Diary of an up and coming sociopath

Welcome to day 2 of Snow Watch 2004 - I can confirm the rumours that I am stuck in Leamington with no hope of escaping, for now. Food supplies and morale remain at pretty good levels, though I did eat the last of my Chocolate Fingers yesterday, so the boots are looking ever tastier.

I can’t say I didn’t expect it. Aqua don’t need me to work today, so I could’ve braved the drive back to Oxford last night, but it was more than likely going to get me killed, so instead I didn’t bother and stayed here watching Futurama commentaries. It made me glad for my foresight, really; “When stuck at home,” I thought, “Futurama DVDs might be a good idea.” I’m not the kind of person who enjoys crowing about how right I am, but only in the sense that it happens so often to brag about it would be pointless. I’ll let the results speak for themselves.

Yesterday was again, golf testing fun. I found a whole bunch of bugs - so many that there was no reason for me to come in today because it’d require a long time to fix them all. Tomorrow should be my final day, though part of me suspects there’s a chance I’ll have to go back for a day or two next week…

Still, I’m not one to refuse money, even if it does occasionally cause gross inconvenience. I had planned originally, to go back home yesterday, do a lecture and spend some time with Nikki today, then go back to finish the testing on Friday, but between work and weather there wasn’t really a chance of getting that sorted. I suppose, in truth, had I been in Oxford the weather would’ve been too bad to go to the lecture and indeed, too bad for me to come back home and finish off the work. Therefore, this work would not have covered the cost of my monitor, which waits patiently for me to return to it and drink in the shining glory of a new screen.

Part of yesterday’s job was to record myself playing “Retro Games” for the master disk submission. I’m not entirely sure why, but when you send off a game to be mastered, someone, (Sony? The Publisher?) wants a VHS of about 5 minutes of the game being played. I had a quick blast on all the retro games, and to secure immortality (or at least, spread my influence) I put “JRH” in on one of the score screens. I did skip through the others though. I also got to see my “Testing and Level Design” credit which was cool, because now I can add some more lies to my CV!

I’ve spent today recovering from gaming. I looked in the mirror this morning to discover a huge amount of bloodshotness in one eye, which I can only blame on over-testing. I wonder how much compansation I’ll get if I go blind. I watched the new Angel episode this morning, and then considered going to Stratford. In the end, common sense prevailed because even if I lived to get the Stratford and back, and the shop was even open, there weren’t many comics I wanted to buy.

Just before writing this entry, I listened to a new CD which I bought online - a Liars EP called “Fins to make us more Fish-Like”. It’s like a headache being played on instruments. I’m not sure I’m loving it as much as their album, to be honest. I’m planning to buy their new single to see where they’re going musically and then deliberate on the new album. A concept album about witches? I’m not convinced. It doesn’t matter though, Easyworld’s new album is finally out next week - it’s been many months since I first heard it so it’ll be a little strange to see it on the shelves, but the success of Til the Day should mean that it does quite well. I played Rob some tracks form it the other day, and even he admitted it was good where we usually have heavily differing tastes, so obviously there’s some hope for it.