Clearing the deck anticipation

I think I'm feeling a kind of anticipation.

Season's changing at the moment and there's a bunch of stuff that'll be either finishing, starting, transitioning or shifting around a bit soon.

The thing I'm feeling the anticipation for is Guild Wars 2, which will possibly see me dive into Massive Multiplayer Online games again for the first time since World of Warcraft was at its peak. I guested a bit for Violence Reborn raiding in Lich King but missed the early Lich King raids and late Burning Crusade raids. I got fed up with WoW during the Cataclysm times so didn't really do much of those raids.

No - my main WoW memories are the original raids and the early Burning Crusade raids with the Mercenaries. We had a good thing going there, although it fell apart as the Guildlink initiative turned into a black hole sucking all of the players addicted to raiding into the one guild. I was more about keeping my people ok than the raiding though.

So yeah - next big game on the horizon is Guild Wars 2, which I should be able to access early from this weekend. I've been thinking I should have cleared off one or two partially completed games (like Beyond Good & Evil and Machinarium) before heading into GW2. That's not happened though cos I'm usually not feeling the motivation to dive into games after looking at a monitor screen all day at work.

I'm also looking at Planetside 2, which could well be awesome. Sci fi ground combat with the potential to be fighter pilot again. Missed that. I'd get caught up in WoW's player v player gameplay (and quite likely GW2's pvp too) but first person shooter games online left me cold because there was no persistence past each staged battle. Planetside 2 should see players fighting for domination of a couple of continents. Could be interesting.

TV is on the transition as well.

I'm currently watching the last Deadliest Catch of the season, plus there's the cricket season coming to a close. I'll be watching as much of Twenty20 finals day (Saturday) as possible but that's pretty much the last big cricket event of the summer. I've also been enjoying Leverage and Falling Skies

TV will be transitioning into the Fall schedules and I'm looking forward to Warehouse 13 coming back (it's fun). DOCTOR WHO ! Yep. 10 days for the next Doctor Who episodes.

I have a few rules with what I watch where I let the OCD out to play. My V+ box shows 7 shows per page. I start on the last page, if it's just movies I'll watch one of those. (Real Steel was surprisingly good.) If it's something daily, I'll watch a bunch of them. That leaves weekly stuff. I like to watch a few episodes one after the other, to get continuity. However ...

Falling Skies and Doctor Who ? They're like - watch immediate. Or in the case of Falling Skies, watch the next day cos it's on late and I'm listening to music by the time it's on.

Oh and if there's more space available on the box than is listed to record in the planner ? I'll dip into the movie collection. I have a small pile of blu-rays from the Bristol trip a couple of weeks ago that I haven't watched yet.

Work is transitioning as well, in both what I do and who I work with. We're getting a fair bit of turnover in the team - 2nd RO and a couple of people the rank above me, including the one I'm trying to learn as much as I can from before he goes.

Project wise, I'm switching from the old project to a brand new one. It's a good opportunity - I've soaked up a lot of knowledge over the past too many years, including seeing now the consequences of decisions made (or not made!) years ago. The thing I'm most responsible for is called a Master Data and Assumptions List, which is where we record decisions, facts and just plain "this is what's gonna happen" assumptions. It's very important that everyone involved in a project is working off the same assumptions, or you either get work done twice (which you pay for twice) or work not done at all.

It's a good opportunity and I'm already getting a chance to apply my brain to it. Just hope we don't end up being a poor relation to some higher visibility projects.

It'll be sad losing a few of the people though as they either move on in the organisation or leave for the outside. I'll definitely miss Miss Meerkat's cheerful cheeky grin as it pops up to see who's coming through the door :-) May it stay unblurry for a long time in that photographic memory !

Oh ! Music too. I have finally managed to get everything in the library listened to since I acquired the Beyond Good & Evil soundtrack a few months ago.

Must do another music post sometime soon. Not sure if there's been much stand out stuff in what I've acquired lately but the Deus Ex soundtrack and the latest from the Ting Tings were pretty good. Not forgetting the Machinarium soundtrack by Tomas Dvorak (one to look out for) and looking further back, I was very impressed with Velveteen by Transvision Vamp.

Ooo - 1 hour 20 left of Deadliest Catch and it'll be on to the music again. Cya later !