Average score:
?.??/10

Scatter and Crunch

The deadline for our game Gamer Mom is March 5th. If the graphics aren't all done by then, the game is most likely not going to happen. Since I started working on it a year and a half ago, that would be unacceptable. However, it is almost as unacceptable to limit my personality to only its most productive aspects for two months in a row. So a compromise will be reached, high in energy and productivity but low in enforced productivity. Until the 14th of the month, days may not under any circumstances exceed eight hours in length. Those shortened days will be distributed fairly evenly to all my personalities, who are encouraged but not required to focus on Gamer Mom. I will try to ensure that roughly 40% of the days in the first half of the month will have Gamer Mom near the top of their respective time allocation tables, but not more than that. I want to build energy that will last past the end of this month, and that will not be achieved by pursuing one activity too obsessively. However, in the second half of the month pursuing the game obsessively is precisely what we will do. I would like for most of the second half to be played by the Addict, showing a level of dedication beyond that which he has ever displayed thus far. I would like to see him go for full weeks without stopping. However, if his energy drops I will not hesitate to have him stop and replace him with other characters (eight-hour limit) to build the energy up again or fulfill whatever we're temporarily needing. Everyone will need to accept that only the first half of the month is for them, and the second half is for Gamer Mom.

Score:
First activity:	Writing the plan for the month	0:11
The play The Tenth Man is over, more or less. Now our number one priority is Gamer Mom. I do not anticipate difficulty in finding motivation for this game - it so clearly matters in a historical sense, as well as a personal one. Then again, I have little understanding of history, so what do I know. Regardless, I've talked both the Worker and the Musician into going along with this strange plan of mine, so I hope to God I have some idea what I'm doing.
Time allocation:	Thinking about gamism	2:51
	Mundane activities	1:06
	Reading	0:30
	Watching YouTube videos of Mummenschanz	0:20
	Checking out the new version of Firefox	0:09
There was a spark of brilliance, and someone wanted to copy it. So he did, and someone else copied him, and copies followed copies until all that was left was a mountain of sameness, the spark buried underneath. The spark was finally lost completely on the day the copiers agreed that they understood what they were doing. The original spark was an accident, or a gift, but in any event it was not planned and studied and calculated. It was simply right, and that was why it existed. The copies were not right, and the more authentic they tried to be the less brightly they shone. But there is hope: someone will come (not me, but maybe some future version of me whose ideas I can't imagine) who is not trying to copy, but only to create. The most beautiful copy is the one that doesn't know it's a copy. And then the new creation and the old can dance together in an accidental lockstep, and transcend their lowly forms while the copies decay and are forgotten. Forget the original. Abandon dreams of staying in that moment, and the moment may someday last forever.
Performance review:	It all fits. Musician: I have no earthly idea what you just said. It's pretty, though. Worker: Pretentious nonsense.

Score:
First activity:	Erasing the broken or finished games on my DS	0:08
Lode Runner, Sly Cooper. I don't expect I'll have time for anything else.
Time allocation:	Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus	3:48
	Lode Runner	1:54
	Mundane activities	1:09
	Taco Fiction	0:36
	Talking with Kyler	0:15
I tried playing Taco Fiction, the winner of the last Interactive Fiction Competition. As always with adventures, it was a frustrating experience. There was clearly skill and cleverness behind its construction, with several moments that I really admired. For instance, there is one point where the character is going over the steps he's going to take in his head, and this monologue words all these plans as specific commands the player will have to type in. Now, the player never does get to type those commands in because the story goes in a different direction, but the fact that it was worded as a game instruction means that the player's right there with him, trying to keep the plan straight in his head. Very clever. But then there's the essential problem with most adventures, which is that in order to progress you need to act like you're not a human being. The premise is that you're trying to stage a simple robbery. So I tried, it went to hell, I tried robbing a different place, the game barely acknowledged that I had pulled a gun out, and I was too scared and disturbed to keep going so I drove away before I got caught. To me, that story makes sense for the character. To hang around for longer after what had gone down, that would not have made sense, and yet that is what the writer expected me to do. The story I got was not particularly compelling. But hey, it's a text adventure fan writing for text adventure fans. So let him assume the character's going to act like an adventure game stereotype rather than a person; no one in that crowd will even notice a problem because it's just what they expect.
Performance review:	There's a reasonable amount of progress here.

Score:
First activity (Thu.):	Watching TV	1:10
First activity (Fri.):	Looking into web hosting services	0:29
I shouldn't have watched those TV shows. I don't know what's wrong with me. 22:50 - Figuring out what's entailed in having an online page for donations 23:30 - Gamer Mom 2:30 - bed (or score, if Thinker says I can't continue) 10:40 - wake up 10:50 (first activity) - Wii Fit 11:10 - Gamer Mom 14:10 - Lunch 14:25 - chores 14:40 - comics 16:30 - score. Today is going to be perfect.
Time allocation:	Gamer Mom	5:04
	Mundane activities	1:11
	Comics	0:55
	Trying to figure out how to set up donations	0:47
I programmed/designed ten more nodes, as well as filling in the images for around twenty others, which involved some image-editing and coding. I have learned that I am unqualified (at this moment) to deal with matters of money. It is all beyond me. I'd like to officially request that the Programmer figure it out, and involve me only when he can give me clear instructions. I made a mistake in the scheduling: I forgot about the eight-hour rule this month. I reduced the comics time to accomodate the rule.
Performance review:	Good work with Gamer Mom. You are slipping a bit in following schedules, though. And I don't like the way you began the day.

Score:
First activity:	Going to ask Sariel when the role-playing would start, then showing him the game Flower	0:30
Can't talk, have to go.
Time allocation:	Dungeons & Dragons (the campaign with Len)	3:39
	Working and talking with Kyler	3:17
	Mundane activities	0:56
	E-mail	0:06
I just sent a letter out to Erika. I've tried getting in contact with her a number of times, and I can never get through to her. But after collaborating with Kyler today, it struck me just how much influence Erika had on my life. First off, there's the fact that the multiple-personality system grew out of a single sentence she told me: "You're acting from the moment you walk in the door.". But she also set a model for collaborations which I strive for, because she always let me go off in my own directions and enjoy myself up to (and never passing) the point where it clashed with what she wanted the audience to be feeling. Which was generally a tremendous amount of freedom. Now, it's not my place to say whether I'm succeeding in creating that kind of creative environment for Kyler, but the fact that I see that as a goal is noteworthy. And then there's Erika being both creative and professional, shattering the ideas I had that being reliable was somehow counter to being creative. The jury's still out on whether I can get Gamer Mom done on deadline, but I am taking the challenge very seriously. I think overall, I'd have to say that Erika is my role model right now, which is funny because I've never had a role model before.
Notes:	Len's story is about to reach a climax, one way or another. I'm looking forward to starting a new arc for her once this turns out however it turns out. But we'll see how Sariel plays it; he may drag this out much longer than I'm expecting.
Performance review:	I find it hard to imagine that more social opportunities could have been squeeezed out of this short day. Well done.

Score:
First activity:	Piano, to prove to the Thinker that I could do things with the day	0:29
Not enough sleep, due to noise. Don't need it for today.
Time allocation:	Music	2:34
Time allocation:	Mundane activities	1:21
Notes:	The day was paused for a 1:09 conversation with Kyler.

Performance review:	The music was not harmed by the lack of sleep, and in fact we've got some wonderful material here, including a huge step forward with the Impromptu. But it's simply not true that you don't need sleep, as evidenced by the messy ending and lack of scoring. Also the mundane activities, which are too long for a day this short. These things cost you, and the low score reflects badly on you. Please don't treat the need for sleep with such a lack of concern in the future.

Score:

Time allocation:	An e-mail	4:06
	Figuring out how to upload clips of the Ruddigore DVD	3:16
	Gamer Mom	2:13
	Mundane activities	1:51
Notes:	I switched to the Programmer for the DVD bits.

Performance review:	I understand, you didn't get enough sleep. What I don't understand is why, with that lack of sleep, you chose to stay up until 05:22. If we had been more awake, I would have thought to remind you not to exceed eight hours. Programmer: That was my fault. I was having a lot of trouble finding an adequate program and format for the clips. I felt like I had unfinished business. You could have requested the next day, and finished your business then. Or you could have simply waited for the next morning. This was unacceptable.

Score:
Notes:	Not written down, but what it was was mainly TV shows. Lots and lots of TV shows, most of them not even very good.

Score:
First activity:	Cleaning up the mess from characters who hadn't bothered to end their days properly	0:20
14:15 - Lunch 14:30 - Gamer Mom 17:10 - Trial By Jury 19:00 - Dinner 19:20 - Score. I'm not good enough, but today is going to be perfect.
Time allocation:	Gamer Mom	2:25
	Trial By Jury	2:00
	Mundane activities	0:39
I did only a handful of nodes of Gamer Mom, but they were particularly tricky ones. I went over most of the libretto for Trial By Jury.
Performance review:	Efficiently done.

Score:
First activity (Tue.):	Advanced Freecell	0:05
First activity (Wed.):	Toki Tori	0:33
I'd like to have the computer automatically switch to the time-locked conference room if the computer's been idle for 90 minutes. This will help us stay in character by forcing communication at inobtrusive moments throughout the day. I think I can do this through the screensaver system. Unfortunately Kubuntu 10.04's screensaver feature is broken. So I'd like to try switching to xscreensaver, which I seem to remember is an alternative program but don't quote me on that.
Time allocation:	Improving the text functions of Gamer Mom	2:10
	Installing xscreensaver and tying the conference room to it	1:30
	Mundane activities	1:01
It worked perfectly. I copied and pasted a Perl script someone wrote that launches a program when the screensaver starts, and I modified it to work for my conference room. (It also automatically disables the blank-screen screensaver that was supposed to go on, because there were conflicts between the two programs.) I then addressed and overcame a more important challenge: automating the italics in Gamer Mom. Up to this point, when I wanted to write italics I needed to draw the text normally, then manually erase the square the italicized word was in and draw the italics on top of that. It took a long time to letter each node which had any italics in it. Now all I need to do is put an underscore before each letter that needs to be oblique in the string, and it draws it with the italics.
Notes:	The day was paused for game night.
Performance review:	Very nice work today. Two challenges overcome, and a bit of a mental workout.

Score:
First activity:	Finding the place on a map	0:03
Aviella told me about a little show in Jerusalem she's participating in. It's a tribute to 1920s "Speakeasies", where there's singing and comedy in a café somewhere in Jerusalem. I'm really curious what this is going to be like.
Time allocation:	My "Speakeasy" adventure	5:40
	Hope Leaves The Theater	1:03
	Mundane activities	1:03
	Comics	0:37
Okay, that was... not what I was expecting. And not very good, either. First, semantic correction: not a café, a bar. I wanted to order tea, but that was not on the menu. Just a lot of alcohol. (Blecch.) But more importantly, the early twentieth Century theme was not maintained in anything past the name of the event. The songs were more recent parodies of things, and the atmosphere was a mess. Beyond that, most of the singers couldn't sing, and even those who could sounded like they weren't taking it seriously at all. I got a great seat by the stage, and I had a table and everything. Just one problem: the other places around that table had their view obscured by a great big honking pillar next to the stage. So the other seats there were quickly snatched up and brought to other people. No, wait, let me back up. I went there early because I didn't know how long it would take. I almost got a 180 shekel fine when I got on the light rail and hadn't paid because the machine wouldn't accept my money. I only got out of it because I had no identifying papers on my person, and the inspector couldn't be bothered to deal with me. After that I walked around to find a ticket machine that works (They seem to be rare.), and ordered ten tickets so that I should never be in that situation again. At the bar, I felt a similar sort of dread as I felt on the train wondering if an inspector would show up. There were a bunch of people I knew there, but no one who seemed at all interested in talking to me. They didn't even want to let me in because I didn't have a reservation (Who knew reservations were needed?), but Miri from Ruddigore was there and had an extra reservation she didn't need so she let me go on ahead and then had me make sure her seats didn't get taken while she went off to mingle. (Groan.) The show started an hour late, and I got there half an hour early, so there was a lot of waiting. And then Yardena spotted me and saved me from my isolation at the table-which-no-other-could-sit-at, so I joined her and her friends at the other side of the room. And yes, I mean the other side of the room from the stage. The stage was not visible from where we were sitting, not the tiniest bit. But we were positioned right next to a speaker, which was set way way way too loud. I tell you, it is not entertaining to sit right next to a speaker which is blaring out poor renditions of songs. And the interacting was very awkward. At one point a conversation started on the subject of whether Star Wars Episode 3 sucked or not, and someone came over and told us to stop yelling. Well, of course we were yelling. We couldn't hear each other any other way! It was supposed to be a social event, no? I don't get it. Thank God after the show Yardena and her (evidently Asperger) friend Shoshanna let me hang out with them for a while, which helped to wash the bad taste of the evening out of my mouth. But I needed to run off (literally) to catch the light rail so that I wouldn't be stuck in Jerusalem for the night. At home, I thought I'd cheer myself up with a Charlie Kaufman piece: the audio play Hope Leaves The Theater. But it turned out to be the first work of Charlie Kaufman's that I don't particularly like. It was Charlie Kaufman doing a parody of Charlie Kaufman, which is so redundant. I mean, yes, its cleverness was fun enough. But there needs to be more to it than that. There's only so far you can go with the meta thing- at some point you need some actual drama. This was all self-reference and no story.
Notes:	Between yesterday and today, I worked on Gamer Mom with Kyler.
Performance review:	Couldn't you get a bit more into it? Or alternatively, couldn't you have just left the bar? I don't like that you sat there and didn't try to find a way to enjoy yourself.

Score:
First activity:	E-mail	0:09

Time allocation:	Mundane activities	4:52
	IM chat	1:28
	Buying a cake mix, and figuring out where all the cooking utensils are	0:31
	E-mail	0:18

Performance review:	What were you doing for five hours of mundane activities? No, you know what? I don't want to know. It's nice to see you're actually making a cake for the cake awareness conference, though.

Score:
First activity (Thu.):	Walking Fudgie	0:07
First activity (Fri.):	Cleaning the stairs	0:12
The first thing I'm going to do is wait for this cake (for the cake awareness conference on Saturday night) to be ready. I don't understand precisely how long it needs to bake for, so I need to stay on my toes. But as soon as I'm done with that, Gamer Mom. 2:00 - Bed. 11:10 (first activity) - chores 11:25 - See how my blog displays in Safari. Don't do anything about it if there is a problem -this is just to let the Programmer know 11:45 - Trial By Jury 13:00 - Gamer Mom, with a 15-minute break for lunch at 14:00 15:00 - TV 16:00 - comics 16:55 - score. I'm not good enough, but today is going to be perfect.
Time allocation:	Gamer Mom	3:40
	Mundane activities	2:11
	Trial By Jury	1:09
	Comics	0:51
	Baking a cake	0:49
	Checking if my blog runs in Safari	0:13

Notes:	No closing statement was written, because I continued reading comics a few minutes too late and did not have time to score before Shabbat began.
Performance review:	The plan was terrific, which is why I let you ignore the 8-hour rule that's in effect this month. But ambition is not an excuse for sloppiness. If you promise, you must deliver. For the most part you did what you said you'd do. But I expect a higher level of excellence from you.

Score:
First activity:	Changing clothes	0:09
Every year, Rachel runs a "Cake Awareness Conference", raising awareness of an important issue: the existence of cake. I wonder what people will talk about, and I look forward to saying hi to certain people.
Time allocation:	The fourth annual Cake Awareness Conference	5:33
	Writing e-mail	3:24
	Mundane activities	1:42
	IM chat	0:37
The conference was great. I had not iced the cake I made, so I wrote a sign saying "Frosting would only obscure the essential cakiness! SAY NO TO FROSTING!". When Jeremy, as part of the best presentation of the evening -a political speech about cake- spoke of the "extremists" who'd written that sign, I took the opportunity to heckle him and yell out protests about how "cakes need to live or die on their own merits". This heated up, and I was having so much fun that Yardena needed to pull me back when I interrupted Rachel's closing remarks afterward. (And then she apologized for pulling me back, as if that was called for.) I came home feeling melancholy because I'd had trouble talking to- but that's a story for a different time.
Performance review:	Quite an evening.

Score:
Notes:	It's a 0-point day, so I don't see any point in counting up the times. I get zero points because I spent more time watching the movie A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum than being creative. But more generally, I get zero points because I didn't get enough sleep last night on account of, um, not going to sleep. Of course there was something I was doing (writing a letter) which I felt like I needed to get done, but I only finished it this morning anyway so I might as well have saved it for today. The lesson for me is to not turn my computer back on when it's automatically shut off at 3:00, regardless of how important I think what I'm doing is. I'm going to fix the problem right now by adding a few more shutdown times past 3:00, so that it won't seem worth my while to turn the computer back on.

Score:
First activity:	Piano	0:21
Music is improved by the presence of an audience.
Time allocation:	Music	5:21
Time allocation:	Mundane activities	2:39
I learned to sing the first verse of Jabberwocky backwards. Here's what it sounds like when you reverse the audio. Not bad, huh? No? Look, it's really hard to sing backwards, okay? You try it some time. Grumble, grumble.
Performance review:	Delightfully bizarre.

Score:
First activity:	Setting up the PS3	0:03
Sly Cooper, Flower, and some adventure game or other.
Time allocation:	Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus	3:14
Time allocation:	Flower	0:47
Sly Cooper is a good game, but it would have been nice if it had a bit less fluff. Characters, cutscenes, endless dialogue - why should a platformer have any of these things? Granted, Sucker Punch did not invent the medium. And granted, when I was younger I loved games exactly like this. But they're really talented when it comes to platformers, and fairly hopeless when it comes to the other things they're trying to do. It's a shame Sony is only pushing them farther from what they're good at instead of having them focus on their strengths.
Notes:	I finished Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, and then I finished collecting all the special moves. I have not beaten all the "sprints" yet. I also got more familiar with level 5 of Flower. The day was paused for 51 minutes to have a phone conversation.
Performance review:	This was a very short day, but you made the most of it.

Score:
First activity (Tue.):	Looking through the script	0:52
First activity (Wed.):	Apologizing to Shoshana for being too pushy (though she said I wasn't, so it's okay)	0:03
First activity (Thu.):	Playing Zelda music on the piano	0:59
First activity (Fri.):	Revisiting my old compositions	uncounted
First activity (Sat.):	Browsing the web	0:43
There are two reasons that Gamer Mom needs to be out there. The first is simply that it will reshape people's views of what games are, or at least adventure games but possibly all of gamism as well. I am going to give players an experience which is meaningful, and which can only be done in an interactive format, but which does not follow any of the rules which people think game design should follow. There are no challenges, no competitions, no balancing, no risk/reward, no learning. And I don't stuff in things which make it seem more conventional - it is what it is, and what it is is good. Which brings me to the second reason this needs to be made, which is that these ideas are so personal to me and I want to express them. It is especially on my mind now that I've met someone who I can picture myself being in a very happy relationship with (unlike anyone else I've ever met), but I can also picture myself being in the "gamer mom"'s situation with because we don't have many shared interests. This character once was happy with her family, and now she finds herself living in different worlds than them but still seeing them every day looking for opportunities that she'll have to invent, because they're not there.
Time allocation:	Gamer Mom	26:39
	Mundane activities	17:15
	Thinking about adventure games	0:19
The game is zooming along toward completion. It is going to be exceptionally good.
Performance review:	Excellent progress, but I feel that the first activities were out of character. I also think you should make more of an effort to avoid TV shows and comics when you have better things to be doing.

Score:
First activity:	Assorted tasks on the computer	0:09
11:45 - Set up the blog post (but don't format it - that's the Explorer's job) 11:55 - Practice Trial by Jury 12:25 - short break, for some mundane activities 12:50 - Continue practicing Trial by Jury 14:00 - Lunch 14:25 - Gamer Mom 17:30 - score. I'm not good enough, but today is going to be perfect.
Time allocation:	Gamer Mom	3:06
	Mundane activities	2:04
	Trial By Jury	0:27
	The blog	0:12
I reached node 395 of Gamer Mom. I went over the libretto for Trial By Jury. I laid out everything the Explorer needs for the next blog post, so he has no excuse to not write it. After a half hour of Trial by Jury, I found that I was alreay quite ready for today's rehearsal, and did not feel the need to continue.
Performance review:	Competent.

Score:
First activity (Sun.):	The first Trial By Jury rehearsal	3:38
First activity (Mon.):	Finding a musical theme for a cartoon Kyler once made	0:28
Okay, that was awesome, but the rest of the day will be even cooler.
Time allocation:	The blog	2:53
	Mundane activities	1:47
	Talking with Harel, and helping him with some CSS	1:15
	Comics	1:01
	Piano	0:36
	Talking with Kyler	0:34
The Worker gave me a crappy dialogue session to turn into a blog post. I did that. And halfway through doing my commentary on it, I realized that I could use the presence of a crappy blog post to inspire self-improvement, so that's the angle the post is coming from. It's an aggressively annoying post, so hopefully it'll teach the Worker to do something interesting himself. The Trial By Jury rehearsal was pretty fun, though the absence of our musical director was very much felt. I still don't know what the director thinks of the face I'm making, because he was facing the piano the whole time and didn't see a bit of it, but I guess it'll just have to be a surprise for him. I find that the most entertaining way to read Golden Age comics is to read all the dialogue out loud while doing period-appropriate corny voices. It brings out the goofy fun of it all. This method also works for anything written and drawn by Roger Langridge.
Performance review:	I like that even with a fairly short day, you get to a lot of different kinds of activity.

Score:
First activity:	Gamer Mom	0:07
So here I am on a bus to the first "date" of my life, unless you count things which aren't dates. I'm excited, but also scared that I'll fail to make a connection. Who is Shoshana? I don't really know, and that means I can't overanalyze this meeting to death. I'll try to just be "myself", whoever that is, and if there's any chance of this going somewhere, that'll be enough.
Time allocation:	A date with Shoshana	6:53
	Yu-Gi-Oh! Abridged	2:04
	Mundane activities	0:34
	Rereading Dungeon Master	0:32
	Watching a video from the cake awareness conference	0:16
Shoshana is odd, yes. Not as relentlessly odd as I was hoping, but certainly pleasantly so. She claims she does not have Asperger's Syndrome, and I am not inclined to believe her. She is too similar to me in too many ways. But however you classify it, the sort of personality I was hoping to see is certainly there. Is that enough? I'm not sure. Compared to my own personalities, Shoshana seemed most like the Explorer tonight. She seems very adventurous, in ways I am not comfortable (at present) trying to keep up with. But unlike my character, she seems concerned only with the "real world" and its boundaries. I don't know if she'd be willing to meet me halfway in any respect. It's possible.
Notes:	Yu-Gi-Oh! Abridged is a YouTube series Shoshana introduced me to. It is hilarious.
Performance review:	I very much doubt there were any missed opportunities here.

Score:
First activity (Tue.):	Writing half an e-mail	1:13
First activity (Wed.):	Playing piano	0:47
It is too soon to write a blog post about Shoshana. The shape of the story is not yet clear to me.
Time allocation:	Mundane activities	4:27
	The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Swrd	3:02
	The blog	2:11
	Hanging out with Moshe	1:32
	Finishing the e-mail	1:08
	Talking with Harel	0:41
	Listening to the Legend of Zelda 25th anniversary concert CD	0:40
There are a few conflicts I see between my personality and Shoshana's. Firstly, I try to avoid cliché in all its many forms, as a matter of principle, while she is comfortable with convention. Secondly, I am very cautious in the physical world but very open-minded in virtual worlds, while Shoshana is always exploring in the physical world and less interested in virtual ones. Third, I am a lot more analytical than she is, and because of this I get frustrated by things that she does not care about. Fourth, Shoshana does not like the idea of Asperger's Syndrome. Here is why this does not preclude the possibility of a strong relationship between us. I actually enjoy cliché, and I get very gimmicky in my work as a way of obscuring the fact that I'm going where many have gone before. I am willing to play to type now and then, just so long as I can go back to my hairy usual self afterward. Regarding the different worlds we frequent, the stance of this version of myself on the physical world is open to revision. Who I am now is still just a third draft. All it would take to match her attitude about reality is a few tweaks to The Rules, which I would be only too happy to make if a relationship develops. The fact that I take such pleasure in "unreal" experiences is harder to bridge since The Rules themselves are built on principles of virtual existence. So my virtual life is just something Shoshana would need to accept, and I don't think that's too much to ask. I see the reality gap not as a challenge, but as an opportunity for each of us to share the high points of the existences we know. My overanalysis, I concede, could cause problems. But the Asperger's Syndrome thing will not cause issues. Now that I know how much it bothers her, I will try to avoid using the term again. It is her personality that I am attracted to. If she doesn't want to call it an Asperger personality, then I will not call it an Asperger personality. Unfortunately I sent her an e-mail insensitively reinforcing the idea of Asperger's Syndrome before Moshe informed me (Apparently he knows and is in contact with Shoshana.) that it offends her. But now that I know that it's such an issue, I'll avoid using the phrase.
Notes:	This was my birthday.
Performance review:	I have dealt with the emotions at hand, and now we can move on to what's next. No more worrying about Shoshana until she contacts us.

Score:
Notes:	This began as the Addict's day. But I found it very hard to focus on Gamer Mom when I was so busy worrying about whether I had a shot with Shoshana. I worked with Kyler for three hours, and he did some of his most fun images for the game yet. The next morning the Person and the Addict got into an argument over who would continue. The Addict said to let him continue with Gamer Mom, and stop thinking about Shoshana, but as soon as the discussion was over the Person took the rest of the day for himself, though the Addict attempted at several points to regain control. I talked to Aviella and Yardena, both of whom talked me into accepting the idea that there was nothing going on between me and Shoshana, and then I spent the rest of the day distracting myself with The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and TV shows. Finally Shoshana wrote and set the record straight, and after spending the day how I did it was not a shock and I wasn't unhappy to hear what she had to say.
Performance review:	While the Person is allowed to be given control of a day, he is not allowed to take control while the personality in charge does not consent. Following this interpretation of the Rules, the Person will now be banned for two weeks. He can rejoin us no earlier than March 9th, unless a majority of the rest of us agree before then that he is needed.

Score:
First activity (Fri.):	Getting permission from everyone involved to make a blog post	0:53
First activity (Sat.):	Wasting time	1:12
13:45 - Blog post 14:40 - lunch. 15:00 - sweep the stairs 15:10 - Gamer Mom 17:15 - Shabbat begins. 18:30 - Trial By Jury 19;45 - score. I'm not good enough, but today is going to be perfect.
Time allocation:	Gamer Mom	2:12
	The blog	2:00
	TV	Roughly 2:00
Mundane activities	0:26
I did a few nodes of manual lettering for Gamer Mom, and then hit a problem in the script that we may need the Thinker or the Programmer to solve. I started putting together a blog post about my feelings toward Shoshana last week.
Notes:	I went to Jerusalem for a party during a break in the day.
Performance review:	This is not the reliability I expect from you.

Score:
First activity:	Going over a monologue for the audition	0:54
Nonlinearity is fun.
Time allocation:	Going to an audition	4:02
	Reading The Importance of Being Earnest	2:49
	The blog	2:24
	Mundane activities	2:07
	The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword	1:23
	Virtually hanging out with Harel	1:16
I went to Jerusalem for a Trial By Jury rehearsal, but I had not received the e-mail announcing a change to the schedule. I got a ride to Jerusalem that meant I was in the neighborhood with plenty of time before the 7:30 PM time I'd been notified of, but unfortunately the rehearsal had started at 5:30 and was already over by the time I got there. So I went straight to the Importance of Being Earnest auditions, which I'd planned to attend tomorrow. I wouldn't normally join another play with so much else on my plate, but Yardena is the assistant director and I'd really enjoy working with her. For the occasion I dusted off my Midnight Nation monologue that I'd prepared way back when Erika Hughes helped me improve my audition technique. I think my delivery was quite decent, though I paced around too much. Zusha (who I worked with in The Tenth Man) was there too. But no one else was there, and it seemed no one else would be coming, so I just hung around with Yardena, who played an audio clip about a woman leaving way too many text messages on someone's phone, which just made me very sad because that was what I was like a few days ago and Yardena was laughing at it. Sometimes you just can't help yourself - can't that be sympathized with, rather than mocked? They told me to look over the lines for the character of Jack, so at home I read through the marvelous script. Jack is not quite as fun a character as Algernon, who also is a lot more like me (He even plays piano imprecisely but emotionally!), but there is literally not a single character in the play who wouldn't be fun for an actor. I am looking forward to this, whichever character they offer me. Heck, I'd accept the butler - I could do stuff with that. In Skyward Sword, I have been dying repeatedly due to Skulltulas. Yes, the same low-level spider creatures from Ocarina of Time that you breeze through at the beginning, and I can't figure out how to do damage to them. At one point I got a hit in by accident, and I have not been able to replicate the success. I know I need to spin the creature around, and then I can stun it for a few seconds using the slingshot, but then I can't figure out how to do damage. Don't tell me, I'll figure it out. But for the time being, I am terrified of this first dungeon of the game. I've been tiptoeing around the Skulltulas, but it seems I can get no further without figuring out how to kill them.
Performance review:	What a lovely day. If you had done something for the game you would very likely have gotten the next day as well, but even without that I cannot object to a day with so much character.

Score:
First activity:	Trial By Jury	0:57
Okay, I'm mostly ready for tonight. This will be a simple schedule. 14:20 - Gamer Mom, skipping the problematic parts for now 18:30 - Dinner 19:00 - Rehearsal 0:00 - TV or comics 2:00 - Score.
Time allocation:	Trial By Jury	4:58
	Mundane activities	3:48
	Gamer Mom	2:10
	TV	1:50
	Practicing the Torah reading	0:25
	Getting money from the bank	0:17
I attended the Trial By Jury rehearsal, which I was almost properly prepared for. I did eight nodes of Gamer Mom. I went over the Torah reading that I will be doing this Shabbat, correcting the few mistakes that popped up. I had forgotten about most of what I needed to do in the morning - I had a feeling that I was forgetting something, but I didn't remember what it was. Once it was reminded to me what I needed to do, I reworked the schedule.
Notes:	The rehearsal was strange. Rob apparently thought I was going to be playing the Judge straight, though he did not tell me that, and I went as far from that as one can go. At home I watched the Oscar ceremony, skipping all the acceptance speeches.
Performance review:	Well, I suppose you did most of what you needed to do, though the revised schedule was not followed too precisely.

Score:
First activity:	Figuring out how to beat Skulltulas in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword	0:40
First activity (after rehearsal):	Advanced FreeCell	0:59
Time allocation:	Gamer Mom	1:22
	The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword	1:15
	Mundane activities	0:35
Notes:	The opening statement, which was quite lengthy, was accidentally erased by the Explorer in his eagerness to start the next day. (It was decided to push the self-meeting off by a day.) The goal of the day, as stated in the lost statement, was to figure out how to deal with a particular logical problem that affected 48 nodes of Gamer Mom. I have added a line to the "sd" code that will make backups of the opening statements from now on, to avoid this situation. It really was a very good opening statement. The day was paused in the middle for a rehearsal of The Tenth Man, which we will be doing one final performance of over Pessakh. I am rethinking my entire performance for the purpose.
I added two nodes and took out a few words here and there, and now it works. I've restaged the scene so that for most of it, only the father is standing.
Performance review:	Very nice work.

Score:
First activity:	Piano	0:34
Trial-la-law! Trial-la-law!
Time allocation:	Trial By Jury	4:40
	Mundane activities	4:34
	Gamer Mom	1:42
	Comics	1:38
	Wandering around in the rain	0:18
	Piano	0:10
We had a little private performance of Trial By Jury, and I played the judge. By "private" I mean that we were just in the rehearsal space, performing for ourselves. But it was a reasonably-sized cast (on the women's side, at least) and we had a little set Rob had put together. I wore a wig and a robe, and I had a gavel. It was the most fun I've had in months. I gave my crazy over-the-top version of the character, improvising staging and reactions. Toward the end I ran over to Aviella, and when she indicated that she was supposed to come to me and not vice versa, I started pulling her over to my part of the stage. (It made sense in context.) This totally threw her off, but it may have been funny. Did I get carried away and go too far tonight? Yes, absolutely. I went way too far, at times. That's part of why it was so fun. No pressure, just messing around with a performance in a friendly environment and showing off what I've practiced doing with my face. Good times.
Performance review:	Sounds like a memorable evening.