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Monday, June 20, 2011

This Week at ADB, Inc., 12-20 June 2011

This was the last week before Origins. Because the Origins trip begins Monday, this "week" covers eight and a half days, starting with the Sunday (12th) that we all worked all day (including Leanna), and ending when we got in the van and headed east on Monday the 20th.

The "biggest news in SFU history" leaked on 13 June. The official announcement came on Wednesday when we unveiled that Secret Contract U was with Mongoose Publishing (of the UK, get it?) to jointly produce an SFU version of their starship game (A Call to Arms), a Prime Directive version of their Traveller game, and the total replacement of the metal Starline 2400 ships (in 1-3788 scale) with new resin Starline 2500 ships (in 1-3125 scale). See the blog posted that day for more.

The weather this week was hot. We were too busy to notice much more than that. The spam storm remained below 100 per day as the filters and firewalls held.

Nothing new was uploaded to e23 this week due to the workload for Origins products. It's 90% certain that the next upload will be at least a week after Origins.

Steve Cole worked on new products, and on preparing everything for the sales booth at Origins. He and Steven Petrick spent Sunday doing Origins prep stuff while the staff proofread the new products. Monday, he got the alert sent out, the Transports Attack cards and cover sent to the printers, and the ISC War cover sent to the printers. On Tuesday, he formatted the ISC War scenario and Order of Battle and sent it to the staff, checked proofs for the Transports Attacked ship cards, finished Distant Armada, and got Jean's last reports on Transports Attacked. Wednesday saw a moment of panic when the die cutter said that the ISC War counters would be late (but he promised to send one box by a faster method). On Thursday, he finished the Transports Attacked rulebook and sent it to press, did all of the reports to date on ISC War, processed more of Jean's phone reports on ISC War, and finished setting up the Origins display. Friday was a birthday party for both Steves. Steve Cole got DVDs of his favorite 1960 TV show, while Steven Petrick received a three-foot bronze sword from the Battle of Thermopylae. After finished his cake, SVC got back to work on ISC War. UPS (after some drama) delivered the ISC War counters and Zip Print, the two covers. SVC and SPP finished the Origins prep work. Saturday was a difficult day, as the F&E staff dumped five hours of work on ISC War onto SVC's desk (he was expecting less than an hour doing final tweeks), but ISC War did finally start printing at 5pm. Steve Cole also did the Captain's Log #43 and ISC War large print editions. Sunday was, to a large part, a day of rest, although Steve Cole had to come into the office to get the Marines playtesting ready for Origins.

Steven Petrick worked getting ready for the Origins trip and getting his secret SFB module printed.

Leanna kept orders and accounting up to date and got things ready for the trip. (She does not go on the trip, but still refers to it as "my vacation" for some reason.)

Mike kept orders going out, rebuilt the inventory, got stuff ready for Origins, and managed customer service. He also released a new video of our products for May. Mike also determined that the uber-PC we use for web management had well and truly died and sent it in for rebuilding.

Joel did website updates, sent out Communique #66 and Hailing Frequencies for June 2011, and helped Mike get stuff ready for Origins.

Jean managed our page on Facebook, dodged a real world tornado, and proofread the new products.

As this blog is posted Monday morning, we're getting ready to load the van and leave for Origins. The two Steves traditionally leave at 5pm, but left earlier last year and this year plan to leave as early as possible to avoid arriving at their first night's rest at the traditional midnight.