So much WIN, I am, in fact, exhausted. But let’s get something down.

Neil Edwards has painted a PC. A PC covered in WIN. City of Heroes and City of Villains WIN to be precise. Yes, this is for a follow-up compo to Andrew Wildman’s painted PC. You’ll be able to get your hands on it… if you (wait for it) WIN. Details to come.

We had big casting WIN. Well probably. One more step, Wednesday.

Costuming for said casting WIN. Talking about PVC versus leather actually got me excited. Not like that. Pervoid.

Secret community video thing… WIN. Several wins actually. One, two, three.. more to come. All edited by me. In some cases scripted by me. In all cases shot… I am a multi-hyphenated man.

Secret Games Convention quest thing WIN. Order goes out tomorrow for the first of many, many Moo cards….

And then I get home, and it’s all Xbox 360 new interface WIN! Rock Band 2 WIN (Who cares about making music when it’s got Livin’ on a Prayer??)!

Good day.

Which means inevitably, tomorrow will be a disaster. Karma.

Ex-haus-ted.

Spent the day in London doing our casting. Saw 16 people – no wait, 17 – and gave the same little five-minute presentation explaining who we are, what we do, and why we want to cast people in these roles 17 times.

I think it was still pretty good, even on the 17th go-around….

Got a big post on the casting process coming, but I’m going to leave it until we officially announce why we’re casting, if that makes sense.

Being in London just reminds me why I left London. Also, got to say, the only thing worse than being stuck in a basement on a hot and sunny June day in London… is arriving and leaving during rush hour. Could have done without that.

Still, really useful and productive day. As always, all of prior expectations were overturned… but that’s a really good thing.

So what’s up with you guys? You’re quiet.

Start the day with coffee, and trying to figure out what we have left to do for the UK Games Expo. We’ve done this so many times it should become second nature, and to an extent it has, but there’s always room for error… and the more complacent you get the more errors you make.

We need to buy hangers (for t-shirts) and storage ‘tubs’ for stock and, in fact, t-shirts. Quick trip to Woolies and one of several local ‘pound shops’ and we’re sorted.

Back to the office. It’s Massage Day (woo!) and Chris is having his First Ever Massage. When he comes out he tells me “I don’t know why I waited so long to have that.” Nor do I mate.

Check on the movie Spaff left rendering overnight. Lucky I did, as despite being excellent quality, it has one minute of ‘blank space’ at the end which probably makes it several hundred MB bigger than it needs to be. Set it to re-render.

Dive into email, feeling way too jittery from the coffees first thing. I never learn.

While I’m emailing, three PC cases are delivered to me. They need to go in the van tomorrow for Secret Prize Project. Feel like an old man as I talk about when I used to open PC cases for a living; well kinda, I was a PC journalist once.

I’ve been asked to judge a student competition for Stafford University, so download the files that I need to look at.

The first re-render of Spaff’s video is the right length – and half the size – but is smeary and pixellated. Fiddle with a few things and start it going again. Pretty sure it’s not going to work.

Watch a few of the videos from the UbiDays press conference. Good job by them on their PR. Remain unconvinced of the earth-shattering importance of a follow-up to Beyond Good & Evil. I mean it was good, but it wasn’t The Best Game Evar.

Browse through some very creative rendered Lego people for the competition. Students are smart. Must adjust my presentation accordingly.

Read an email from @Geoffrey – hallo! – pointing me to an interesting article about the deaths of MMOs. The stuff about Auto Assault is quite moving. That leads me on to a new post-apocalypse MMO that’s being worked on, in part, by some die-hard AA fans. It’s called Apokalypsos. Be careful not to drop that final ‘S’ or it’ll be something to do with the end of the world via dance… or a crappy fruit drink.

Start an email with thoughts on the Lego designs, but don’t finish; go to lunch with Mat and Chris instead. Over burgers we talk about the show this weekend, and set the MMO world to rights – usual stuff.

Back to the desk to an email announcing our summer party; we’re going to Thorpe Park. Even though I’ve known about this for ages, I’m suddenly excited by the prospect of many rollercoasters. Yayyy!

Next up: boring show prep. First, decide on how much stock we want to take, then see if we’ve got that much available. Then, re-price an awful lot of it as the prices have changed. I am the Pricing Gun Kid.

In the middle of this I get a phone call from my contact at Stafford, pressing me for decisions on the Lego design thing. I give her my choices over the phone.

At 4pm we go over to our other building to do a count of every t-shirt we have, and move them all from flimsy, crappy cardboard boxes (which are a pain to move, stack, and store) into those new tubs. Utterly tedious and sweaty work, but needed to be done.

Finished by 5pm, and we drop by the Community team to grab some swag for the weekend. We pick up mostly Guild Wars stuff – Skill Pins, Mini-Pet cards. I walk out with a very heavy bag. Mat also hands over the new printed signage for the weekend, and we agree to meet tomorrow before we go pick up the Transit van.

5:30pm, and we’re locking down final bits and pieces. I’m starting to get that feeling, that tingly feeling of dread that we’ve forgotten something or we haven’t done something. This results in me asking Chris “Have we got [insert thing here]” about a million times.

Last thing before I leave, Chris says: “We’re up to 186 applications.” Meaning our casting job isn’t getting any easier.

Tomorrow: van hire, packing, then The Road to Birmingham. Expect service to be light.

Before I even get to the office, I’m on the phone to our costume designer. Busy executive type, me.

What really strikes me is that I can’t walk up the (pathetically small) incline to our office, and talk on the phone at the same time, without feeling a bit out of breath. Fitting that I’ve got my gym kit with me.

First thing after I get my breath back: Spaff’s nearly finished on our Secret Little Video Project, and wants me to do a dialogue polish on what he’s written. Between the two of us we add about 20% more gags. That’s science, Bobby!

While we’re doing this, Spaff reminds me that he’s off tomorrow and into next week; so I won’t be able to run my presentation past him, annoyingly. So much for my calendar being accurate.

Chris points out we’ve passed 100 applications for the parts we’re casting. Eeek.

Get into my emails:

• One to the UK Games Expo organisers, just letting them know about Karl Kopinski’s presence
• Another to… Wizkids, actually, just to check that they’re still cool about giving us some free HeroClix to give away this weekend
• A request to Finance to get a float, and petty cash for this weekend to save my aching credit card
• A ‘pretty please’ to some Community team fellows to do some video capture for our costume reference

Realise that I have a tooth playing up. I’ve got some dental work coming up in two weeks, but wonder if I can pull it forward; the dentist says no. Then I remember I won’t be around next week anyway, soo… that’s that.

Lunch; sandwich from home, and OTRSPOD:EO. I ‘LOL’ quite often while playing. (BTW, Monday’s strip? Hardest I’ve laughed at anything for a while.)

Post-lunch, open up my presentation for Stafford to see all the images are missing. What the…? Realise I’ll have to work on it at home, and that my window to do something polished and rehearsed is rapidly closing. Who wants to see a presentation on Saturday night??

“We’re at 126 applications now,” Chris says. We log in to the casting site and see that every applicant is neatly laid out for us, with giant green and red buttons marked ‘Suitable’ and ‘Not Suitable’. My stomach does a backflip. This is like an automated heartbreak machine.

I duck back to email for refuge, and slim down the Inbox some. In the middle of this realise I now have two invoices sitting on my desk that need paying, so go find my boss and get a quick lesson in raising Purchase Orders, something I have avoided until now due to my pathological fear of boring paperwork. Thankfully, it turns out it’s sort of stupidly easy to do.

Back at my desk, the final version of Spaff’s video is done. We all have a good laugh watching it, and promise ourselves that next time… we film it for real.

Write this post, here, about many bargains. Come clean us out!

At a bit of a loose end, I realise I should try and tackle something I’ve been putting off for quite a while: drafting a mission statement to go into a corporate fact sheet we’ve been working on. These are tough things to nail. I spend an hour intermittently staring into space, writing gibberish, getting a word I like, putting it next to a word I don’t like in a sentence I hate, and then finally have two lines. But two decent lines.

Next to me, Chris is editing the transcript we had done for Episode 3 of the podcast. (Out next week. Pretty sure.) He can’t make out one word which the transcribers couldn’t nail. Turns out, it was ‘implementing’.

5pm: “154 applications.” I decide I’d better take a look. “Should we do, like, a standard rejection letter for people?” Chris asks. I have no idea. I’m still worried if I click ‘Unsuitable’ that it’s going to auto-email someone with a big fat NO. THEY DON’T WANT YOU.

Trying to start casually, I start looking at applications. Early on, I make mental notes of who I think might be right, and who might not. Then after several pages, I click the Unsuitable button… and then it gets a bit easier, and God I hate it.

I am extremely glad we did the casting call; it’s swelled our shortlist twenty-fold, but at the same time, it does mean a lot of people made an effort (even if it was a very, very small effort in some cases) and a lot are going to get rejected.

I spend about an hour and a half sifting, only looking at applicants for one of the two parts. I start with 60, and as I leave, I have 15 possibles, 11 undecided and 34 ‘Unsuitables’. Sorry, ladies.

And we haven’t finished accepting applications, yet.