Oddball Update

I was having a hard time conceiving of spending more time sitting at a keyboard than I did yesterday: Twelve hours. Well, today I spent fourteen hours sitting at the desk, hammering away on crufty old tables in file after file of HTML code, attempting to redesign a flock of 40 sample applications for our company. I finished ‘em at half-past midnight, but of course, by then everyone else I work with had gone to bed, and I couldn’t get anybody to help me actually put all of my hard work to use. So I had to log onto the live site and deactivate the portal page that leads to these sample apps, at least until we can actually get them updated. Which I only did because part of the reason for the redesign was our change of company name, which is required by law after a cease-and-desist which…oh, fuck, it’s one in the morning and I’m not going to prattle on about that any longer. Surely you’ve already read enough.

It was Monday today. Er, yesterday. Honestly it didn’t feel like a Monday. It felt like a Wednesday. That’s probably because I worked most of Saturday and the entirety of Sunday. The weather here was completely beautiful yesterday, with nice cool breezes blowing in through all of our open windows. Today it was still cool to be outside, but there wasn’t as much wind, and it was humid. After while, the house started to get really unpleasant. Well, actually, that’s not right. The house in general was fine, but my room was a hellhole. With two machines running, my workstation and my web server, even two fans and a wide-open window couldn’t stop the ambient temperature from climbing up toward, I swear, ninety degrees. I thought I was going to have heatstroke in there, the feeling getting more and more certain with each of the fourteen passing hours. I think it’ll be five a.m. before that room assumes a normal temperature again. I might have to run the A/C tomorrow. Er, today.

The good news is, I don’t expect to have to put in another solid 12- or 14-hour work day anytime soon. The end of October was our official, legally-sanctioned deadline for our change of corporate identity, and with that deadline gone and all the critical work done (even if the sample apps aren’t actually online yet), everything else can be made to fit into my standard 8-hour work day. Which is really great, honest to God it is.

Heh, speaking of work, Birty Dird called me on Friday and left a message on my cell while we were on the plane from Detroit to Orlando. He openly admitted not knowing whether I had electricity, phone service or email access at my house thanks to the hurricane, but he damn well needed the password to his silly inconsequential “Link Lister” deal on his website, which he lost along with all of the other passwords that are critical to his business when he chose to reformat his computer a few months back. Funny thing is that I swear I sent him that very information not long ago, but maybe I did not. I didn’t call him back, and he left me another message to that effect yesterday. I really don’t care anymore, I just really do not. The man owes myself and my friends a total of somewhere near $1,100 which he has not contributed anything to for about two months, so I really have a hard time giving a shit about anything he might want right now. I’ll send him his beloved “Link Lister” access codes, after I log into my GMail account and undoubtedly have to wade through (and delete) about six bazillion emails from him that have surely been piling up since I last checked that account a couple weeks ago. I don’t get email from anyone else but him at that address, so you can see why I rush to check it so often with such reckless abandon, har de har har.

Once things slow down for me at work, and I of course get the whole heap of other tasks I have to perform off my plate, like getting somebody to come out here and fix the broken tiles on our roof, finding a bank that will PROPERLY take my application for a business credit card without fucking it completely up like Suntrust just did, and a variety of other swill, I plan to post up my first PC game review in quite some time. I picked up F.E.A.R. on Saturday (thanks to a colleague of mine, in fact, who bought it for me partly because he wanted to see it run on my SLI rig) and spent approximately four hours playing it — in the middle of the night on Sunday. God, it is great. Creepy as hell, tension like System Shock 2, and incredibly intense firefights. Halfway through playing it at 2:00 a.m. I had to turn the light on. Yep, I give it two enthusiastic thumbs way up. Soon as I can go through and take some good screenies with which to pepper my review, I’ll give it a writeup. Suffice it to say, this is one of the few new PC games out there this season that’s worth your attention. Oh — and thumbs up to nVidia as well. Their most recent Forceware display drivers are tops, especially now that I don’t have to reboot my machine anymore when I toggle SLI mode on and off. Makes high-intensity gaming even easier.

Well, that’s all from me for the present time. It’s 1:30 and I should get to bed. I still feel a bit wired, but I should hit the sack anyway so I can get an early (read: 8:30) start tomorrow. Never know what kind of fucked up fallout there might be in the world of pressing legal deadlines at the office, so I don’t want to arrive late to the party.

Categorized as Life