(no subject)
Life has been pretty busy since Prague. Not in the wildly exciting tripping around Europe sense, but just in the 'always doing something' sense.
Work's been ticking over, with most days fitting within the accepted 9-6 hours and some amount of make-work happening. We released Duels of the Planeswalkers last Wednesday, and there have been over 100,000 sales on xbox alone since then, so everyone is pretty pleased. There was an unfortunate incident where we had some hidden content inside the game which hackers gained access to, but it looks like we have mostly weathered that now. We had a massive party at the local pub Wednesday night on the company's bill, where about 40-50 of us managed to spend £1200, mainly on alcohol. One guy ended up diving in to the river and I said that I would go in if people could get me in. They tried, and it turned out that they couldn't, so I was able to stay dry! My job appears to involve a lot of reading bug forums at the moment, though, and tracking down anything genuine that people are finding in the wild so that it can be fixed at a later point. And testing other projects, of course.
And in my other job (judging, of course), things have been going smoothly. The weekend after Prague I was the head judge for a two day event in Gravesend which involved a PTQ. Attendance was terrible, and we don't think that Gravesend will be getting another of these for quite some time as a result. However, everything went very smoothly, and the poor attendance meant that I was at least able to get home in the evening of the bank holiday Monday rather than trying to hurry back in time for work the next morning. The next weekend I was the head judge for another PTQ in Chesham, which I was conveniently able to tie in with visiting my parents and both sets of grandparents. I was a little more worried about this one for a number of reasons; the last Chesham PTQ had been one of the largest ever held in the UK, there was no highly experienced judge as the tournament organizer in the event that I messed up, and one of the judges on my team had been on my team at Gravesend and had been very difficult to work with. On the day the numbers were reasonable (a little disappointing, truth be told, but it turns out that this has been common all over the world at the moment because people hate the current format. As a result, some cards have been banned, and it's changing), there were no major problems, and the potential problem judge was like working with a different person. So pretty good, all round.
And finally I have acquired a third facet to my life (ok, it's still related to Magic, but give me this one?). Over the course of encounters at a number of recent European events, one of the French (well, technically Russian, but he's lived in Paris for 10 years) judges and I have finally decided to date. We decided to go for it the weekend of the Isle of Wight festival, when he came to visit me here, and the next weekend I spent in Paris with him. Having to cross the sea twice to see each other is something of a novelty, but it's going to be interesting to see where this goes. I think we have vague plans to next see each other after Irish and French nationals at the end of July, and after that we'll be spending a week together in Pennsylvania at the end of August between a couple of Magic events out there. The flip side of this is that David has now quit judging as a result.
TL;DR - work is still going well, judging is going very well, and I'm now dating an overseas judge. Woop!
Work's been ticking over, with most days fitting within the accepted 9-6 hours and some amount of make-work happening. We released Duels of the Planeswalkers last Wednesday, and there have been over 100,000 sales on xbox alone since then, so everyone is pretty pleased. There was an unfortunate incident where we had some hidden content inside the game which hackers gained access to, but it looks like we have mostly weathered that now. We had a massive party at the local pub Wednesday night on the company's bill, where about 40-50 of us managed to spend £1200, mainly on alcohol. One guy ended up diving in to the river and I said that I would go in if people could get me in. They tried, and it turned out that they couldn't, so I was able to stay dry! My job appears to involve a lot of reading bug forums at the moment, though, and tracking down anything genuine that people are finding in the wild so that it can be fixed at a later point. And testing other projects, of course.
And in my other job (judging, of course), things have been going smoothly. The weekend after Prague I was the head judge for a two day event in Gravesend which involved a PTQ. Attendance was terrible, and we don't think that Gravesend will be getting another of these for quite some time as a result. However, everything went very smoothly, and the poor attendance meant that I was at least able to get home in the evening of the bank holiday Monday rather than trying to hurry back in time for work the next morning. The next weekend I was the head judge for another PTQ in Chesham, which I was conveniently able to tie in with visiting my parents and both sets of grandparents. I was a little more worried about this one for a number of reasons; the last Chesham PTQ had been one of the largest ever held in the UK, there was no highly experienced judge as the tournament organizer in the event that I messed up, and one of the judges on my team had been on my team at Gravesend and had been very difficult to work with. On the day the numbers were reasonable (a little disappointing, truth be told, but it turns out that this has been common all over the world at the moment because people hate the current format. As a result, some cards have been banned, and it's changing), there were no major problems, and the potential problem judge was like working with a different person. So pretty good, all round.
And finally I have acquired a third facet to my life (ok, it's still related to Magic, but give me this one?). Over the course of encounters at a number of recent European events, one of the French (well, technically Russian, but he's lived in Paris for 10 years) judges and I have finally decided to date. We decided to go for it the weekend of the Isle of Wight festival, when he came to visit me here, and the next weekend I spent in Paris with him. Having to cross the sea twice to see each other is something of a novelty, but it's going to be interesting to see where this goes. I think we have vague plans to next see each other after Irish and French nationals at the end of July, and after that we'll be spending a week together in Pennsylvania at the end of August between a couple of Magic events out there. The flip side of this is that David has now quit judging as a result.
TL;DR - work is still going well, judging is going very well, and I'm now dating an overseas judge. Woop!