Well, this week was certainly an interesting one. Tuesday started it off with me doing some game study (working on my C#, looking over XNA Studio, that kind of thing), then watching some Kyle XY later with Anastasia. I like that show. Draws on similar themes to John Doe and The Pretender, both of which I like very much. Lea also came over later an hung out.

Wednesday Anastasia left pretty early, leaving me to start a bit more groggily. I took Lea to her place to pick up some of her stuff, then to Uni to drop her off. After that I did some online reading, some emails, that kind of thing. Then I gave Artificial Studios a call to see if I couldn’t get some work with them while I was here (and could, you know, work). I actually managed to get a hold of Jeremy, the owner. (I would later find out that this was something of a miracle, given how many phone calls that guy fields in a day.) Anyway, I talked with him for a while, got him to dredge my resume out of the jobs emails and arranged a meeting for the next day. Feeling pretty good about myself, I set about cleaning up my computer and updating files, added a new firewall, fixing some other things. I also did some research into whether or not I’d be able to come back here in January and get a work visa (and just a work visa). The short version is: no.

Thursday started off with more ‘cleaning up’ of my computer and some research into game development. If this is a path I’m going to be taking more seriously, I’m going to need to do some study! After a bit of that, I left for my meeting at Artificial Studios. Well, more accurately I locked myself out of the house, had to get Lea to let me in, then left for my meeting. Continuing my comedy of errors, I then walked around the wrong building for a good 20 minutes before eventually going to the next building over and finding their offices – the address on the website was listed wrongly. Naturally. Anyway, I went in and had my meeting with Jeremy, outlining how long I would be in Gainesville, what I wanted to achieve, that kind of thing. Jeremy was pretty impressed with me (and my resume) and said that I was generally awesome but I wasn’t around long enough. He said if I was going to be here for longer, he’d hire me on the spot, but since I wasn’t going to be around for very long, it wasn’t worth the company’s time to train me up – just when I was trained up and starting to be productive, I would be leaving the country. Ah well. In any case, I got plenty of advice on what to develop between now and the next time I would be applying to a game studio for a position.

Friday was a fairly vegetative day for me – to give you some kind of indication as to the state of my brain, I watched Date Movie. It was funny, but utter rubbish of course. Apart from my vegetative state, I also had a call back from Jeremy (actually he left a message, my phone had died) saying that he had been really impressed with my proactivity and that while he couldn’t take me on as a programmer, he could take me on part-time as an assistant producer if I was interested in getting my foot in the door to see how things worked. Wohoo! The pay is rubbish, but it’s a foot in the door and will be a bunch of experience for me.

Today Anastasia and Lea went to the football while I stayed home and worked. After the game was over we had dinner with Lea. Not much else to report.