Thursday, March 31, 2005
My life in dot points
Lately I have been too busy at my plate-spinning, juggling job to spend the time to keep track of it all in rambling blog entries. While I have a ten-minute lull between urgent, wrenchingly awful phone calls, I’ll summarise what’s been going on:
- Project Porkpie - continues to fill my every working hour, and seems intent on making a play for the rest of my waking ones. The past week has been all about the selection of a position I shall call King of the Codemonkeys – basically the lead developer and person to whom, in theory, I will delegate all the actual hard parts. This process has not been without its fraught moments, as previously mentioned, and these have continued, albeit with fewer histrionics. In particular, I have been dwelling with (probably unwarranted) dread on a forthcoming meeting in which I will have to inform someone with whom I work that they were not as good as the Young Punk to whom I will offer the job. In my imagination, this will be a tense exchange which will spark a slow and murderous smoulder of humiliation and rage that eventually will culminate in an explosive outburst of bitter recrimination. I may be projecting a little more than necessary, however.
- Missing in Azeroth - This cartoon probably tells you all that you need to know about my preferred non-work pursuits. Apart from my gun-wielding cow-monster (Jimbo’s preferred debasement of the noble and spiritual character of the tauren folk), I now have half a dozen other characters floating around on various iterations of the World of Warcraft, impatiently awaiting their turn for large blocks of my undivided attention. It’s true – they waste away if you don’t look after them. Why, just last night I discovered that the dwarf priest I created on the Hellscream server has been deleted without trace, just because I haven’t played him in thirty days. It’s a heady responsibility, looking after so many digichildren, and one I don’t take lightly.
- Fiji - did I mention that in three weeks I’m flying to Fiji for a conference peripherally related to Project Porkpie? Because I am. That’s just another thing that’s filling me with (again, probably completely unjustified) dread. I will be speaking there. I will need to have something to say that is (a) true, and (b) encouraging. Reconciling the former and latter will be…challenging, let’s say.
- Birthday 1 - It was Ev’s birthday on Friday. I missed calling him - due to his no doubt rich and full social life and not anything to do with the fact that I spent as much time as I could get away with glued to the computer slaughtering kobolds - but luckily he’s coming to visit in a few weeks (I’ll actually still be on my way back from Suva when he arrives). He’s coming for a science fiction writers’ convention, at which I would like to put in the odd appearance, depending on the schedule. But just in case I can’t, he’s staying for an extra week, which will mean we will have plenty of partying time. Oh yeah.
- Birthday 2 - Sonia’s birthday was on Saturday. Outdoor cafe in Kingston, good wine, family and history’s most diabolical chocolate cake (but it didn’t defeat me, oh no, except that it did really) – good day. Highlight was three-year old Flynn’s superb timing in extinguishing the candles just as we got to “Happy birthday, dear Son-nie”, thus saving his mother the potential indignity of missing one…
- Houses - Not much getting done on the renovations at the moment. This is mainly due to the fact that the next big job is to rip up the remaining slate flooring so that we can lay down the faux-wooden slats in the kitchen and dining room. This is back- and wrist-breaking work, and there is no reason whatsoever to look forward to it. On the plus side, the timber doors have been stained, sealed and finished. And they look really good, what’s more.
- In other news - I am married to the bestest, wonderfullest person in the whole wide world. This assertion is final. So there.
4 smartarse remarks
4 Comments:
Rregarding the hiring process for "Project: Porkpie" I can recommend the book I'm currently reading, "How would you move Mt. Fuji." It is about the devious tricks and puzzles Microsoft uses in their hiring process. You could have fun putting a couple of the puzzles into your interview.
I don't understand how an ad for shoes with no laces relates to the wholesale slaughter of Kobolds, unless they're Kobold skinned shoes....
Re: In other words- Like Hell you are. I am. So there.
I must confess that I also have been sucked into World of Warcraft, so that for the first time in the last fifteen years I am no longer role-playing on a regular basis. And I think it really sucks that Koboldsare not skinnable. I think there is a big potential market in kobold-skin footwear.
I'd wear 'em. And murlocs. Who wouldn't want to wear a really sweet tie-dyed psychedelic hat made outta one of them little buggers? Nobody, that's who.
