Pyxelation Collaborator

I might recruit a collaborator to help me implement Pyxelation. His name is Mat Hopwood, he lives in the UK, and he claims to have almost 20 years of experience as a game programmer. Yesterday I almost finished writing the detailed design specs of Pyxelation (8 pages so far), and today probably I'll finish it and send it to Mat. Then he'll give me a time estimate as to how long it will take him to implement the Pyxelation Game Engine. He charges $50 US per hour, but substantially less on long projects. I will offer him the money as a fixed price contract, and pay him portions of the total amount whenever he completes key milestones of the project.

I still don't have a clue what to get my nephew Alex for Christmas. So far at work I've worked 16 hours on a project that increases/decreases the primary key (Client ID) of a block of Client Master database table records by an amount specified by the user (the Client ID field in various detail tables must also be modified the same way). I expect to work on that a further 14 hours at least.

There's a song by the Steve Miller Band that includes a made-up word starting with the letter P: "the P-something of love." This morning I was trying to remember that P word, and I just remembered it now: pompatus. My nephew Jesse Savath's surname is a made-up name. My late uncle Harry Davis's real last name was Popovich (his brother's name was Jack Pope). I continue to enjoy my freedom from owning a vehicle (although it complicates Christmas shopping slightly).

On Thursday I'm going to take the day off from my Sound Times job, and get a haircut. My regular, Elaine Landry, will be away this week, and I told another of my students, Placidus, who is from Sri Lanka, that I would be away. I love Pop Tarts, but I buy them rarely, and only when they're on sale for $1.99 (regular price $2.99). Hopefully I'll invite my brother's family over for dinner this coming weekend. Maybe I'll call him today. I guess I should do some more computer work soon. I think I'll have 2 Pop Tarts for lunch. Whenever I buy those, I polish off a box of 8 in 4 days. I rarely buy ice cream, and when I do, only the expensive kind that comes in 500 ml tubs, which I polish off in 2 days, max.

I just realized that today I have to buy a Christmas card for Maria, my cleaning lady, who is coming tomorrow. She comes once every 3 or 4 weeks. So it'll be nice to get out for some fresh air, after spending all day yesterday writing Pyxelation design specs. Soon I will get down to work, so I'll wrap this up right now. I hope the Christmas muzak in the coming days doesn't faze you too much. Don't worry, it's only Christmas, everything's going to be OK. Bye-bye.