As predicted, there was indeed a setback to the opportunity that looked like it was coming my way — but it's not entirely doom and gloom.

Essentially, the problem was that the job in question is a long way from me — like, not practically commutable long — but could have easily been done from home, with occasional visits to the office for meetings, events and suchlike. The guy I'd been dealing with was all for me working this way, particularly as during the pandemic most people there have been doing this anyway, but sadly their CEO is pretty dead-set against people not working in the office for the majority of their time.

This is silly, of course, given that so many businesses have shown they can operate very effectively with a home-based workforce during this whole situation — but, well, if you can't move the big boss man, you can't move the big boss man.

This would have been a great opportunity, but it's doubly frustrating because our boss at the day job is being absolutely insufferable right now. She's continually making up new "procedures" and constantly complaining at us when we don't follow the rules she's decided we should be following on a whim. She's a complete control freak, and she's only been getting worse over the course of the last year or so.

I wouldn't mind if these procedures actually added any benefit to our daily working life, but all they do is create work that isn't necessary for what we do — as evidenced by the fact we've been more than capable of doing our job for years at this point without her latest hobby-horse getting involved. But anyway. That's a complaint for another day.

The "not all bad news" part of what's happened is that there may be some sort of freelance opportunity to still get involved — and in the long-term, that may be able to convince the CEO to bring me on board more permanently. It's not a sure-fire thing by any means, but it's a start — and it'll be a bit of extra pocket money if nothing else.

With this in mind, I still can't give details, I'm afraid — I'm actually going to have to sign an NDA to discuss the potential freelance stuff further, so this will probably be the last you'll hear of it for now — but suffice to say it's bad news… but not the worst possible news. I'm upset, but there's still hope.

Better than nothing, I guess. Now to drown my sorrows in Mana Khemia for the evening.

It looks like I may have been a bit hasty in hoping for some exciting news coming soon, as I had some follow-up news today that was rather disappointing. It's not completely beyond hope — yet, anyway — but this is the main reason I didn't want to give any details about the shenanigans going on behind the scenes.

It's frustrating, because over the course of the last few months — both before and during the pandemic — I've come so annoyingly close to achieving something that I really want to achieve, and it's just been kind of snatched away at the last minute. It's doubly annoying because it's not anything that I can really do something about — it's entirely down to another person who, triple annoyingly, hasn't been directly involved in the situation in question.

I'm sorry to be vague, but I'm going to hold fire on the details until I know one way or the other which way things are going. Don't worry though, it's nothing "bad" — it's something that, if it happened, would be very, very good for me; the disappointment and frustration is coming from the potential for the thing not to happen, if that makes sense, rather than trying to avoid an unpleasant situation. So that's something.

So I'm okay, but I can't pretend I haven't had a bit of a "low" day today. I'm just going to have to take things as they come, though, and if good things happen, good things happen; if they don't, I'm no worse off than when I started. That's probably the healthiest way to look at this, right?

In the meantime, I hope you've enjoyed the latest episode of the MoeGamer Podcast and my review of The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters over at Nintendo Life. If you haven't read the latter in particular do please give it a click — getting my stuff read means greater possibility of more paid work in the future, and it'd be nice to have something go well.

I thought about this when I first started looking at Atari Flashback Classics on Switch — long before I started the Atari A to Z Flashback series, in fact — but old Atari 2600 games make brilliant handheld games, and the Evercade has only made this all the more obvious.

Most of these games are designed for quick play sessions. Those that aren't based around a lives mechanic are usually limited to the very specific (with good reason) two minutes and sixteen seconds, while those that are based on lives are generally so monstrously difficult that a single playthrough probably won't last more than two minutes and sixteen seconds, at least when you're starting out.

These short play sessions make it easy for the game to have an addictive quality, because it's practically no time commitment to have "just one more" go — and playing a bunch of games in rapid succession generally allows you to see marked and noticeable improvement, easily measured by your score or progress through the game's levels. Perfect for when you want to while away a few minutes rather than hours.

So far I've been especially enjoying the Atari 2600 version of Missile Command (which I think I might like better than the Atari 8-bit/5200 and arcade versions) and the Atari 7800-exclusive Food Fight. I haven't delved into Centipede yet, but I'm pretty sure that will have a very similar effect on me.

Toilet breaks will never be the same again!

I think we're almost at the end of the home renovations my wife has been doing for the past while during lockdown. She's put new floors down in the main hallway and the upstairs landing, replaced the grotty old carpet on the stairs with a nice runner, and put a bunch of pictures we've had lying around for ages up.

Here's some wide-angle photos if you were curious:

Here's the hallway and staircase, looking into my wife's study/office in the background. Admire my promotional Atari Lynx poster over the radiator.

Here's a look up the stairs, where we've finally found a place to put a bunch of the wallscrolls and posters from JAST USA I've had lurking around for ages. And an instructional guide on how to hook up your new Super Nintendo Entertainment System, of course.

We've not really had anywhere to put Gear for ages, so I'm glad to finally have her back where she belongs: on display. Excuse the mess in the room behind — that is my "work from home" office at the moment and has also been a bit of a rubbish receptacle for my wife's shenanigans! Clean-up is on the agenda for when everything is definitely positively finished.

And finally, a shot from the top of the stairs looking down. Again, excuse the crap on the carpet; we'll hoover when we stop making mess!

It's all looking very nice indeed and my wife has been working incredibly hard on it. The only remaining "big job" for now is to put up the rest of the shelves in the living room, but we're not doing that until Ikea deliver the brackets we need to actually put them up. That'll be a couple of weeks from now, so expect some more pics then!

I'm kind of knackered and not really sure what to write about today, so I'll just ramble away and see if anything coherent comes out.

To be honest, I'm kind of champing at the bit to talk about the thing I teased yesterday, but as I say, I don't want to jinx anything. I'll be able to share a bit more about all that… soonish, though, likely in the next few weeks or so. The possibilities are making it extra hard to care about the day job right now, I won't lie — but I'm hanging in there for now.

I'm certainly in no great hurry to go back to the office. The day job sent around a huge document full of "guidelines" for those returning to work at the beginning of July (a cohort I am not among, thankfully — it's initially just specific volunteers) that include all manner of ridiculousness like one-way systems, special techniques for going through doors, limitations on going to the toilet and all manner of other stuff.

I mean, I say it's all ridiculous, but in the context of the whole pandemic thing it sort of makes sense… to a certain point, anyway. I kind of feel like if you need to put that many restrictions and unnatural, inconvenient routines in place to get people back in the office, then it's probably not quite time to get people back in the office just yet.

People have proven themselves perfectly capable of working from home over the course of the last… however long it's been now, so I don't see any particular reason why we need to rush people back. But no; it seems the company isn't even willing to entertain the possibility of having people working from home more permanently when (if?) this is all over. Seems a bit silly to me, but this is probably why I don't run a company.

Anyway. Not something I need to worry about too much right now — and it might not be something I need to worry about at all. We'll have to wait and see. I'm sorry for "vaguebooking", but as I say, I'm trying to be a bit cautious in my enthusiasm! Just keep your fingers crossed for me next Thursday, let's say.

I don't want to jinx anything by talking about it too much for now, but I might have some good news on the employment front soon. We'll have to wait and see, but Discussions have been Happening. That's all I'll say for now, but suffice to say if this comes to anything it'll be very exciting, and I'll be very happy.

In the meantime, I found some time to enjoy some more Mana Khemia 2 this evening. It's a lot of fun so far. I've only completed two chapters of Ulrika's route so far, but I'm anticipating that Raze's route will have a markedly different feel to it. Ulrika's is pleasantly silly, and appears to be escalating in that regard with each passing chapter, and I am all about it.

I've been finding the combat a bit more challenging so far, too, which is good. The game ties character progression mostly to crafted items as in the previous game, with the exception of HP and SP, which go up naturally every few battles. Thus far staying on top of the crafting has still made for some fairly challenging battles rather than overpowering the party, giving the whole thing a nice sense of balance — there's also an optional Hard mode for those who want the game to put up even more of a fight, too, so it seems at some point Gust took criticisms that some of the Atelier Iris games and Mana Khemia were a touch on the easy side to heart.

The characterisation is great, and it's been a delight to see how some returning characters from the first Mana Khemia have grown since the first installment. I'm looking forward to seeing how the whole thing develops — and how Ulrika and Raze's stories eventually intertwine, because presumably that's going to happen.

Anyway, that's a fair way off for now. Digging what I've played to date though!

We braved a trip to Ikea today, hoping to get all the necessary accoutrements to complete the plan colloquially known as Project Shelf, more formally known as Pete Uses Most of the Available Walls in His House For Shelves with The Intention of Filling Them with Gaming Paraphernalia and Miscellany, Mostly Games. It's our wedding anniversary on Sunday, so we've spent some of the money from our respective parents on this project as well as my wife's hallway renovations, which are now pretty much complete.

I normally hate going to Ikea, but I have to say, going at 8pm in the middle of a virus pandemic is quite pleasant, because there's hardly anyone there. Result. Doing my bit for the British (and the Swedish) economy.

We were, I'd say, about 80% successful, largely because Ikea's website has been a broken piece of shit for the last few months and thus we weren't able to properly check stock of the things we wanted. We managed to get most of the things we'll need, with the crucial exception of the brackets to hold the shelves in place; we were, however, able to order those, but they won't arrive for another couple of weeks.

Still, I'm looking forward to the finished result; I really, really like my "library" of games that I currently have, and having a little more space both to expand and to spread out some of the things that are currently a bit crammed in will be very nice indeed. In particular, I'm looking forward to having some dedicated space to display the Evercade and its games, as well as some of the limited editions I've had to squeeze in a bit more tightly than I would perhaps like to.

Expect some photographs of the finished project when it's all done and dusted… likely in a couple of weeks' time, but perhaps sooner depending on if and when Ikea are able to deliver those brackets!

It's so hot here right now. I don't like it. I haven't liked the heat for a good few years now — though I remember being a bit more fond of it when I was younger. Ah, youth, and all that.

Spring and summer have definitely got hotter over the course of my life. I remember some pleasantly balmy summers when I was a kid, but I also remember it being considered quite unusual and worthy of note when we would have a "heat wave". Nowadays, it feels like we're confronted with the same "hottest summer since records began" stories every year, and it becomes increasingly unpleasant to even contemplate going outside.

We bought a portable air conditioner a while back and stuck it in our bedroom. It's probably the greatest investment we've ever made. Were it not for the fact that it's incredibly noisy, I'd be a strong advocate for putting them all over the house. Including in the toilet, which is like a bloody oven at this time of year.

Still, even with lockdown supposedly "easing" over here from the beginning of next month (let's see how long that lasts if the virus cases start spiking again) it's not as if I have any real particular desire to go out and do anything outside. It might be nice to go and see my friends — though they were hardly ever available to do anything fun at the best of times, so this whole situation hasn't been much of a change.

Anyway, just felt like moaning about that. I'm off to sit in the air-conditioned bedroom and play retro games until I fall asleep!

Started Mana Khemia 2: Fall of Alchemy today and am already enjoying it a lot. There are certain aspects of the game so far where I can feel it just sort of straining to become what the Arland series would become, but it's also its own distinct, unique thing, too. The characters are already shaping up to be some of my favourites so far; Ulrika is what I regard as a proper Atelier protagonist, which I feel like we didn't really have throughout the Iris series (with the possible exception of Viese), so it's a pleasure to have a ditzy, enthusiastic young girl in the leading role once again.

Interested to see how the two routes play out in Mana Khemia 2. They're already shaping up to be quite different with occasional crossovers, even just looking at my limited experience with the first chapter. It appears that one group focuses on combat studies, while the other focuses on alchemy, though I imagine there'll be a bit of both in each route — there certainly has been in Ulrika's so far.

There's also some pleasing fanservice for the first Mana Khemia in there, too. The group's homeroom teacher from the first game is now the principal of the academy, and is not doing a very good job of it. Flay, the "perpetual student" playable character from the original, is now a teacher, as is Tony, the secondary antagonist for much of the early stages of the first game. It's interesting to watch these two in particular apply their personalities to a "professional" life — though with Al-Revis in the state it's in at the start of Mana Khemia 2, "professional" may not be quite the best word!

Looking good so far, then. I'll be archiving my gameplay on YouTube again (primarily for my own purposes so I can refer back to footage and take screenshots if required), so if you want to see what the game's all about feel free to check out the videos. First one should be going up tomorrow.

Hope you've had a pleasant Monday! It is Monday, right? I'm losing track…

I've had a never-ending stream of farts today. I blame the whole tin of beans I had with breakfast. I'm sure they never affected me like this when I was younger, but now… I feel like a single can could probably propel me around for the entire day if I let it.

Anyway. It's the end of another week once again, and I've had a fairly productive weekend. I got the next two weeks' worth of videos done and dusted today, and managed to plough through all of The Coma 2 yesterday, as I noted. I'm very tempted to boot up Mana Khemia 2 just to have a "quick look" at it, but it's nearly 11pm and I know for a fact at this point that a "quick look" at an Atelier game will almost certainly last for several hours.

For the next couple of short;Play videos I looked at Ion Fury and Dungeon of the Endless for Switch — these have both recently had nice packaged releases, and I've been looking forward to playing Ion Fury for ages. I was not disappointed at all; it feels just like a classic Build Engine game, which I'm delighted about. I appear to have completely forgotten how to play Dungeon of the Endless effectively, however; I make a real mess of things in the video! Clearly some more practice is required.

As you can tell, I'm not super-coherent this evening. I've worked on a lot today, so I should probably get some rest ahead of another stimulating week working the day job from home. Ah well. At least I have writing my The Coma 2 review for Nintendo Life to look forward to, as well as all the daily goodness on YouTube and MoeGamer — please look forward to it, and have a pleasant night!