Oddball Update

Sorry…I seem to have taken a few days “off.” You’re meant to envision me making air quotes when you read the word “off,” because this weekend I was certainly anything but “off.” Unless you count “off my rocker,” which is where I just about ended up going after working 24 solid hours in two days, 16 of which were on Saturday alone…after lunch. I’ll let you do the math to figure out what time I went to bed that evening. Er, morning.

Anyway, I’m back for a brief update. Apple and I are going on a well-deserved vacation this week. It’s going to be fun enough just getting to tell all of the people who are clamoring for my attention that they can kiss off for a week, honestly. At any rate, we’ll be visiting San Francisco, a place neither of us has been before, so that should be fun times. One of the reasons why I’ve been working at an absolutely insane, unsustainable pace over the last few weeks is because I’ve been trying to launch the new website I’m developing for work prior to our departure. It looks like we’re going to be able to do that, but with one fewer section than I had hoped. I ran myself totally against the wall this weekend but am not going to be able to finish up that last section before we leave, so we’ll launch without it and add it in later.

The site is not quite half done, which is frightening, really, considering all the work we’ve put into it, but at least I’ll be leaving town on a high note in the development cycle (which was important to me, since it’ll make coming back a little easier to bear). After I return I plan to get back to a regular eight hour per day schedule, because honestly I’ve seen the effects of working constant overtime, and you wind up taking just as long to finish the project anyway because you burn yourself out and spend entire days running in slow-motion. Which, by the way, describes my Easter Sunday perfectly, when I probably spent more time glumly sitting around and bitching than actually accomplishing anything, since I had enough strength to bitch but not enough to work. Gotta love that, right.

Other news: My former employer wants a new website built for one of their demanding “cash cow clients,” so that’s going to be funskis when I get back from vacation — oops, did some of that oozing sarcasm drip on your shoe? My apologies. I also need to wrap up some modifications for Gulfstream and get their site online, which I’m still holding out hope I’ll be able to finish before I leave on vacation. Since the revisions they requested are minor, there might just be enough time tomorrow for that. Boy, would that be a load off. Also, “Unclean Waterfowl” (heh…thank you, Pooch) still owes me information that will help my crew and I update one of his websites, but if he doesn’t get it to me before I leave, I guess he’ll be waiting an additional week. Not like I really feel bad for the son of a bitch at this point, because I am having serious thoughts about cutting him loose and sticking exclusively to projects for my day job and my former employer, and telling everyone else to go away, cause we’re, like, closed.

I want a couple of new video games. They’ve honestly kept me sane over the last few weeks, those tasty golden nuggets of time when I can lay back and play some mindless game for a couple hours. Specifically, I want to pick up Tomb Raider Legend for the Xbox360 (which I was wanting anyway after playing the excellent demo, but especially now that my friend Pooch — who just got a 360 himself — confirms that it’s a fun time)…and Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX for the PSP. The latter I was really hoping to get before our vacation because I could pass the time playing it while sitting around on those boring flights and in the airports. I’m expecting a $50 rebate on the laser printer I bought in March to get here any day, but of course it wasn’t in the mail this afternoon, so I went home empty-handed. It’s funny, actually, because I’m owed money from a whole bunch of people, and I either A) haven’t had time to invoice them or B) have been told “the check is in the mail” but haven’t got it yet. So I dunno what I’ll do, just sit here I guess.

Speaking of games, I traded in Project Gotham Racing 3 so I could buy Oblivion, and now I discover that Microsoft has released a car upgrade pack for PGR3 that adds, among other rides, the 2006 GTO. GROAAANNN. Now I, what, have to buy PGR3 back again? Misthaufen.

Can’t believe it’s almost 9:00 already. I’d at least like to get back to playing Oblivion, but my better judgment compels me to write the Frequently Asked Questions page for the section of the website I’ve spent the whole day on, because it’s the last page I have to do before my vacation (and before we deploy this thing). Only problem is, I haven’t got a clue what questions would be frequently asked about this product, so it’ll be like pulling teeth to actually put any content down. Sigh. Well, I guess I could at least spend until 10:00 on it, that’s over an hour. By then I’ll either be finished or so completely sick of it that any further efforts will be rendered totally useless by my exasperation.

Hmm…I really feel like doing some writing. Maybe snarking up a few of my old stories. Hmm, while thoughtfully reminiscing about this subject I lost ten minutes, so I better stop…ten minutes are hard to spare around here lately.

Later, blokes.

Categorized as Life, Randomness