I've just been buried at work lately.

And by lately, I mean since early August. Non-stop. Tons of (unpaid) overtime.

I worked 90 hours one week. 20 hours in one day.

And those weren't even in the same week.

But things are starting to calm down. A little bit.

I had to supervise two major construction projects, including the building of an all-new computer lab for running Maya. We were put six weeks behind schedule due to construction issues (and asbestos removal), but fortunately the guy working with me put in some insane hours and got the lab open only one week late. Thanks Scott! Awesome job!

Besides that, we decided to replace all of the Macs in one of our two Mac labs. So this meant re-shuffling around all of the remaining good Macs into the other lab, getting rid of over 30 old Macs and monitors (we sold them off to students), and of course, installing all of the new ones. Plus of course, putting new software on everything. The problem was - the new Macs didn't show up until the 18th. The semester began on the 11th. But they're in and running now.

On top of all that, I started teaching again this year, since we had a huge turnover in the faculty who teach in the labs where I work. I felt it was important to have some continuity in the labs from last year to this year, so I'm teaching first-year intro to Macs (using After Effects and Final Cut Pro to produce traditionally animated films). I forgot how hard teaching was, and how much time it takes to prepare for a class. But I'm starting to remember now.

It takes a good eight hours (or more) to prepare for each class. It'll probably be twelve or more as I get deeper into the technical stuff. I have to do this on my own time, since I'm still responsible for all of the duties I had before. Except now, I have to do those in 4 days instead of 5. I'm hoping I can do more of the class preparation during the week though - I really miss having weekends.

So, that brings us to the Atari-related stuff...

I got the Four-Play manual text from Zach, and I plan to try and get that going this week. It's a short manual, so it shouldn't take long.

I also have three homebrew games (Rip Off! and two unannounced projects) to create sprites for.

And, I've got a pile of homebrew games coming (soon?) from AtariAge. So I want to review those.

Besides all of that, Weird Al's new album "Straight Outta Lynwood" is out today, so I want to write a review of that for my blog.

Oh yeah... I've also got one more video game movie review to write for my website. But those take some time to do, so I don't expect to have that before the end of the year.

And there's other stuff too, leftover from my various "to-do" lists.

The question then is - if I'm so buried at work, why do I want to do all of this other stuff, too?

Simple.

Because I enjoy it.

Working on this stuff is what I do to relax. It allows me much-needed time to be creative, and not have to think about technical stuff all of the time.

(Yes... technical stuff also requires creative thinking. I'm more and more convinced of that the longer I do it, and the more I'm involved with the homebrew community, and see what the programmers are able to pull off. They have astonishing creativity! But that type of creative thinking is work for me. The other kind is what I use to relax.)