A bed of roses

Another meeting, another set of minutes. And the ones I wrote yesterday needed some editing. Both sets are now with the same person for final review - which is a formality because I've never known them change anything.

I also reminded myself how the 'scoring' works on the Project Request bit of P4W, so I will discuss that with my LM when they're back.

Still zero response from the colleague on the report. I'm going to have to send it on for review and say I couldn't get updates for these bits but I won't call colleague out by name. Probably they're busy, or I just hit them cold - but it would be nice for them to SAY that rather than just ignore me.

I wrote to my aunt, finally! Just a quick note with a brief update on where we are. If/when she writes back, I'll give a longer update and ask for the addresses of my other aunt and my uncle. Just been looking at photos of where they and my father grew up; the nostalgia is real - although I didn't visit there very often.

I won an auction for one of the dresses I had my eye on on ebay. It'll be nice to have something 'new' to wear. Next time I'm on leave, I'm going to give myself the task of clearing out some old stuff. Closing my bottom drawer is getting to be a struggle! Although I dug out a pair of black jeans with a jacquard pattern today, to channel my 'inner goth'. I've never embraced any 'look' or 'fashion' in particular, but I do like the aesthetics of both goth and steampunk.

And I've just booked a hair cut. I have a photo of how I WANT my hair to look, so there's no room for misunderstanding. If the hairdresser still cuts the front short, I'll know it really is time to move on.

Looking forward to a desky day tomorrow.

When I was looking up my fanfiction.net page for althea_valara it took me right back to my early days on the internet, and my first forays into 'proper' writing. OK, it was fanfic - but the stories are all my own. It also made me nostalgic for all the people I met back then, people I'd never met in real life - would never have met at all without this wonderful thing called the world wide web - but who I thought of as friends. But just as suddenly as they appeared, they seemed to float off again into the ether and I was so busy with Life that I hardly even noticed. I have three(?) people as friends on fb and lassarina here, and that's the sum total of what was a thriving little fanfiction community.

I know there are still fic-writing communities around but I haven't engaged with them, and I haven't written fic at all since... 2016... Really?! I've written original fiction and stuff for church - and a HUGE chunk of my paid work is writing minutes, which is a craft like no other :D But it seems like I've hung up my ficcing quill for good. This isn't a good thing or a bad thing, just where I am at the moment.

If you do happen to visit my fanfiction.net page, please take a glance at my list of favourite authors, too. There're some great writers in there.

But about the only NY resolution I've made this year is to write SOMETHING every day. 'Writer' is one of the labels I embrace, that I choose for myself, and my soul is always a little uneasy when I'm not making words.

My first day back in work wasn't quite as quiet as I thought it was going to be but at least I was at home. Mostly I was catching up with my brain from the end of 2023 and just plugging myself back into the system. Progress is being made on our project processes and how we translate that into plans. I've set aside the whole of tomorrow afternoon to get my head around it all. One of the results will be to strengthen my role by making me the Gatekeeper, confirming whether or not a project is in the correct state to move to the next phase. I can feel a checklist template coming on! I do love a good template.

I also have an itch to translate the whole thing into video game speak, with project sponsors as quest givers and devs as helpful NPCs. I just know it would all be lost on most of my colleagues :D

Well, here's to tomorrow's adventure!

I woke on Tuesday morning to news that was totally beyond my wildest expectations.

Final Fantasy 8 is getting a remake for the PS4!!!

*dances wildly for several seconds*

I still can't quite take it in.  Only the other day, I was explaining to my gamer colleague why I had no expectations of ever getting a PS4 port, let alone anything else.  The received wisdom was that Square had lost the source code and with it any chance of me ever playing it again, unless I dusted off the son's PS3 or attempted to play it on my aging laptop, and bought the appropriate version.

And then...  Tuesday morning...

*dances wildly for several more seconds*

It does make me wonder whether the story about the source code was true or just a rumour Square put out to keep fans quiet?  Or maybe someone was exploring a dark and dusty basement, filled with JRPG style puzzles, and stumbled across it?

ANYWAY, to say that I am hyped over this is the under-statement of several millennia.  Possibly of all time.  I have signed up for email updates and am haunting YouTube for reaction videos.  And am loving the general level of excitement from the members of the FF8 fb forum I belong to.

FF8 was my entry-level drug not only to the wild and wonderful world of gaming but to the often wilder and more wonderful world of the internet.

I had played FF7 but I was rather irritated by the less-than-subtle ecological references, since I felt like the world's only eco-warrior at the time and didn't need a video game to tell me what I already knew - I needed the rest of the world (especially politicians) to wake up to it.  I also didn't understand RPGs AT ALL.  I got bored with the battles and ran away, then wondered why I found bosses so difficult (you're not levelled up because you keep running away from battles, you IDIOT!!!).  So, I kind of plugged away with it, but I didn't 'get' it.

Then I picked up a second hand copy of FF8 and all sorts of pennies dropped.  I understood the connection between battles and levelling (although, what I didn't realise because my copy didn't have it's little 'how to play the game' booklet, was that the monsters levelled, too).  I loved drawing (especially the '???' options) and junctioning.  I was blown away by the graphics.  I loved the card game, although I never completed it.  I even loved the bonkers-even-for-a-JRPG story!

Then I got stuck on the battle with Adel.  I just couldn't get past it.  One day, I mentioned it at work and was advised to find a 'walkthrough', which sounded a bit like cheating, but I decided to investigate.  I found one created by an American girl and used it.  She was my first on-line friend and we are still in touch (via fb, but that counts, right?).  We started corresponding via email and she suggested I join an 'on-line forum' called Choco-Boko-Booyaka.

Now, this place was like the land of the Chocobos in FF9.  It really wasn't the kind of place you could find by accident.  It moved a couple of times while I was a member and I could never find it just by searching.  It was run by a girl (young woman?) who went by Ellone and she really was our big Sis.  It introduced me to AIM, fanfiction.net, Nanowrimo, and LiveJournal.  It was the scene of my first on-line identity - Rosa Heartlily (because I misread Rinoa's name - doh!).  I was definitely in FF8-heaven.

Oh, and I've just remembered - when someone new joined I would write, '*Rosa appears in a swirl of rose petals and astride her chocobo, Golden Sunset* Welcome to CBB!  Have a look around the forums, meet people and, most of all, have fun!' - or something along those lines.

*wipes a tear*

I opened an AIM account (using AthenaRose for Reasons) and got into my first live on-line chat with a lad from Manchester (only about 30 miles from me).  After a while, he asked me to vote on a picture he'd done for a forum called Digital Webbing.  DW is comics based, so really wasn't in my area of geekdom but I wanted to help my friend.  Through DW, I wrote my first comic script (episode 15 of Awesome Storm Justice 41, which is, I think, totally defunct), learned lots about comics and their characters. learned that Darth Vadar is Luke's father (I know, I know - I lived under a rock for years), and was introduced to MySpace and then fb.

Oh, and met my regular on-line chat buddy, who introduced me to the Dragon Age series, amongst other things.

So, without FF8, I don't have the kind of on-line life that I enjoy so much.  I (probably) don't have my novel because I've never come across Nanowrimo from any other source - and without ff.net, I might not have started writing seriously, anyway!  I wouldn't have so many on-line friends - or, at least, not the ones I do have.

EDIT: I realised after I'd left for work that I should also mention that this game kept me sane through some pretty dark times at work.  Being able to come home and slash a few monsters into tiny bits for an hour every evening was a true life saver.

FF8 is so much more than 'just a game' to me.  And I cannot wait to play it again and relive all the memories.

*dances slowly, finally disappearing stage right leaving behind a swirl of rose petals*

 I think it's been more than a week...

So, the first news is that I have finally joined the 21st Century and got a smart phone.  I'm not a technophobe by any means, but I've never really wanted one.  But the SIM on my clamshell type one gave up the ghost and... well, here we are.  I'm still on pay as you go.  I've ordered a cover, screen protector and a cute charm.  New phone = whole new ways to accessorise!

The second is that I really, really want to finish KH1.5 but the end bosses are hard and are forcing me to level *sulky Rosa*

The third is that I'm listening to the FF8 OST and I really, really, REALLY want Square Enix to announce they're doing a remake *extra sulky Rosa*

The fourth is that I've finished watching NieR: Automata.  There is so much to process in that game that I really don't know where to start.  I understand J saying that he now sees games can be art.  Of course, I've always seen them as such but hey.  There also isn't really much to say that wouldn't count as a spoiler in some way.  Of course, it's gorgeous AND weird in about equal measure.  The player I was watching kept saying how much he loved the game but that everything it asked him to do hurt.  There are some incredible characters, not just 2B and 9S, who will stay with me for a while.  All I can say is play it or watch it.  I also understand J saying I should play it - the impact is strong enough from watching but playing...  That could be heart-breaking...

And lastly, I have spent far too much time looking at spreadsheets this week but I think I may have an answer (developed during a conversation with my line manager - credit where it's due) to the perennial problem of resource planning.

Well, that's all for now.  Toodles DW!