Actually a good thing, as I really didn't want to go. I put off registering till a couple of weeks ago, despite much nagging from my boss, hoping to get out of it entirely.
Of course, what with all the news at work, it's not surprising that my boss forgot all about it, and double-booked herself for today. I'm certainly not heading off to the NEC by train for an extremely dull show aimed and a trade I'd like to leave.
Although I guess it's unfair to call it 'extremely dull'. There's plenty of cool stuff there (if you're into print/publishing), but there was really no point to my being there because, even if there was something on show there that would benefit the company in some way, they're not going to pay any attention to a manager they're making redundant at the end of the year.
Or not. Who knows? The process is drawing much criticism from around the company - not just the Production departments - and just keeps dragging on. More and more, the ground troops are being shown how awful everything will become when Production is centralised at head office. Frankly, most of us are finding it hilarious. There was no risk assessment prior to the proposal, and the figures used at the planning stage seem to indicate that the folks behind the proposal started with their £1M p.a. saving and worked backward to achieve it.
So. The week at work. The MD is now officially gone, and three managers are taking his place. One to deal with the day to day office grind, starting in about a month (thankfully the only new recruit), and the other two are next up the food chain for Sales and Production/Editorial respectively (and are just adding our titles to their portfolio). The Sales guy has already won some points (with everyone but the Salespeople) by calling for weekly Sales meetings to discuss current status, prospects and plans. I'm surprised this is considered revolutionary.
My boss offered to run the exiting MD's personal effects to his home today - hence the cancelled trip to IPEX, and also cancelled plans to meet up with a couple of friends on the way to/from the show.
The weirdest thing - or perhaps not weird at all - is that no-one in Production really gives a flying fuck about the MD, while the Salespeople (even those who claimed to hate him and want him dead) were weeping - literally, in some cases.
"What are we going to do without him?" they ask.
"Grow a spine and learn to do your fucking job," I reply.
I give it a couple of weeks before they realise they're (broadly speaking) better off without him.
In other news, I got my hands on a couple of Wii-based guilty pleasures recently - Castlevania Judgement (a 3D fighting game using characters from various parts of the franchise, but which also has a more interesting 'quest' mode) and Onechanbara (aka 'Bikini Zombie Slayers'). The former I haven't played a great deal yet - just enough to understand the complaints about the in-game camera, which seems to focus on the opponent and swing wildly around the player without really keeping track of them). The latter is a very standard slice-'em-up... nothing particularly amazing to any of it, and the presentation of some of it is downright apalling - scrolling intro text? Wasn't that last seen on the Atari Jaguar? The voices are the original Japanese which, lets face it, adds to the authenticity of the experience... but did I really mention authenticity when writing about a game featuring a girl scantily dressed as a cowboy running around a zombie-infested city in Japan?
Annoyingly, I'm sure I had a dream last night that might have proved interesting... but I'd forgotten all about it by the time I woke up.
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