A day in the life of Tim Aste.

Blogging. I usually wait to do this until I have some big announcement to make or whatever. Unfortunately, half the time I have something big or cool going on, I can't even talk about it until it's too late. At this rate, I put a .plan out every 4-6 months.

With our new website layout, it's much easier to do more frequent blogs. I have been a bit detached from the awesome community as of late...So in a concerted effort to try to "blog" more, I have decided to write a .plan about daily life at GG, and what it's like to work at the most awesome place in the universe.

This isn't too much of a general description of everyone's day. It's much more me just writing down what I did yesterday, and trying to take accompanying pictures. I decided to have a little fun with this to help fill in the gaps of things I can't go into details about. Rest assured, yesterday was a very productive day. :)

I've had to leave some parts a bit mysterious as I can't talk too much about the new awesome top-secret projects coming from GG until there is approval to talk about them. Jay will have be tarred and feathered if I do. That is NEVER fun.

Disclaimer: This in no way reflects the daily life of the average GG Employee, except maybe Pat Wilson or Adam deGrandis.

So without further ado, a day in the life of Tim Aste:

9am - Wake up. Groggy. Last night still a bit hazy. Southern Comfort bottle is little bit more empty than I remember it. Try to get in the shower, find someone already in the shower. Decide to wait them out, how long can a shower take?

10am - Room mate still in shower. Misjudged the effects of warm water before noon. Decide to give up hope and just go into work. Already late.

10:01am - Go outside. Another sunny beautiful day in Eugene, OR (translation: rainy). Gawk at our basement "swimming pool."

10:05am - Arrive at GG World Headquarters. Prompty greeted by the smoking crew.

10:06am - After greeting everyone, checked my dreaded inbox and make a first pass at any outstanding or important emails from yesterday or that came in overnight. Don't reply yet as this will take time. Also check up on team-mates work, see where everyone is at, and get in a pre-emptive berating of the interns(not really, they do awesome stuff).

10:15am - After assessing the todays tasks and situation, I realize it's time for breakfast. I make a sandwich and Adam D. decides to join in.

10:20am - While eating the sandwich I begin the long task of working on my inbox. Get out replies and forwards of important messages, support requests, or whatever else happens to be in there.

10:42am - Complete morning email, add more tasks and goals for today, as well as highly critical things that absolutely need to be done.

10:46am - Start today's work on design of new [censored] project.

11:20am - Step back for a second to check up and make sure everyones current work is going ok with no problems that need attention. Everyone here learns off each other and always helps out (at least with artists). Adam is currently helping Justin K. with a normal map issue. All looks well.

11:25am - Unsuccessfully try to track down Williams. Pretty sure he is avoiding me. He's holding a grudge from a Settlers of Catan game from 5 months ago still.

11:30am - Continue design work, flag a bunch of stuff in an art history book for scanning.

11:40am - Snag Williams as he goes by, prompty get ignored. He will get his.

11:49am - Fight off Justin Dujardin from my desk, continue work. Feeling quite productive at this point. :)

11:50am - Get Pat Wilson in the loop on things. It's best to give Pat what he wants than suffer the consequences.

11:51am - Back to design work, notice cool looking things on Adam's monitors and praise him for being so much better than me.

12:50pm - Criticize Adam's work. He doesn't like criticism, as we found out at the MBUltra Post mortem. Get assaulted by Adam deGrandis.

12:55pm - Get a call from Ben Garney. He needs someone to babysit the sump pump in our new basement swimming pool while the TSE meeting is going on. I agree. On the way out, I feel a dark presence on the stairway and think my wallet is missing. I think it was Zach Zadell.

1:00pm - Arrive at house and sync up with Ben G. to babysit sump pump, which is ok because I'm doing most of my work in a notebook at the moment.

1:03pm - Analyze basement situation.

1:05pm - Sit down on the steps by the hose and fill a whole notebook with notes and designs over the next 2 hours. Find I'm much more productive with a single notepad then a laptop.

1:45pm - Run into frustrating logistics problem.

1:52pm - Solve problem. Everyone rejoices.

1:55pm - Quickly check up on basement. Back to work.

2:01pm - Find a bill in the mail for $0.00. Consider writing a check for $0.00

2:30pm - Lunchtime, need to eat healthy because sitting down all day will make you chunky. Lunch today consists of salad and chocolate milk.

2:45pm - Matt F. calls, and says he has the freshly spayed cat and is on his way to relieve me so I can go back to the office.

3:24pm - Matt F. arrives with his extremely doped up cat. Hilarity ensues. I pack up my stuff and head back to the office.


3:30pm - Arrive back at the office. The whole office is currently rearranging their locations at this point. This is to get ready for the next round of projects to keep teams close together. High efficiency to follow. Adam and I stay in the same spot luckily. Adam, desperate for attention, shoots himself in the leg with an airsoft gun for "research and development". I'm smart enough to remember to video tape it to embarass him on the internet. Click the thumbnail to watch. :)

3:33pm - Do afternoon pass on email, gotta keep on that stuff or it will blow up. Start putting my notes into the website.

3:45pm - Check up on people's project progress from the morning, realign schedules. Back to "the fort".

3:55pm - Bug Josh yet again, he continues to ignore me since he tries to do the work of the entire office. In his spare time Josh does voice-overs for movie trailers and rides around in a Escalade.

4:00pm - Back to work on project design

4:27pm - Adam D. makes hot cocoa. Totally disrupts me by telling me how good it is, and pointing out I have none. What a jerk.

4:30pm - Work on project website, bring it up to speed, add new users into database in preparation.

4:45pm - For the first time today find time to do some actual "computer graphics" work. Gotta pull my share of the art tasks. :) Doesn't usually take this long to get into it, but today was unique.

5:10pm - Go around, check up on various things. Have discussion with Eric on armor style and silohuette.

5:15pm - Back to working on art.

6:30pm - Dinner time. Consists of a quick match of Planetside with Adam D., and left over pizza. Stephen Z would usually play with us, but he had some extra work today that had to get done.

7:00pm - Back to the office. Transfer days worth of yellow note pad fun into website

7:45pm - Grab a drink. Back to work.


8:45pm - Wind down for the day. Make sure I drive Adam nuts before leaving by blasting my music. This works great when the office is fairly empty. He hates it.

9:05pm - Thus ends another productive day as an indie. Good night GG!