That leaves, as of tonight, 84 bugs still outstanding. Assuming no more are added (an unlikely assumption, alas) I need to do 12 bugs per day for the next 7 days, or about 1 bug per hour assuming 12 hour days for the next 7 days. I don't know how realistic that is. Some will take less than 1 hour but some will take more, not quite sure how they'll balance out in total. I don't generally tend to be a particularly stressed-out or anxious person, but the volume of bugs remaining is definitely weighing on my mind. Last night I went to sleep at about 11, but woke up at 2. I'd been dreaming of nothing but bugs and people in beta having problems and not being able to do things, and I woke up remembering I'd meant to check in some bug fixes to writ quests before I went to bed, but I'd forgotten to. Then I couldn't get back to sleep because all I could think about was all the bugs, so I gave up and got my laptop and spent about 2 hours fixing more bugs, before going to sleep again about 4 and waking up at 7 to get ready for work at 8. Not very restful! I hope I don't spend the next 7 days doing the same, though I probably will. I've been dreaming about tradeskill bugs for most of the last month; that and coworkers doing random things. A month or two ago when I was wrestling with my perl scripts I dreamed Ilucide was actually being created from running a perl script that was compiling him up from code. Which was kind of disturbing...
Yesterday we did a lunch time play test of Karnor's Castle. They ordered lunch in for us so we wouldn't have to leave our desks, and could just play straight through. We took two groups in (it's not instanced) and went in different directions. The quests aren't in yet and there were some odd bugs with aggro that made it a bit difficult to pull, so we didn't really get the feel for how it will be when those are done. Overall though it was fun, and the zone was very reminiscent of the old EQ1 Karnor's and looks great. Jindrack was the tank for my group, playing a monk; I played a dirge as usual, which is my favorite class for grouping with.
I've been relaxing in the evenings lately by making little model slugs out of Fimo modelling polymer while watching a DVD. I watched "Flushed Away" a couple months ago, and that movie has cute little singing slugs all throughout it. In the DVD's special features they had a little tutorial on how to make a slug. I'd bought the Fimo at least a month ago when I saw it on sale at Michaels, but it's been sitting on the shelf for ages. In the last week or so though my eyes have been getting so tired from staring at the computer screen for so long that I've been having trouble focusing when I drive home in the dark. So when that happens I take a break from the computer screen and make a little slug or two. I actually used to make little model dragons out of Fimo and similar modelling substances, but they are a lot more work and require a lot of fine detail. Slugs about match how I feel at the moment. I've made about 8 so far, and started leaving them around the office on random people's desks just to add a touch of surrealism to everyone's life. Fyreflyte got one of the first; Feconix has one, Cat from the audio department has one, Tom in art who did the fantastic new graphic for tinkered fireworks has one.
Last night, following the play test, I made a slug that was feigning death, since at one point Jindrack used his group feign to save us all from adds on a pull. It's very cute - lying on its back, little tail curled up, tongue lolling out. I stopped by Jindrack's office today (Ilucide, Vhalen, and Jindrack share a corner office) when only Ilucide was in, and asked him if Jindrack would think I was completely insane if a feign deathed slug appeared on his monitor. His answer was "Probably, but I think he needs to see that," so I left it on top of his monitor, and a non-feigned one for Vhalen too for good measure. Neither of them have said anything so far. Ilucide stopped by late this afternoon to ask Fyreflyte something about item names, and I asked him if Jindrack had noticed the slug.
"Yes," he said, "he said 'what the hell is that?'"
"And did you tell him," I asked.
No, apparently he said he'd just denied knowing anything about anything. And he didn't know if Vhalen had noticed at all. Men ... So Jindrack probably either has no idea what it is and where it comes from, or possibly thinks I'm too dangerously insane to risk mentioning it. Hopefully he was amused at least. Slowly but surely as time permits, more slugs gradually invade the office, at least until I figure out how to lead my newly created slug armies to take over the world ... or until I get bored of slugs and start making something else. Right now however I need to get back to bug fixing; three new ones have arrived just while writing this. I'm starting to dread that new email beep sound.
