journal for 2003-03-27
zelda
Well, I got Zelda. It’s awesome.
I got up early on Tuesday and went down to the Broad and Guetter bus stop to catch the 0615 to the mall—but it turned out that the 0615 F bus goes to the airport instead. I said, “Hey does this bus go to the mall?” The driver pointed at the sign. Grr! The 0645 didn’t, either! When I asked that driver, he said that it would be 0815 before the first F bus to the mall, but suggested I take the A to the PPL building and then the D or K. I did, and I got there around 0715, well in advance of EBX’s 0800 opening.
The bus home wouldn’t arrive until 0840, so I wandered around the mall. Nothing was open, and the old people were there walking laps. What depressing exercise! The obvious Dawn of the Dead images kept coming back to me. “They just know this place was important to them.” I poked my head back into EBX for a while and ended up picking up some used games, too.
In the end, I got home with Zelda, State of Emergency, .hack, and DM BMX2. I’ve only played the first two, and I haven’t played much State of Emergency, really. I’m not sure whether it’s going to turn out to be a fun diversion or if it’s just as shallow as it seems at first. It’s a real button-masher.
Zelda, though, is a masterpiece. You can read my rantings at $gs, if you’re interested. I played it nearly all day on Tuesday, most of the day on Wednesday, and for a few hours, today. I’ve reached a point, I think, where I’m no longer fawning over its newness. I think my gameplay will slow quickly over the next few days. I hope I can manage to avoid my usual get-to-the-end-then-stop mentality and actually beat Ganon when I get to the final battle.
work
I think I’m nearly done with my recent bout of spec-writing. I’ve got one approved and two waiting for approval. I’m already implementing on the first project, but the latter two will require more pre-code planning. I’ve done some estimating, but I fear that it may not be quite right. MASH, the ticket-tracker, is due to become much more configurable; I’m hoping to start by storing Perl in the database and possibly later create a little language for configuration and hooks. Obviously, that single feature is scheduled to take up quite a lot of development time. Since it’s not extremely urgent, I’ll probably have to hardcode a lot of things that will just be ripped out later, to get previous milestones up and running. Arrgh!
I’m hoping Matt Ayres will come by on Monday and that talk of TVLand will interest him. Ah, a competant second coder!
I got my expenses for OSCON 2003 approved. I have a list of the courses I want to take, and I’m hoping to send in the registration form and check on Monday. I need to talk to our travel agency about a quote for the flight, and possibly for the hotel. I figure I’ll probably end up finding out that Expedia is cheaper. I should ask the hotel if they have convention rates.
I am really stoked about going. Getting to attend the State of the Onion and the lightning talks is likely to be Quite Awesome.