Let's play catch up

Right, let me see if I can cover everything I want to cover without losing the plot.

I may well be getting made redundant in a few weeks' time. My company is looking at getting rid of 1200 or so jobs across the country. Apparently, shedding engineers i.e. the people who actually do the work will, "allow us to continue forward with an agressive and maintainable strategy for winning new buisness and retaining the buisness we already havem while keeping our standards of service as high as our customers have come to expect." Yes. Of course.

Myself and everyone I know in the compnay have already been informed that our jobs are at risk. Management is doing the whole consultation period, and letting us know at the start of November who specifically they're planning on letting go. Final decisions will then be made, and redundancies will happen on the 12th of December.

Annoyingly, if I wasn't already bankrupt, I'd be welcoming this, as my redundancy package is quite generous, and would put me in a very good position for starting University next year. Unfortunately, I'm pretty certain that any redundancy money I get will be swallowed up by our bankruptcy accountants. We've not said anything to them yet, as we don't want them getting twitchy for noe reason - I may well get kept on after all, but I'll speak to them if I have to at the start of November.

I've started my pre-access course for Unviersity, currently doing our Sociology block, which I'm actually enjoying immensely. We had a general essay to hand in just after the start of the course, which was checked but not marked, as it doesn't count towards our final mark, and is really just a tool for us to judge how hard we need to work on essay skills. I got mine back on Monday there, and did very well. I need to start working on a portfolio of writing to apply to my chosen degree, Journalism and Creative Writing. To say that I'm nervous about it is an uderstatement. I've been putting it off out of fear, but I need to man up and get it done before I run out of time.

Part of the portfolio I need to do is an interview with a local celebrity, which I've been struggling with. Fortunately it occurred to me that a friend of a friend is a kind of a big name in the pro-mountain biking scene here in the UK, so I'll speak to him about it. He's a good guy, and we get on reasonably well, so it shouldn't be a problem.

I'm a little burned out with my Warrior in World of Warcraft, so I've kind of shelved her for a while, and I've been spending time with my Death Knight alt. I was trying to power level her Mining and Blacksmith skills, but got thoroughly fed up with that in a very short time, so I'm just going to have some fun levelling her up instead.

Away from the PC, I've started a regular gaming group with an old friend of mine and some friends of his to play Dark Heresy, the Warhammer 40,000 RPG. I'm a big fan of the universe, and it's a ball finally getting some like-minded souls together for some RPG time. I'm not a huge fan of the system Dark Heresy uses tbh, but we have a really good laugh at it. I've suggested that we could also give Dungeons and Dragons a shot for a couple of weeks, betweend Dark Heresy adventures, if our current GM needs a break, and the guys are open to the idea.

So I'm currently scribbling down some ideas for an Asian-themed campaign, with a particular focus on Japan as the main base. Fortunately, I've got my hands on the DnD 3rd edition 'Oriental Adventures' book, and a lead on teh 2nd edition stuff as well, so I'm going to thieve as many hooks, NPCs and plots as I can. The downside being that none of the mechanics are compatible with DnD 4th edition, so I'll have to do that myself. Having had a bit of time to think about it though, I don't think it'll be too much of a stretch. I guess that's about it.