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. ^^