A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

I have a negative bank balance for the first time. I am not pleased; I mailed in my deposit six days ago. Gonna call em and see if I can learn more. (I just did; they don't know anything about it. Sigh.)

If there's any time to kiss the bottom of the barrel I guess it's now, the week that I start earning money again. I have decided that I will give WedThuFri over to contract work, at least until circumstances direct otherwise.

Yesterday went well. I mostly sat and watched another fellow create a sandbox environment on the PC I'll be using. This took a long time, and I wrote more here about why it took a long time but then I remembered that I'm under an NDA and I should probably cool it. (I think this is the first time I've been under NDA while actively blogging. Fairly certain that Harvard didn't much care what you talked about.) Anyway, I'm mostly set up now, or anyway set up enough to start learning the system. This will take weeks, probably.

Yesterday's Gameshelf shoot was great. Due to unexpected drama knocking an hour off the schedule we had time only to shoot Werewolf and the opening skit, but it all went very well. You'll like it. Even the grumpy crew commented repeatedly about what a good shoot it was. Don't expect a finished show this month, though. We still need to shoot the host segments, and then I need to edit it together. As I have already written, I want to put this to one side and concentrate on Volity. Not for nine months again, but for a little bit.

The drama came about because a wooden clothespin holding a filter in front of a studio light caught fire. Nobody noticed this, but the smoke detector sure did, and so did the subsequent firefighters. I took the singed pin home; an interesting memento.

Also interesting: among the crowd of firemen who showed up was a fire chief, and he was dressed in the usual garb except where the others' heavy clothes and helmets were the usual black-and-yellow, his was all white, including a white helmet. It was oddly cinematic.

I haven't signed the contract yet, but I'm nonetheless sitting in daerr's office. More miscommunication; the fellow who'll act as my main customer contact (the company itself being my customer) hasn't shown up yet or answered my email from yesterday so I don't have anything to do.

And of course the usual "first day at work" elation dissolves away because I'm not getting paid for this. If I were a bastard I'd bill for this time sitting around picking my nose, but I am not a bastard. I guess actually I should just go home if he doesn't appear in the next hour or so. But, whatev; it's nice to be very quite almost in a money-earning state again. Nearly.

I saw colorwheel for the first time in 999 years last night and according to tahnan there was international espionage afoot but our cover story is that I was paying her back for bagels.

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I have been helping a friend with a secret project. It is fun to play the role of beta tester for once, instead of begging it out of others.

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Cave Story is a charming game, a free 2-D platformer/adventure designed, programmed, and artwork'd by, if I understand correctly, a single Japanese hobbyist who goes by the pseudonym "Pixel". An excellent English fan-translation is available, but it's unfortunately hard to get get going since you have to download the Japanese-language app and then download and run a separate program that patches the first app with English. Because I am incredibly lazy, weeks passed between rserocki first recommending this game to me and my finally setting it up.

The game structure is oddly reminiscent of the "Ratchet & Clank" series for Playstation, in that it's a platformer where you advance by unlocking new worlds to explore and gathering an ever-growing collection of ridiculous firearms that you can individually power up through several levels. It's entirely different in presentation and personality, though.

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Had an incredible game of Gnostica at dictator555 and classicaljunkie's equinoxical thing last weekend. It was hard to get into because two players were newbies, and one of the newbies was also one of the hosts and kept having to get up. But the newbies were very smart and caught on quickly and after a couple of hours (!) of confusion we had a couple more hours (!!) of frantic, violent fun. Things went back and forth so much that we actually attracted a crowd. Whenever someone new came to see what everyone was watching, there'd be this conversation:

New person: "What are they playing?"
Person who has been watching us for a while: "I have no idea."

It was also the first Gnostica game I've played since I don't know when where I didn't need to look at the rulebook once. I definitely want to play this game more.

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Had a nice Volity meeting Monday. I feel we're done with the first half of the rev system construction. Onward.

I have been ignoring the rest of the Volity world while working on this. It can't be helped. The success or failure of Volity Games as a commercial venture is absolutely bound to this system, and until we launch it nobody knows. I want to collapse the goddamn waveform already.

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Visiting the company again tomorrow, on my seven-week anniversary of my first interview with them, to talk with more people. I told the person who mailed me that I look forward to it but added that I've started looking elsewhere as well. My friends within the company heard about this from the company's internal rumor mill, except it had it that I already had a start date established. Huh?! Kind of sad.

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Gameshelf shoot tonight! Werewolf, if enough people show up. I'm a little nervous about this... never before have I attempted to herd so many cats. I have an Plan B if too many people flake, but I'd rather go with Plan A, thanks.