’ like for them to last.

Last but not least to note, today I held a tutorial session for Lea and some oher classmates on programming VBA. Since I’ve got a CS degree, programming in VBA isn’t the hardest thing in the worl for me, an it was nice to be able to show how to analyze a programming problem, then construct the solution in a logical manner. Apparently the tutor/lecturer is less than good about explaining this kind of thing – not sure if they’re assuming some programming knowledge or what, but there were certainly a bunch of “Ah! So that’s how you do it!” moments, which as a tutor is always nice to see. I don’t know if I’ll be holding any more impromptu tutorials later this semester, but I’m certainly not averse to the idea. I like teaching small groups of people, particularly when they’re people I know already. ^^