Monthly Archives: May 2007

Scratch Pad May 9

9:15:

So: the pressure is now off, unless something drastic happens. I’ve got a good version of the dictionary without US/UK spelling issues (as far as possible in the game words), questionable game words removed and the same in definitions replaced; all levels balanced. Now it’s tweaking, looking at words to see if I’m happy with the progression, double and triple-checking everything. I sent both last night’s version (the one currently loaded) and ths morning’s version (all known errors fixed) to our ESRB rep this morning; I’m waiting for a reply concerning changes or issues, but that may take a while.

9:47:

It feels odd to be kind of making work for myself after focusing so hard for the past couple of weeks.

11:01:

Five minutes ago they handed me a DS and asked me to play, and I found a bug for them. Heh. (Or maybe I just confirmed it. Whichever — go me.)

11:30:

I’ve been staring at -ise and -ize suffixes for so long that I can no longer tell what’s right and what isn’t — they all look wrong to me.

13:39:

I spent my lunch hour browsing in the new Welch’s second-hand bookstore location, and came out with an armful of books. Then I bought a vanilla soda and half a dozen bagels. I’m going to miss this area. I am definitely going to make an effort to come out here at least once a month for lunch with the gang.

14:01:

Yup. I’m going to miss this. I won’t miss the loss of two and a half hours a day to commuting, though, and I’m looking forward to not missing Liam so much. And I miss working on my own stuff, too. I’ve been sitting in bed at night with my laptop reading through the Vivaldi story and Swan Sister on my breaks, and my interest in them is slowly being revived again. I just wish there were more places around where I live where I could go sit and drink tea and write, in order to get myself out of the house.

14:05:

Stewart’s Cream Soda is SO GOOD. It is positively addictive. I’m glad HRH picked this instead of the lime soda by accident for me two weeks ago, because it has allowed me to discover the wonderfulness of it. I usually find cream soda much too sweet, but this is very smooth. And did I mention addictive? This one is gone much too soon. (Checking the clock I see that it’s been forty-five minutes since I started it, but it feels sooner because now I have no vanilla soda, and I am lonely…)

14:11:

They’re progammed a sound into the game that’s a kitten’s meow, and it’s amusing but distracting. I think of Stella every time I hear it, or as HRH has dubbed her, “Darroch’s little monster”.

14:37:

There is a world of difference between misspelling something and mistyping it. Just thought I’d share that. (So I have lousy typing ability. I can’t be perfect.)

14:48:

Just came back from a brief ice cream break with Meallanmouse. I had a small cup of chocolate, but I should have had a small cup of soft-serve. We also picked up vanilla soda, from a different company. Not As Good. Still, it is vanilla soda.

15:29:

Heh — they’ve just asked me to do a sound test. They want to record fifty-odd definitions. Naturally this occurs forty-five minutes after I have eaten ice cream, so I am all gunked up.

15:50:

Not happening today anyway; no time in the studio. They’ve also asked me to be the on-site consultant regarding the pronunciation of the competition words at the Friday recording session, as t! is away that day.

15:51:

Working on this contract has also really sharpened my desire to read again, particularly theological and spiritual texts. It’s like the analytical and critical part of my brain was kicked back into life.

16:41:

Looks like this sound test will happen Monday — so voila, my contract has been somewhat extended, even if only by one day. This has to be officially confirmed, of course, but it seems logical to me.

Scratch Pads May 7 and 8

The scratch pads at work have seen scarce use these past two days as I’ve been over my ears in work and staying as focused as possible. But here’s what did get jotted down:

May 7:

8:56:

I made pancakes this morning, inspired by Blade’s breakfast on Sunday. It went over very well; Liam ate more at this breakfast than he has at breakfast in weeks There is enough batter left over to do it again in a couple of days, too. My pancakes aren’t usually this fluffy; apparently all the planets aligned in a particular way this morning.

10:52:

“Armadillos range from South America to the southern part of the US.” Really? Those are well-traveled armadillos. WORD CHOICE AND ORDER COUNT, people.


May 8:

Had a pancake again this morning. I really enjoy it when the whole family eats breakfast together. Liam likes putting syrup on one of his silver dollar pancakes, topping it with a second, and eating it like a sandwich. Not as successful is trying to eat this sandwich by impaling it on a fork and lifting it to his mouth.

So very tired. What with working on the laptop at home on other work at night once dinner in finished, my brain’s not getting a chance to rest.

Was suddenly ravenous at 10 AM despite having had a sit-down breakfast again, and descended upon the cafe to forage. Ended up with a delicious square thing for my coffee break — a shortbread crust, with brownie on top. Also a hot chocolate. And yet, curiously enough I have not gained any weight while eating lunch out every day. (This isn’t necessarily a good thing. I was hoping to see the scale creep up a bit.)

14:23:

shopsoiled lotus (no, this should mean nothing to you, it’s a note to myself)

16:35:

Overheard: “Yay, you worked all day to get it broken.” (Yes, we’re on a build deadline, how did you guess?)

Today’s amusing link: The Austenblog points us to a fantasy Jane Austen action film.

Also, weather? Ridiculous. Three weeks ago there was snow on the ground. We hit a high of 27 degrees C today. Enjoyable, but alarming.

Sunday Morning

Liam has been sick for four or five days now, and he’s pretty fed up with it. He’s better, but cranky in general. Every once in a while he will just stop what he’s doing to just stand there and cry, and you can tell it’s the “I’m tired, and I’m tired of being sick, and I hate my teeth too just for good measure” kind of crying.

He was ricocheting around my office this morning, being magpie-like and bringing all sorts of things from different places to stack on my lap: a tablet of music manuscript paper, my Hedwig folder of random music, a small plate with an owl on it, my statue of Horus, two cassette tapes, his little Matchbox fire truck, a chopstick… anything that caught his eye. Then he started playing with the Velcro closing on the bow pocket of my cello case, so I put all my email stuff on hold and said, “Liam, I have a treat for you, but you have to go into the living room and be quiet for it.” He ran into the living room, very excited, and I pulled the viola out of my cupboard.

Now, this viola only has the top three strings, and it’s missing a soundpost, and the bow hair has pulled mostly out of the ferrule; in short, it needs work before it could ever seriously be played. But a two year old cares nothing for such things.

I set the case down on the floor of the living room and Liam crouched next to me, watching as I unlatched it and opened the lid. Right away he beamed and his hand darted out to strum the strings. I lifted it out and did a rough tuning to make sure the strings were at least in tune with each other for him (and for our benefit too). He bounced around, and we asked him to quiet down again before letting him explore it without endangering it. Then I told him to go get his little chair, but there were height issues so he sat on the ground instead, and I gave him his very own cello.

He was absolutely thrilled, and was very careful with it as he plucked with both hands while singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”. The notes were nothing like the song, of course, but he knew what he was doing: he was playing music and singing along.

We let him play until he started getting too physical with it, and a little frustrated because he couldn’t make it sound the way he wanted to. Then we put it to bed in its case and said night-night to the baby cello.

I have such an awesome son.

Scratch Pad May 4

9:03:

Gah. Another night of 4 1/2 hours of sleep. Liam woke up at quarter to six, which is better than yesterday’s five-thirty. It wouldn’t be so bad if I wasn’t working in the evenings at home, too, and going to bed late.

9:04:

Oh, thank gods — the file mailed correctly and arrived here safe and sound. I don’t know what I would have done if it hadn’t arrived or had arrived corrupted somehow. Cried inside and gone home to work on it, I suppose.

9:05:

Happy birthday, John David!

10:04:

Wow. The French dictionary team is having a worse time than I’ve had; their structure is much more rigid.

11:10:

Hee hee hee — I was just a guinea pig for the Wii remote, as I am “someone not of a technological bent”. I got to test some movement values. It was a pink remote, which amuses me immensely.

11:43:

I am aghast. This dictionary still uses the no longer academically accepted BC/AD abbreviations, instead of the BCE/CE.

12:10:

Eating (a surprisingly good) lunch at my desk, having regretfully cancelled a lunch date with the guitarist from Invisible (I know, I know — I can hear the band’s fans screaming in disbelief) because I want to make sure this is done and handed in by five. If I’m not done today, everyone else gets backed up too. When I went downstairs to get my sandwich there were a pair of guitarists practicing in the cafe, playing some really nice laid-back warm afternoon coffeehouse-type jazz. Made me wish I didn’t have to come back upstairs to work.

12:29:

Ceri sent me to see this picture. Maybe that’s how this dictionary got so awful.

13:45:

Overheard: “Screw the washing machine, get the PS3.”

13:46:

Starting to go a bit wonky. I’ll take a short walk when it’s done. I have another 150 words to find definitions for; four hundred down. Drive! Drive!

16:43:

It will never end. Every time I run a check I lose words, so I have to sift through the removed ones to find some to put back in, or tweak them to make them usable. I rebalance the totals. The I run my next check, and I lose more. It’s on ongoing cascade effect that wil keel mee dedd. *headdesk*

17:39:

Still here. Am bitter and determined now. It will be done today, damn it.

18:59:

IT IS DONE! WOO-HOO!

(also? Nice overtime this week. Go me.)

Scratch Pad May 3

11:42:
Now it’s a game. Can I transfer a certain number of words to another level to make the numbers even out? (If I think of it as a game, it’s fun.)

13:35:
Lunch out with the gang! I will have make the effort to come downtown semi-regularly once this contract is up simply for the lunches.

14:51:
The entire room emptied out to surprise our assistant producer in the cafe, as it is his birthday. Very cool. I am now back as I have a pile of work to do before tomorrow afternoon, and I am the only one in the room, which is eerie.

16:15:
I cannot believe this pile of work that persists in not going anywhere fast. It’s all about adding a word here, taking one away there, shifting between the levels to keep things at the target numbers… but there are still over three hundred missing. I am not bitter about the loss of the supplemental dictionary, but I could be if I dwell on it too long. It comes down to adding as many new words as possible, then doing a reverse casade thing where I move blocks into higher levels and look for lower level words to replace them, over and over.

22:47:
Yes, I am at home, and am slogging through this redistribution and inserting words into various levels, readjusting, inserting, readjusting… I’m not going to bed until my target levels are within ten or so words for each level. That gives me enough room to lose more for various reasons. Figures this would happen today, when I got three secondhand cello books in the mail that I won on eBay and want to play through them. Liam has a very definite cold, and is back on his cold syrup. It’s almost gone; there will be just enough to send to daycare with him tomorrow before I have to pick up more. He’s not happy and he’s kind of off his feed, but he’s not deathly ill enough to keep home. (Good thing, because I can’t stay home, and neither can HRH after taking Wednesday off for Liam and Tuesday off for the car.)

11:17:
There; done. Tomorrow, I get definitions for the five hundred-odd new words and make sure they’re within the specified length. That’s all I have to do before sending it to the people who need to upload it, to make the demo ready for next week. I say “all” but I know damn well I’m going to be working insanely hard, and taking a short lunch in order to get it done by five.

Now: bed.

Scratch Pad May 2

Happy anniversary, HRH! Eight years ago today we became engaged. I still haven’t completely forgiven you for proposing when I was exhausted and sticky from spilling apple juice on myself during our pause to rest in the middle of a long bike ride on a ridiculously hot day.

9:28:
I just mistyped “polygamist” as “ploygamist”.

9:44:
“Sleep”: something I only got 4 1/2 hours of last night, because of working on the tarot kit review (thus my brain was still active and wouldn’t shut up till after midnight), and waking up early before 5:00 thanks to intuition, twenty minutes before Liam’s asthma woke him up. Poor little guy is at home today, with HRH staying home from work to be with him.

9:51:
Craving all sorts of bread today.

10:01:
I am engaged in a morphological process. I love my job.

12:55:
Back from lunch and had to take a tour around the desks to dodge the cluster of guys playing Guitar Hero.

14:03:
I have just made sure that “cowbell” is restored to the dictionary. This dictionary: now with more cowbell!

16:01:
Okay; now it’s all about moving things around to even out the numbers. Ugh.

16:35:
I got an email dictated by Liam:
“Happy! Down wa car caarr oh hoo a a Liam Ma Ma Juice….Nemo!”
It made me smile. Apparently he had a nap that was just shy of three hours this afternoon. I’m not surprised.

Scratch Pad May 1

9:43:
I’ve just read that Boo has passed away! I’m sitting here in the office trying not to cry. He was a wonderful bunny, and gave Liam so much pleasure at the caregiver’s. He will be sadly, sadly missed.

9:44:
Beltane today. At least it’s sunny. I’m so sad about Boo that I’ve lost the cheerfulness I had earlier about the holiday.

11:40:
Life is playing Calvinball with my poor husband’s brain. Interviews, no interviews, job leads, more job leads… at least no one is pressing him for a decision nownownow, so he can explore all of them properly.

13:08:
Mmm. Every time I have the quesadillas at the Mexican restaurant here, they’re different in a totally delicious way. Today the onions were caramelized. Although for once, I couldn’t finish it, possibly because I didn’t have breakfast until 10ish. Had the pleasure of Scott’s company at lunch today too; very enjoyable indeed.

13:47:
Have I mentioned how appalled I am about the incorrect that/which usage?

13:49:
Somehow a bunch of the final level words were marked to be edited when most of them were OK. Hmm. Must have had my finger on the wrong button while I sorted things mechanically one day.

15:35:
DONE!

16:05:
And now we scramble to replace the words we’ve had to remove. Lots of copy/pasting, and math to see if we’re closing in on our target numbers. Friday is our deadline. It would have been easy if we hadn’t encountered that double setback.

16:54:
Enough. To public transport, and to continue reading Diana Wynne Jones’ The Pinhoe Egg (a Chrestomanci book! about Cat!).