I should be downsized. Those bastards at Stardock should downsize me.  When I was in my 20s, I was able to get so much done it was crazy.

Some people spend hours a day playing World of Warcraft or other such things.  That's the kind of person I am.  Ever see the South Park episode of World of Warcraft where the kids are playing against this griefer who lives on his computer?  That was me in my 20s and early 30s. Except I wasn't playing games.  I was writing them and skinning and working to create desktop enhancement software.

But now I'm 36 and have 3 kids.  You should see my 1 year old girl. She's so cute.  She owns me and my two sons.  And my wife and I find ourselves spending increasing amounts of time being parents.  Which has slowed my work time down considerably. 

Where I used to be able to do 84 hours a week easily (and it's really not hard to do that - it's just 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. Don't scoff, think of all the MMO players who do that sort of thing and pay for the privilege to do it).  Now, I'm lucky to do 60 hours a week.  That's a net loss of 14 hours each week. 

Needless to say, it greatly reduces my productivity. So I'm in the process of bringing my successors up to speed. People who can pick up some of the things I used to do.  You already see Zoomba and Island Dog all over.  They have taken over a lot of the stuff I used to do on WinCustomize and elsewhere. 

One of the places my reduced productivity has affected people is in the Magic Suite.  It's a premium suite we're giving away to Object Desktop users who have renewed until past January 1, 2009.

Here's some screenshots of it running on my desktop:

Like it? I sure do. But the gadgets are missing. Why? Because on Windows Vista, the UAC causes problems for gadget deployment from a suite. We're working on it but it's going to require an update in one of our programs. It's a pain in the butt.

So as you can see, it's almost done. But it's not quite there yet.  But it will totally rock when it's done.  Our ETA is about another week.

But much of the hold up has been my fault because there's a lot of coordination in this particular suite and I am the one doing the coordination and I budgeted my time based on what I've historically worked.  So we're on it. It's coming.  It totally rocks. Stay tuned!