Work
Dan has returned, and with a beard no less. As expected, Dan is showing himself to be a pretty busy guy, and had requested that we speak to him about nothing but code for today. Tomorrow I get to tell Dan about all the fun things that have been going on while he was away.

I did a bit of a Dan last Friday, it seems. When purchasing things for myself, I almost religiously get receipts. When purchasing $100 worth of pizza on behalf of the company, I forget to get a receipt. This is going to make getting the money back a little interesting. Mind you, I do have a bunch of witnesses who can personally verify that I came back with a large tower of pizza which they then proceeded to consume, so I'm sure I can work something out.

The Building Committee also elected to have the meeting room near the dev/systems/support area called the "Daniel Ingvarson Memorial Lost Article Room" (DIMLAR), in memory of all the keys/watches/credit cards/wallets/stuff that Dan has lost in his travels.

Bad debts
Ghassan Matar, of Hexapods, seems to have completely dissapeared, along with the money that he owes me. Luckily I made him pay for a large sum of the money up front, so I'm not much out of pocket, and most of the work I did was on Finance::Quote and which I would have done sooner or later anyway.

House-hunting
I have to admit, I really like the house that we've been looking at. Jacinta checked with the council, and yes we can run chickens there. I've been talking to various banks and other financial institutions about getting a home loan. This is all very exciting, and very scary. I'm also now quite aware how much money I have, how much I'm spending, and how much I'm saving. Overall that stuff is looking pretty healthy, although stamp duty and the legal costs of transferring a house can be quite high.

Diplomacy
Getting very interesting. Junwei and I are very good friends, which is why I've been kicking his butt out of neighbouring provences. Phil and I are also good friends, which is why he tried to invade me last turn. I'm also good friends with England, so good friends that he's letting my troops stay in his capital city. Everyone's my friend.

Finance::Quote
Been doing absolutely nothing recently, which sucks. Been spending all my time looking at houses, looking at home loans, cooking dinner, and defending France from the Italian hordes.

Chickens
Chickens are way cool. If we move to Preston, I can keep six of them, but I'll probably start with five. I've decided to call them Ben, Tara, Ian, Sofie, and Daniel.