Kate's paternal Grandma passed away yesterday around lunchtime. A formidable lady, even after 90 years. She died peacefully in her sleep at a nursing home she loved to hate. Everyone's holding up well. Inlaws are on their way back.
And so onto Kate, or Sickface as I like to call her these days. Kate's life pattern is quite simple: Wake up a few times each night. Get up about 11/12. Feel sick for 4 hours. Walk dog. Feel exhausted. Sit down. Fall asleep. Wake up when I get in. Stuff a little nosh onto her moosh. Fall asleep. Be very awake. Go to bed. It's the life of a Sickface. Every day, she's getting better - she's now eating chocolate again, which is a good sign.
Last weekend, I started the change of the study into a nursery by moving the bookshelves out. Loading and unloading the books took forever. There is so much furniture in the house, it's difficult to find anywhere to put it but I think we've won - turning the living room into more of a library. I also sorted out the garden, did several shopping trips and made space in the loft. Cream crackered. Tonight looks like it will be a mass cleanup before the outlaws arrive tomorrow. Gah! It never ends.
My Easter is chopped into two with a gliding weekend slapped into the middle of it. Which is a bit of a bummer because my four day holiday is shortened a lot. It will be nice because I'll get to see people I don't normally see because of our duties being of different weekends. It's also not a big problem because of the lovely Wales holiday that's incoming.
Last week, I reconcilled with Gareth over the phone. I doubt we'll ever be as close as we had been but at least there's no more bad blood. His wife-to-be doesn't like me, aparently. Which is fair enough.
My bass banjo is in the UK, so I'm now waiting for ParcelForce / UK customs to get their shit sorted and I'll be the proud owner of a funktastic plinky plonk bass banjo. An early Birthday prezzie methinks.
I'm still trying not to buy GH:WT still. I think I might enjoy the singing bit but am still not sure whether it is worth the cash. The tracks included are quite bizarre, not nearly as good as the previous games.
Chom Isis bug fixing is going really well and I am now going through some new features and overhaulling the Stats system as my original solution was, well, rubbish. Once that is done, I'll open up a bugger-about Beta for anyone who wants a fiddle while I sort out the guide and maybe do some Youtube video walkthroughs.
Icar's next version is ticking along. I've done some new graphics (most of which you've seen) and updated others at a higher resolution. It's going to be a top book when it's finished. The best quality free RPG? Time will tell.
To help with my graphical exploits, I've purchased a Wacom Bamboo tablet (although it was only 60 quid in PCWorld, shocker!). It's much better than the old Genius tablet and I've already found some huge benefit in drawing the new pawn faces for the next update of CI3.
I've been doing some freelance in the gaps too... one of the clients is a pain in the arse and we might drop them - even in these economically difficult times. They essentially want a full time developer but do not want to pay for one. Good ones are, after all, very very expensive.
Still not managed to get Ubuntu running on Mum's old Inspiron 2600. They have a long way to go before those installers truly are user friendly. If I struggle with it, christ knows what normal users do. It's a pot luck. If your hardware happens to work as they assume, you will be up and running quickly, if not, you're fucked. I'll probably give up and put XP onto it.
The bi-weekly L4D fixes have cured my habit of Fishconning - particularly making up for the one I missed. It goes to show that with a bit of organisation - or even the right technology - we can get together for a side-shudderingly good laugh. It cements the reason we're mates in the first place: we enjoy each other's company and make each other laugh. Sitting here writing this, EMW roaring BEEEFCAAAAKE in my ears and Pete calling ACHTUNG! has made me chuckle. I'd like to expand that over other games - not to a high level of play like Dwain and Aggro do - but to get a little variety. When we do eventually tire of L4D, I don't want it to stop there but to continue to roll.
I'm still writing my novel. About 40k words. I'll get to 50 and then refactor, review, revise and release to you lovely people.
I've got nowhere with SPP, except a deep desire to play the thing.
Work is meh. Less meh than before but there seems to be a gulf between the corporate view of the world and reality.
That's it.