Day 5

Day 5 of La in Florida:

• A good solid 6 hours at work,
• followed by a good solid eight hours of coding. I got the OS X port of 'Chesterland Adventure' up and running, and fixed all the major bugs. Load and Save features aren't implemented, but the original game didn't have them either, so tough luck. >:) The 3-D warp-drive and spinning-apple-logos easter egg even works (thanks for all the free code, Alex!)
• Got a voice message from a rep at Apple Computer! ... I'll call them tomorrow and see about setting up an interview.

• Played three games of Warcraft III, and won the third with heros at 10, 10, and 10. That pushed me up to 52nd place on Battle.net.

  The replays of the fights were helpful ... I lost to a human player in the second game, who used his Spellbreakers to burn my mostly-Bear army to death. He was depending on the spellbreakers to hold a front-line and protect his all-magic-user army from harm -- an army I've seen in the past, and been very frustrated by. How could I break their ranks? Did I need to?

  In the In the third game I saw a Human player using the same tactic, so I went very heavy on Mountain Giants. They formed an excellent front line on the narrow terrain, and they had no mana for the spellbreakers to burn. 'Taunt' is a non-mana spell -- quite possibly the only one of it's kind in the whole game. When my priestess learned 'starfall', he tried to rally by making a dozen spellbreakers -- overproducing them. He must have figured that since they're "immune to magic", starfall wouldn't hit them. Nnnnnope. Starfall drops burning slag on everything - magic immune or no.

  Anyway, I had a good time with it.

• Listened to a few episodes of The Now Show before bedtime. Tomorrow Uncle Steve gives his keynote address ... perhaps I'll wake up to find some new gear to buy. :D