The blahs were helped along last week by a project deadline that was fast approaching. It was completed Friday morning, to a bit of surprise at the time, but less so in looking back at the source of the problem I kept running into. Said project is a data importer: taking a rival product and turning it into our own on the database side. The importer kept giving me a foreign key error when trying to insert some rows as it was assigning tickets to invoices. The frustrating thing was that when I'd look at the database logs it was sending nothing but null data. Eventually got around the issue by making sure that the data it was attempting to insert was in the database to begin with. I should not have been surprised when this worked, but I was.

There has been a bit of slacking since then. Mostly I'm waiting for when a test import can happen. Either at the end of this week or next, depending on when the clients are ready.

My creative side is a bitch to deal with. I have been wanting to go back over my nano entry and do the edit and rewrite it needs but instead I find myself working on the Warhammer campaign. So far I have a good portion of the outline of events completed and need to start working on getting some of the details written and creatures stat'd out. I keep trying to figure out if there is some sort of overall story I want the players to tell or if it nothing more than a random series of events. Mostly up to this point, I thought it was a combination of the two, but now? Now, I keep trying to lean closer to the first option. But it is not always easy to get players (who want this to be entertaining) to also get into the storytelling aspect of things (which is not always the entertaining part). I am hoping that with the way I have set up this set of adventures it will be a bit easier for them to do so. I have them discovering the existence of Skaven, a race of rat-creatures which can talk, cast magic, and walk on their hind legs. They will also be going into the middle of a clan war between the greenskins and beastmen in the region of the world known as Tilea. I get to introduce all sorts of interesting things like Skaven mages and beastman shaman.

The on my own part above is in reference to my wife being in Vegas for CES. Her gaming site, Gaming Angels was able to get passes for her and two others to go. I think it is pretty cool for her and I find myself a little bit jealous. I could use a few days off to run around the toy aisles like that. But I'm on contract now, so every hour not working is money out of my pocket.

Which reminds me, I can finally talk about this.

The company I was working for got bought up by eBay/StubHub. Mostly the latter one more than the former. As such I went from employee to contractor. The rate is okay. A few bucks more after paying my own taxes than I was making before, but not enough to take account of retirement savings or other benefits I was getting. The contract lasts until the end of March after which I either go back to the agency I came out of (the woman I worked with there told me I was more than welcomed to come back at that point to sit on their "bench" if necessary) or they re-up me or I become and employee. I don't see that last option happening right now. Hopefully, if they do re-up, I will be in a good spot to ask for a higher rate. It is only after my first invoice and check did I realize why contractors charge the rates that they do. Vacation? Need to save. Retirement? Need to save.

Anyways for the next few days it's me, two dogs, two cats and a lot of Fable II. Or Gears 2. Or WotLK. Or playing the L5R card game. Or solo Arkham Horror. Or...well, you get the idea.

Note to self: Finish bottling the beer. It came out perfect. Beautiful, rich gold color. Wonderful head when poured. Slightly sweeter than I would have liked but there not be any lack of hoppiness in the brew. I had some with a bowl of homemade potato soup. It was very, very good. Made sure to give myself some more head room in the bottles that I put the test into. Still carbonated just fine. No explosions. The relations who got to sample were quite happy with the results as well. I guess I can always fall back on being a brewmeister if the civilized world comes to an end.