Thursday, September 28, 2006

7-4, Doing classified tasks for The Man

Max’s Godawful commute to Volt

Walk 0.1 mile NW from OVERLAKE TRANSIT CENTER to

Depart
SR 520 Ramp & NE 40th St
At 06:05 AM
On Route ST 545 Bear Creek Park and Ride Express
Arrive
NE 83rd St & Redmond P&R-BAY 2
At 06:15 AM

Transfer to

Depart
Redmond P&R AcRd & NE 83rd St-BAY 1
At 06:35 AM
On Route MT 291 Kingsgate Park and Ride
Arrive
Willows Rd NE & NE 116th St
At 06:53 AM


Max’s Defeated Ride home from Volt

Depart
Willows Rd NE & NE 116th St
At 04:28 PM
On Route MT 291 Redmond
Arrive
NE 83rd St & Redmond P&R-BAY 2
At 04:45 PM

Transfer to

Depart
Redmond P&R AcRd & NE 83rd St-BAY 1
At 04:55 PM
On Route ST 545 Seattle Express
Arrive
Overlake TC AcRd & BAY 2
At 05:08 PM


So Why Does Max have this job at Volt?

He can’t tell you.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

This joke works better with the anouncer voice

Every day my life resembles a bad sitcom a little bit more. For those of you who were busy watching House, or the new entirely controversy based survivor series here’s what’s happened in the last few episodes.

Season 19 Episode 5: The Other Wilsons.

Max moves in with an old friend from college and things are about to get wacky. Will Max adapt to the new environment, and who are these new Cah-Razy characters!? Look out folks because the next one on the guest list is hilarity. Thursdays on “Maxin it out”

Season 19 Episode 6: Gettin’ Paid

Watch as Max tries and tries to find a job. The internet? Interviews? Blind resume drops? Which will it be? But don’t stop just yet because things take another cah-razy turn. Will Max end up being a bouncer at a strip club? Hold on to your hat’s folks because it’s about to get wild. Thursdays on “Maxin it out”

Season 19 Episode 7: Playing the Game

Things are finally starting to look up when Max gets a job as a game tester, but he’s the one who’s about to get played. A handling mix up sends Max to the wrong project, will his dream job slip through his fingers? Find out Thursdays on “Maxin it out”

The only problem is that the producers of the show also have a nondisclosure agreement, so they can’t tell me how the end of this amazing two-parter is going to go. The gist of the story is that I was supposed to be signed onto a project that’s going to run continuously through the end of October, but when I went in to do the paperwork involved in becoming a Volt employee they put into the bullpen list, so I got contracted onto a project that was just that one day. It turns out that even if you’re not on a project there’s a day laborer kind of fill ins pool that you can throw your proverbial hat into. I’m supposed to be on a project, but was instead thrown into the pool. I’ve talked to the guy at Volt, he’s working on it, and everything should turn out okay. I’ll let you know as soon as I do.

Monday, September 25, 2006

Because Then I'd Have To Kill You.

I have a job working for Volt game testing. I also have five nondisclosure agreements with Volt and Volts customers and Volts customers customers so I can't tell you much about my job. I'm a gametester. It's enjoyable, they give you free soda, and I get to do numerous interesting and amusing things that I can't tell you about.

However it may be more important what I'm not doing. Project Exodus is about going out and doing something on the edge, getting more life experience, getting good stories (which I won't be allowed to tell you) and seeing the things that I've sought to see. So what am I not doing? I'm not wearing a hat with my company logo and a shirt with my name on it. I'm not slicing up sandwiches five days a week to pay for the interesting parts of my life, and I'm not doing what every other damn kid is doing.

And yes, I'm not making that extra $1.50 an hour that I could be making, but what I am doing is better then that, what I am doing is more stimulating then that, what I am doing is making every part of my life interesting, what I am doing...

Is something I can't tell you about.

Saturday, September 23, 2006

As of 9/25/06 This is True

My name is Maximilian Willson, and I work for Volt Game Testing.

Drowning In The Same Damn Sea

My phone rings it's inentionally sterile "Beep! Beep!" non-musical ringtone.

"Hi I'm from volt gametesting calling for Max Willson..."
"Oh hey. This is for the Nintendo of America testing right?"
"Actually this is a diffrent service, we want you to test for the X-Box 360"

Damnit! Where were these people 3 weeks ago when I didnt' have a job? Also how is it that I can say that I've been playing video games since I was four and major corporations will think that's a good thing. Man, suddenly I'm Mr. Freakin Popular.

I still don't know what I'm going to do, but now that I've got TWO gametester options on the table I can say one thing for certain.

Screw Quiznos.

I let you know how it works out when and if it does.

Friday, September 22, 2006

Damn...

This was supposed to be a post celebraing the fact that I got a job a Quiznos and that life was now clear and focused. But literally while I was logging in to blogger I got a phone call from one of the other places I had applied.

'Hi this is Sandy with Nintendo of America..."

I've got the Quiznos job. That's mine. It would be 9-5 M-F at the Quizno's by the Bellevue Transit Center, and it would pay 10/hr. It's profoundly safe, and stable, and fits the role of "Something that will finance project Exodus." But now a much much more interesting job has been dropped on my head, and the head wound of opportunity has removed the glory of clarity.

I'm back in the same Damn boat. Drowning in a sea of opportunity.

Okay lets think about this. For one thing I definitely have a job. Because I don't start until after next week I can definitely find out if I have the gametester position by then. If I don't, then I shrug walk away and go make sandwiches for the next nine months. If I do I have to throw a brick in the face of Mike who was really friendly, and essentially gave me the job as soon as I walked in.

Probably anyway, the gametested job is much more interesting, but here's the catch. It's a full time job, but project by project. They need me available, but they aren't promising me anything. The doomsday scenario where a month goes by and I'm eating only Raman and hoarding all of my remaining money in order to pay the next months rent and stay one step above homeless will probably never happen. But it might. Damnit this is confusing, after nearly a month of job searching I find one that falls into my hands, and now something better is knocking at my door.

You know none of this would've been a problem if Deja Vu had hired me.

The other thing about the Nintendo job is that it could be my foot into the industry. The two college paths tied for the lead at the moment are CS degree and an attempt at getting into the game industry, and if that attempt fails selling out to M$ long enough to get a degree in game design. Or Psych Doctorate, with the intent of becoming a psychotherapist, and making a stab at joining the NSA underground weapons labs that are working on chemical mind control.

As you can see I don't have anything "normal' in mind, but remember that these goals are #2 after Destroy The Sun.

Gahhh, well I'll let you know which one I go with, but at least you can take heart in knowing that I do, in fact, have a job.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

A Series of Unfortunate Events

So I've signed up at spherion, they called me in yesterday to go get a job placement.

I was sick yesterday. We arranged for me to go in today at 10.

I woke up at 9:30 today my head literallly completely blocked with a thick noxious goo. I've rescheduled for tomorrow at 10.

Every time I begin to get close to something somehow a wrench gets thrown into my vast macine.

Thursday, September 07, 2006

Nuklearpower.com Newspost

(Provided against his will by Brian Clevinger)

Oh, and I'd apologize for inflicting today's comic on you, but spitting up bile and hate is all I know now. Can you blame me? Imagine being forced to put up with two years of that shit. At academic gun point.

Professor: "What if I remove a single molecule from the table? Is it still a table.?"

Class: "Yes."

Professor: "What if I keep doing that? One molecule at a time? When does the table stop being a table?"

Class: "Ooooooh."

Brian: "I'm gonna say when it falls over."

Professor: "That's not the point of the--"

Brian: "That's when it stops being a table."

Now I make a sprite comic. Oh, tuition. You're the best spent money ever.

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Deja Vu

Before I can come out and say this I need to explain some of the finer details of my moral code, and I do live by a moral code.

I’m sure by now you’re aware of my vow of pacifism. It keeps me bound by a strict if somewhat vague rule that I may only resort to violence in self defense or defense of the innocent. I say it’s vague because the case could be made that someone with a cold who’s coughing near me is an active threat. I was never captain healthy, I could die of that cold.

I also have a belief that nobody is truly innocent. This is why I tend to mutter “damn comparatively innocent bystanders” whenever my “Anything that moves” mentality causes me to peg an innocent in time crisis or one of its family of gamers. On the surface this seems like a very harsh belief, and it is, but above all else this is a way for me to forgive the vast and numerous flaws of the world. Sidharta Buddha said that human ignorance was boundless, and it is from that which we learn that the compassion and the patience of the enlightened must also be.

So why does this matter? Be cause I’m about to make a very controversial definition of innocent.

Before I do I have to bring you into another philosophical quandary. Many of the great masters have preached the idea of material abandonment. In general I agree. A mind who sees on material goods and treasures turns a blind eye to the light. The point of which my views differ comes when the matter of the body arises. Many would say you must abandon your body, it is a material thing and you must seek to transcend all material things, but I believe that ignoring your body is a mistake. Your body is how you experience the world, it is your anchor to the earth from which you were made, it is the vessel for your self and this anchorage is not without value. Because of this I don’t think ill of bodily matters or bodily pursuits. The same beauty I see in the natural world I see in the natural aspects of human existence, even the fleshly and bodily ones. My moral code has no stigma on sexuality, hedero or homo, as long as consent it maintained. So being a rake or a seductress is fine as you’re not a rapist.

This all leads me to the point of this over extrapolated philosophy lecture. There’s a good chance I’ll be getting a job as a strip club doorman. From my conversations with the manager this consists mostly of keeping the dancers safe, or in my own melodramatic rephrasing, Defense of the Innocent. There are a few more aspects of it, but the guardian defender role is what I’ll be doing the most. It’s essentially just standing around and being menacing, which in melodramatic respeak becomes Totem of warding.

You could question why I took it, but it comes down to one very simple answer. Life experience. This is a job that’ll keep things interesting.

Alpha

I met the larger of Kevin’s two cats recently. It was a very confusing experience. The cat was affectionate after I used my highly trained Cat affection inducing techniques on it. I’ve spent a lot of time with cats and have gotten fairly good at such things. The weird thing was that while the cat was purring and rubbing against me it would periodically bite me. Not a real aggressive bite, it wouldn’t break the skin, more of a nip. Now I’m not sure if cats do this, but I know canines will nip each other to assert dominance, so I began to think that this cat was trying to tell me that it was the Alpha in our relationship. Understand that I respect the role of follower, but I’m not willing to be second to a housecat. I learned from an aide at pets mart that if a dog begins nipping you to assert dominance you have to nip it back. This doesn’t mean actually biting it; he taught me a hand gesture which is basically a fancy way of pinching it that simulates the nip. If you do this long enough the dog will eventually cave in and recognize you as the alpha. So I began to nip the cat, which it didn’t seem to enjoy, but it never stopped nipping me. Eventually the thing got bored and wandered off. I told Kevin about it biting me in a strange unprovoked way, and he said that:

”Yeah, She’s just crazy.”

There wording is important there because the alpha behavior only occurs amongst male dogs. I wasn’t sure cats did it at all, and I’m essentially certain that female cats didn’t do this. I told him my alpha theory but given the gender of the creature it’s an amazingly far fetched idea, and we’ve come to the consensus that the cat is just weird.

But for the record, if the matter ever comes up, I am the Alpha Cat.

P.F. Chang's

The Following was written on my notepad on a page with a “Blog This” tag.

”August 29th. I’m the restroom at P.F. Chang’s. We’re waiting for a table; I passed 4 empty tables on my way to the restroom. Someone is screwing with me.”

PAX: Fury, & The Nature of the MMO as an Evolving Genre

Now I’ve talked WoW before and will almost certainly talk WoW again but I’m here right now to talk about the bigger picture.

I’ve been playing MMORPGs for literally half of my life. I started around 9ish with Nexus Kingdom of the winds. It was 2d, there were only four classes, but it was a continuous online game. It was a good one too, simple, but the class structure was lacking. It’s also a game where you could see what would become the “Essential Model” already beginning. I played a mage, as I almost always do, but mages were a weird class in that game. The essentials were the guy in plate mail with the sword, and the healer. In this game they were called warrior, and poet. Poet was a caster who could do very very minimal ranged attack spells, but could keep a full group alive. Warrior had the most HP and arguably the best damage, but couldn’t live long enough to get anything done without a healer. Mages were the only class that could solo because we could attack from a distance and had functional but not great healing abilities. The key thing we brought to the table was the spell paralyze, meaning we were the only crowd control class. Rogues were in theory highest damage, but in practice that only worked out halfway.

From there it was Ultima Online which is, IMO, still in the running for being the best. I liked it for the freedom it allowed you. The combat and what would be thought of the “Normal” MMO activities had all kinds of flaws, but it was a game where you could progress to the grandeur as a craftsman. You could skip the whole of combat if you chose. I think it was neat, but ultimately doomed. It had the first beginnings of 3d, but it was a fixed perspective, and was functionally a 2D game.

Then came Everquest. Oh the madness that brought. 15 Expansion packs later that game still has clingers on. It was the first game to have every class with a clear role, it was the first game with classes that breached the roles, and it was the first game in real 3D. When you threw a fireball in that game you felt it. Warriors/paladins would tank, priests/druids would heal, and all different manner of us would provide the various forms of DPS. The basic model was in place. More importantly though the basic model was being under-minded, because EQ was the one that introduced hybrids. I’ll make no secret of the fact that I love hybrid classes. I love having that multi-functionality at my disposal. Hybrids are what cause power disputes though. Let’s take Paladin, which is a simple discussion. Paladins are tanks with healing abilities. How well should you let them tank? Clearly not as well as a warrior who doesn’t have healing abilities, but then you have to make sure they don’t heal as well as a priest. So if you have someone who’s just bad at two things why do you need them in your group? The eternal battle of the game developer is making a hybrid which isn’t just someone who’s bad at two things, but legitimately good at being that blend. This is also the battle of player, and why I’ve spent so much time explaining to other Paladins why my Paladin is beating theirs in every category

Learn2Play

That bit of arrogance aside I return you to the main story. EQ began to go downhill because SOE hates their customers. I could go into that but you’ll have to just follow me on that one for now. I departed EQ into the glorious world of Asheron’s Call. This was the first game I played by Turbine, my 2nd favorite game company after blizzard.

Asheron’s Call was awesome. It was the first game without zoning, it had a great magic system, and a sub par armed combat system which I never really noticed. The graphics were good, the way the game flowed was good, and the classes were ridiculously simple. You were either a caster, or not a caster. If you were a caster you could do the full assortment of magic. I could buff, I could heal, and I could throw waves of fire at the insolent fools who stood in my wake. It was glorious. If you were a non caster you had an incredible armor class, because you put points into strength and could hence lift the good armors unlike us mages, and you had had your weapon of choice and a shield. You would rush forward and bash stuff while people like me stood in the back, kept you alive, and threw arcane doom at whatever we were fighting at the time. AC also had cooking, which was the pointless side skill I invested way too much of my XP into. I had all kinds of fun with that. It wasn’t by any means critical to the game, but it was crazy fun.

In time AC got repetitive, and it was about this time I met a man who was in the beta for a shiny new MMO called “Anarchy Online.” Not only was this one new and making improvements in the places where EQ was making mistakes, but it was a cyberpunk MMO. Cyberpunk is a genre I love. The only thing that even comes close is Steampunk, which still hasn’t gotten a good representation in a video game.

You heard me whichever company made the game Arcanum. Still Hasn’t Gotten a Good Representation in a Video Game. That’s not me being a jerk either that’s the sound of your game sucking.

I got AO the day it came out, and what ensued was the worst launch in recorded history. The server was constantly crashing, you essentially couldn’t zone, and the whole thing didn’t work. I decided to check back in a month when I figured they have everything up and running. I forget what exactly happened during that month game wise. I think it was Diablo II. It my have been on of the final fantasies though. I never stopped playing other games while playing MMOs; it’s just that the MMOs are played for such an extreme length of time that it’s easy to tell the story through them. In either case I came back a month later and things were great. I was a fixer, I had a submachine gun and supernatural hacking abilities and I felt great. I soon earned a reputation as a Blitzer. Blitzing in AO was the art of running past all of the enemies in a mission and grabbing the reward then bolting away. I could get a mission reward in 30 seconds, not counting travel time to the mission. I became so good at this that I wrote a guide to blitzing, and the Master Blitz List, which was my compiled list of items that were worth blitzing. It’s part of the “Essential fixer guide” in the fixer forums. As great as that was AO quickly developed problems. Funcom, the company that made it, was more interested in making new content then they were in fixing the bugs in the existing content. The bugs got worse and worse as time went by. What would’ve been the final blow was struck when they released the Shadowlands expansion pack and brought a whole new load of bugs and a bullshit fantasy element to the game. By then, however, I was involved with the most fun guild of all time. Xtronica Entertainment. We ran the social scene in that game. The actual game play became a secondary item to just hanging around and messing around with my friends in Xtronica. There’s a long story there, but it’s bittersweet and not relevant to the point of this.

From AO I began jumping around. I played Dark of Camelot which had its merits. I played Star Wars Galaxies which is an offense to star wars fans the world over. I dabbled in city of heroes which I thought was a load of fun but far too repetitive. It was during my CoH time that I got an invitation to the World of Warcraft beta. Blizzard? Making an MMO? It was a dream come true.

And it really was. WoW was, is, and most likely will continue to be amazing. But standing as I do now on the vast mountain of experience in this field I must say that WoW wasn’t a standalone creation. It’s what MMORPGs have been evolving towards all this time. The whole cycle has been the gradual refinement and perfection of this singular vision, and WoW is just the best instance of it to date. And I’ve think I’ve seen the next instance.

Warhammer Online. It’s gotten a lot of semi-deserved flack for having an art style that’s amazingly similar to that of World of Warcraft. I myself sometimes refer to it as “World of Warhammer Online Craft” mimicking a Penny-Arcade comic I would link if I had internet while typing this. I really have been spoiled on broadband. Anyway, I played the Warhammer beta, I’m signed up for open beta but haven’t gotten word in yet, and I think that it could go amazingly far. All it has to do is learn its lesson from WoW, and then take the idea of fast intense involved combat that is its central dogma, and not screw it up. There is much potential in that game, I won’t be canceling my WoW account anytime soon, but Warhammer could go far.

That is until Fury comes out. Oh my God you guys Fury, Fury you guys, oh my God Fury, oh my God. That game was awesome. It’s if you took the best elements of WoW style game play, and pulled out all the PVE leveling item grabbing crap, and revved the whole thing up by a factor of 5. Warhammer has my cautious optimism. I’d put money on Fury. It’s fast, it’s tactical, it’s vicious, it’s brutal, it’s in your face and it’s glorious. It’s the game play that people have been trying to get for years finally put the way it should be. They were the ones who were willing to stick their necks out there and merge RPG style combat and FPS speed. I think this is what a lot of us have been looking for all this time. And make no mistake there are those who don’t want this. They want the big group PVE dynamic, but you know what? WoW has got that down solid. If you want the big kinda slow 20-40 person raiding experience, and it’s a great experience, go play WoW. If you want the breakneck adrenaline pumping PVP combat experience, and it’s also a great experience, go play Fury. Now Fury isn’t out yet, but once it is I think the rift in gamers that’s always existed will finally be the way it’s supposed to be. There will be a game for slower “Basic Model” PVE style players, and there will be a separate game for fast paced PVP jerks, and I’ll have to pay TWO monthly fees, but I won’t care because it will be glorious.

PAX: Goth

There are lots of Goth chicks here at PAX. Not just people who are wearing enough to tag them as being part of the Goth subculture, but women in full Goth costuming. Complete with the dyed hair, the “Evil Schoolgirl” motif and the complex assortment of cut of T-shirts, lacy undershirts, black skirts and fishnets. I like the look but I’m struck by the lack of Goth Guys. I haven’t seen any of the over pale, short dark spike hair, sleeveless shirt with pale slightly too thin arms drooping out, metal spiked wristband, shiny chain wallet black cargo jeans people here. I’ve always like the Goth look, and Goth music, it’s just Goth philosophy and more often then not Goth people who bug me. I have the overwhelming urge to take a nerf bat the whole lot of them.

”Cheer up Fucker!” BAM. I think it’d be good for the nation as a whole. But if I’m doing the Goths I’d have to do the Emo people who need it even more.

The reason I started noticing the Goth girls was because of my belief that I would get a picture of everyone who was in costume. I couldn’t decide if they counted. Is that a costume, or is it a look. I mulled this over and decided sometime late in day three that it was a look but I should get a picture anyway because it would make a cool picture and I really like the outfit. I have a weird double standard of not caring much about how I look or about male fashions but I enjoy playing around with female fashion to no end. This is also why I was the one who wasn’t bored when Hannah would drag Shlomo and I off to go look at clothes. I was still a bit of an inhibitant because of my opinions on the price of clothes, but I think you get that with most males anyway. Doubly true if the male has been tricked into buying the clothes which I luckily was not.

Anyway the whole thing was for not because by the time I decided that there were indeed photo-worthy the convention was nearly over and I didn’t see any more. A shame really, they had impressive outfits.

PAX: Dead Rising

This is me, having just finished playing Dead Rising, announcing the fact that I’ve finally been convinced to buy an X-Box 360. I could rant for four pages without saying anything but it rocks. You can use almost anything as a weapon. Benches, CDs, you can even literally mow them down. As in, you can grab a lawn mower and use it to kill Zombies. You can’t honestly say you’ve never wanted to kill zombies with a lawn mower and mean it, so don’t even try. Also, now the 360 has Assassin’s Creed, not to mention the always delicious retro flava’ of the X-Box live arcade. As soon as I’m done reeling from the economic hit of buying the console formerly known as the Revolution I intend to begin preparing for the economic hit of buying a 360.

PAX: Jason

There was a panel about “What’s wrong with the Gaming industry” that was really a great discussion about a matter I’ve been ranting about for a while now. I call them Spike TV gamers, the names very but we’re all talking about the same group. They’re the generation that grew up with PS2 being their first system, the ones who started with good graphics and multi-million dollar production games. I’m in a weird position because I started gaming at the age of 4. I can still hearken back to picking up James’s Sega master system controller and playing Altered Beast and Sonic 1. Good times. Anyway the rest of my generation started at around 11, or as late as 16 so I’m not in the age group of my generation. I look like a member of the next generation of gamers, but the modern generation… well, there’s a story one of the panelists told that could best explain it.

As the story goes he was at the X-box live arcade booth. For those of you not in the know X-box live arcade is a series of cheap old school games ported onto the X-box and sold dynamically over Live. This guy was playing Time Pilot, something he had played in his youth. He had gotten really far, up to the distant future alien invasion level, 2008, when one of the sales people came up and began trying to talk to him. The panelist tried to multi-task playing the last level of the game and talking, but before long he got shot, lost his last man, and turned angrily to face the young man who had interrupted him. What he was trying to say was that you could hit start and turn on the “Advanced Graphics Mode”

They had changed the game. They had jumped up the graphics with no respect to game play. The person who interrupted to mention it was named Jason. People like this Jason are what’s wrong with video games nowadays.

This descent isn’t new either. It’s been going for a few years now. I can remember the exact moment I began to see the fall of my subculture. It was the day I heard about the “Spike TV video game awards.” Spike TV isn’t nerdcore; they aren’t aimed at my people. That’s a channel for people who beat up my people in high school. They were declaring themselves an authoritative voice on something they had no business talking about. But the masses don’t want game play anymore. They want the same first person shooter schlock tuned up with fancy new graphics and the same old game play.

I could keep going, but it’s just angry ranting. I can rant out onto forever but at the end I won’t have accomplished anything, and I’ll just be tired and frustrated. At least as I am now I’m just frustrated. Part of me wants to enter the industry to solve these problems. I have so many grand vague epic visions that I think I could bring to life, but I’m not sure it’s what people want. The people don’t want innovative, they don’t want new. They want what they’re used to, just a little bit flashier.

Behold the Fall of Man.

PAX: Trailers

We gather before the keynote speech, it promises untold delights for the unwashed huns that are the gamer masses. The screens have been set up to run a series of trailers, and we stare in rapt fascination at the games yet released. I’m along with the rest of them in this adgenda but I can’t help but think that we’re paying to watch what is essentially a commercial. They’re cinematic enough that they provide legitimate entertainment, and to those concerned, and we are concerned, the trailers provide useful information. But the thought that we’re playing into someone’s grand machinations cannot be silenced.

Actually that’s not entirely true. That thought was silenced pretty fast when I began to think about the fact that people will cheer when the trailer voice announces:

”Rated T. for Teen”

There’s a lot that could be said about that. The easiest thing to say by far is that these are immature people who are looking for massive violence and vague sexuality to get their proverbial jollies, but you could also take the unrealistically optimistic view and say they’re cheering for the age of games aimed at the age group that are actually gamers nowadays.

Yeah, I know that’s way too optimistic, but it’s fun to pretend.

Monday, September 04, 2006

Beware I Live

The phone issue has been sorted out. Best buy was actually quite cooperative, so Kudos to them. I'm going to continue the hunt for a job that I would want until the end of this week, then I'm going to spherion and temping it.

The housing matter hit an issue with funding. I'm the only one who had built up a "warchest" so there's going to be a delay while the other memebers of our group build up the necessary alpha strike funds. This isn't that big of a restriciton because it gives more time for scheming, which is needed, but it does mean that I'll probably be here for a month or so.

Link Dead

I have an issue. I'm supposed to get a call back about a job some time today or tomorrow, and my phone is dead. My phone is dead and I can't find my charger. I've turned my temporary room upside down twice looking for it, and I'm convicned that I must have left it at the hotel or some other equally foolish thing.

I went to best buy to get a new phone charger. They didn't mention that a 6101B doesn't work with normal 6100 series chargers. I'm fairly certain I'll have to get one off the website. I'm going to call back and give my potential employer The Wilson's home phone number. I've gotten their approval so it should be fine. In the meantime if you need to contact me use e-mail, I check it roughly daily.

Friday, September 01, 2006

PAX Starstruck

I arrived at PAX full of spirit and vim, and something shiny that I couldn’t properly identify, but what I think was zeal. I stalked the vast landscape seeking out the elusive prey of experience. I saw many wonders but I stumbled across one that I was not prepared for.

Tycho

I’ve felt many things in my life but this was the first time I’d felt legitimately starstruck. It’s bizarre, My impulse to flee in terror met my drive to pounce in a fanatical fury and they cancelled perfectly leaving me completely unable to do anything. After a few moments of fanboy paralysis I approached him, shook his hand, which truly was an honor, and got him to sign the back of my PAX badge. I could make some cliché about not washing that hand, but I’ve taken at least five showers since then so it would ring false.

Also, when I met Gabe on Saturday I wasn’t struck at all. I think it’s clear to whom I pay my true allegiance.

PoS3

I've just lost one of my PAX posts, which are still in the works and should be up shortly, But I'm losing it because of great news. The one thing, the one thing that the PS3 had going for it was the game Assasins Creed.

Well that's being simul-launched on the 360.

Woo!


Maxtionary
Simul-: A prefix meaning that the verb following it it happening simultaneously.