It's hard to believe it's July already. On one hand, we're getting to the coldest part of the year - this week has been absolutely freezing. On the other hand, the days are supposedly lengthening, but we won't actually notice a difference until much, much later. It's still depressing getting up in the dark and coming home in the dark.

Work has been incredibly busy. I'm finding myself having more responsibility, which is great and all, but it means I have to attend more meetings when sometimes all I want to do is just sit and program in silence, har har. Despite being busy though, I'm still enjoying where I am and what I'm doing.

I had Burger King for dinner for the first time in ages, and I'm reminded why I don't eat Burger King often.

It's gross.

Now that I have heaps of time on my hands, I've lined up a healthy set of games to keep me occupied: Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2 (don't hate), Final Fantasy XII, Kingdom Hearts and my most recent purchase, Portal 2, thanks to a Steam Summer Sale. That'll keep me going for a few months!

I've been to two birthday dinners this week, and boy am I stuffed. First was at Cinta with Charlotte, second at the Flying Burrito Bros with Ritu, both with lots of people and food and delicious moist cake. Ritu's cake was from Cha, which surprised me because I heard the Cha cakes were traps, but apparently not. The cream does taste rather artificial though, so as long as it's in moderation, it's okay.

I'll be burning off all that food at the badminton court tomorrow anyway.

Last night at 1am, the couple in the apartment above me decided it would be the opportune moment to have a domestic argument, firing F-Bombs every second word for a good 30 minutes or so. Being in the semi-conscious state I was, my first thought was "oh geez I hope I don't have to call the cops" followed by anxiously waiting for gunshot sounds. Sigh.

My horrendously bad Starcraft II streak continues. FML. I'm pretty sure I'm the worst player at work :(!

The weather has taken a turn for the worse, with bitterly cold wind and rain attacking the city for most of the week. Today was the first day I had to wear my polyprops. I have to say, the awesome jacket and gloves I bought from Hong Kong have definitely come in handy! I don't know how I survived last winter without something as snuggly and warm.

It's finally October and the year has gone by so quickly. Winter is technically over, but today's blustery conditions tells me otherwise (Thanks Wellington). Even typing this now, I can hear the wind howling outside, bringing a chilly southerly to sweep the streets of the city.

Anyway, Hot Wheels™ Battle Force 5™ has supposedly been sent out the door, which means we're just sitting tight and waiting for feedback. We're still playtesting this - it's really good and I like the story mode, but it's easily clockable in a few hours. The theme music is cool though! Rugby League 3 on the other hand is still there, just waiting for publisher dramas to resolve. Meanwhile, most of the programmers have been pulled onto research and development projects.

On the Pokemon front, HGSS was released a few weeks ago and I've been busy hacking away. Apart from the standard Pokemon stats, attack information, level-up attacks, breeding moves, trainer information, etc, I've also managed to learn from Eevee at veekun how to parse sprite data, which is something completely new for me, and provided a good challenge over the weekend. There's still things I don't know but I'm learning!

Winter has pretty much arrived in Wellington, with some epic hail and thunderstorms to start off the season. On Wednesday morning around 6am, the four of us in the flat were woken by a heavy hailstorm, followed by some brilliant thunderclaps that were lagging behind the lightning by only about half a second, so the storm was pretty much overhead. We opened the door to find the following sights:

And when I left the house at 8am to go to work, this is what was left:

Upon arriving home after a long day on Wednesday, I was mortified to find my computer refused to boot. Later diagnosis by my awesome workmates revealed that the BIOS had screwed up somehow and a simple reset by taking out the internal battery fixed it all and now it's working fine again, just in time for the latest Psypoke project...

Psypoke Idol 2

Flash and code done by me! Go and vote for your favourite Pokemon!

In other news, I spent Saturday afternoon lazing in the sun at a friend's place in Wadestown instead of going to Karori Sanctuary, had dinner at Siem Reap again, overtime is scheduled for the coming week and it's also Mother's Day today. So I'm waiting for our cordless phone to charge so I can make a call.