The website is launched, though there are still things that need to be done to it before it is finished. Still, I now have the time to get back to working on my other projects. I’m about halfway done with the font I’m working on. I now have piecemeal Drupal modules that I would like to clean up and stick on their site. I also again had the revelation that my professional website looks bad and needs a makeover. I get that revelation on a regular basis. This is good in that I’m constantly a.) learning more about design and programming and b.) upgrading the website to reflect that knowledge, but is a pain because this is a chunk of work to have to do on a regular basis. Am also thinking of shifting it into Drupal, to give me another Drupal site and to give me more Drupal experience. The site is just straight PHP right now, before that it was built with the ever popular duo of M4 + shell scripts. Which made me feel pretty cool to have a site built in them, but was not all that applicable to the job direction I was trying to go in. Oh yeah, I also have my super-cool new site idea that I wanna build and launch at some point. And there’s still converting the rest of the php into classes at Writaur.com. And making a version of Storypath that uses gamebook/rpg character elements.

Apparently none of this was as important to get done as beating Peggle Nights yesterday. It’s a free download if you create an account at PopCap games and say “yes” to getting a newsletter. Not nearly as exciting as Oasis, but it’s still pretty fun, and is apparently effective at distracting me from the pile of things I have to do. I’ve still got most of the “Challenge” levels to beat, so it will pose as a potential distraction for awhile to come, I suspect.

I made it to the second round in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest! The first round was where they read your 300 word pitch for your novel. 1000 people get to go on to the second round, and as they accept only 5000 entries, and the Young Adult category was a new one for this year, there’s a good chance I was accepted for my lack of typos and misspellings. Still, I was in the top 20%, so that’s good. The 2nd round is where they read the first 3000-5000 pages of my story. I really hope the style of the novel won’t be a hindrance – as it’s a “Choose your own adventure” style book, and the contest requirements said it had to be the first 3000-5000 words, so they will be reading a rather disjointed story indeed.

And on a final note, tonight will involve beer. Apparently the Coors factory is about 15 minutes away from where we live, and a coworker of Drew’s invited us to go take the tour. Seems that they’re very generous with their free samples, and the end of the tour involves being able to try up to three of their products. We still need to determine the “Who’s driving?” strategy of all of this, hopefully the factory is near enough to downtown Golden, CO, that we can stroll around and sober up a bit. The best part about Colorado is that, were we ambitious, there is a path about a 10 minute’s walk away from where we live that we could bike on to this factory. It’s a 9 mile ride, which I don’t think is bad at all, but Drew might have difficulty with. Still, we’ve got a stationary bike that he’s been using, so maybe come Springtime we can try the ride and see how it goes.

I finally beat Oasis on Insane. Were this 2004, when the game actually came out, it would likely be much more exciting. Nonetheless, Oasis has provided me with months of gameplay, and was totally worth the $6 I paid for it. On a similar note, rumors have it that a version of Civilization will be coming to Facebook this June. Aside from my occasional Scrabble obsession (and whenever someone flings a Pathwords invite at me), I’m not a big Facebook gamer. Yoville got tedious, and I haven’t logged into my account in months now. There’s a bunch of others (Mafia Wars, Farmville, etc.) I signed up for, played once, and then promptly forgot about. I think a problem with these games is that they’re mostly about doing the same thing over and over to acquire more stuff and build your character. None of which is all that interesting to me. One thing that is immensely interesting, however, is Civilization.

Job prospects = still slow. Didn’t get the job I interviewed for this past Friday. They might have a temporary use for me for a project that may or may not happen, however, which would be nice. I’d like to get more hours at Liberty, as though the pay is meager, it’s actually pretty fun to jump around by the side of the road all day long. Also, I don’t think I’ve ever felt this healthy in the middle of winter before.

I wish another Chick-fil-a would open up out here. This is because I want to do another First 100. Preferably without the blizzard this time around. I also really just want to eat chicken constantly, because it is so freaking good.

I finished reading “Jonathan Norrell & Mr. Strange” by Susanna Clarke recently. It was fabulous, a very British early 1800′s take on magicians and magic, quite long and involving with quirky characters, I highly recommend it. I’m currently reading “Nature Girl” by Carl Hiaasen, which is quite funny.

Finished watching Evangelion. Apparently the ending was poorly executed due to budget issues, and I thus need to see a movie called “The End of Evangelion” for proper fulfillment. I really liked the concept behind the ending, and we can hopefully get our paws on the movie sometime soon. Started watching Bleach, am enjoying it but with mixed feelings. The more it veers away from the “I need to kill this giant Hollow” plots, the more I like it.

Oh yeah, I totally scored some free fabric off of Craigslist. Giant bag, some scraps and some decent-sized pieces. I’ve got a pair of black shorts with a drawstring that never really fit me right, and I’ve got this great idea to convert it into a skirt, adding some fabric to the bottom in ruffles or something. I’ve got plenty of fabric to do this, now it’s simply the matter of locating said shorts. There’s this black hole that follows me sometimes, and likes eating things I’d prefer not to have eaten. I picked up a tank top from Old Navy with the final dregs of my gift card, and as a tank top it’s entirely too long, but with some fabric on the bottom it would make an awesome dress. I need to find a fabric really similar to the tank top’a fabric to execute this, however. Now, once I have made these items, I need to find or create circumstances where I would actually wear a skirt or a dress. Pants are just such a nice default, but it’s a shame that I keep making all of this crap and never wear it anywhere for the most part.

Oh yeah, crispy chocolate in my near future. Old Towne Arvada is having some sort of chocolate festival, whereupon I will enter items into their cookie contest and, with any luck, will win a giant pile of chocolate. Which would be good timing, as our Christmas chocolate is slowly running out!

Now here’s an article for your “being entertained by stupid people” quotient for the day”:
Reasonable Consumer Would Know “Crunchberries” Are Not Real, Judge Rules