I should design more layouts so I create more sophisticated looks when people ask me to do things for them

The fleece monster blanket plan only worked for the first day. I should continue that.

So many I should’s. I need to just do them and not worry about things I could have done.
I need to stop wasting time!

Well, speaking of getting creative… I’m going to dress up as Zoey from Left 4 Dead this Halloween. Specific details on the costume and its making will come up soon.

The day started off with me realizing I had to call in to see if I was needed at the court. My phone was dead, so I started to scrambling for my phone charger. Turns out I left it in the game lab because I lived there (basically). I had to catch the next bus 20, which was at 11:30am and I had to leave in five minutes. I threw all my school stuff into my backpack and ran off.

I got to the game lab at noon because it takes half an hour to get from my house to campus. I plugged in my phone and called. The recording listed the group numbers that needed to attend the to the court today at 12:30pm. I hadn’t heard my group number yet and there was only one more to go. I was starting to calm down. However, just as my luck goes, the last group number happens to be mine! AH!

I tried to contact my professor and TA but they were busy. So I wrote them an email saying I had jury duty and I wont make it to the final. Kthxsry, but next time.

I start calling people to complain and possibly ask for a car ride, but everyone I knew was out of town or studying for their finals. I had to take the bus, but none were coming! I hadn’t eaten anything, so I left the bus stop and went to the coffee cart in Baskin, grabbing a croissant and chai. It wasn’t until 12:25pm when a bus finally came, but by the time it got downtown it was already 12:45pm and I was late. I was gonna go to jail, I wasn’t going to be able to do my homework I needed to turn in before my final at 4:00pm. To my surprise, a bus 71 was waiting to leave in the next minute and that bus passes by the courthouse. I jumped on, rode for a few minutes, hopped off and there was a fat line of people who were also summoned and didn’t want to be there. They all looked like zombies waiting to feed on flesh. Very unenthusiastic.

I waited and was seated for about 20 minutes. People were broken up into more groups and led to other chambers. My name was called and I had to walk to another room, not knowing when I’d be able to talk to the judge about leaving.

A series of more waiting took place and I was hot-seated, meaning I was chosen to be on the jury. Tons of questioning went on, and eventually it was 4:30pm, half an hour after my final started, and I was finally able to talk to the judge without interupting. I told him I had a final and he said, “Oh, well we dont want to waste your quarter’s worth of learning for nothing. You are excused.”

Then I left.
And I ran.

And I came to class a bit after 5:00pm, getting dirty looks from my classmates. Coming in late, who do I think I am? I went to the front and told the professor what happened because apparently he didn’t get my email. He said it was okay, had a concerned look like he wanted me to calm down, and told me I could have extra time to complete it. He was super nice about it, luckily. I finished my exam half an hour before the end of the time period allowed, before 85% of the class. I turned it in with my unfinished homework and appologized again for being late. The professor seemed to like me, hah.

Turns out everything was okay, but just stressful… like Chris said. I ended up getting an A+ in the class.

A note to all you potential jurers of the future: make sure your schedule is planned around your summon date. Lots of times you don’t have to attend, but make sure you plan for the worst case scenerio.

The funniest thing is that they both happened during the last quarter of my senior year. What a nice way to almost end school, right?

Anyways, story one took place in the game lab during my senior design sequence. We, me, Chris, and Trevor, stayed up programming very late because Ripholes was in terrible shape. Terrible is an understatement, by the way. That story is for anther time though. At any rate, we slept in the lab because it was 4:00am ish or so, and had class early in the morning and we both lived in inconvenient places.

I lived by the beach that took route 20, which came ONCE every hour. Chris lived near the campus, but his bus stopped running at 6:50pm, and it only came twice an hour. If we were to go home, we’d get an hour of sleep, and then we’d have to wake up to get ready, and catch the bus anyways. Why not just stay?

The lab did have fancy couches. The professors even said they chose those particular designs because they knew students would get sleepy.

About 6:00 – 7:00am, a technician from BELLs comes by, kicks our door open (because it was locked) and questions our presence. He threatened us with expulsion because it was “against university policy” to allow students to sleep in the lab.

First off, we were scared as hell. Being forced awake to an angry man in a baseball cap early in the morning isn’t quite pleasant. Second, we were confused and delirious. He could have told us the world was ending and we would have believed him. Third, he didn’t notice Trevor sleeping on the couch in the lounge area. Fourth, its not against the rules. Fifth, why was he there. And sixth, of all the excuses in the world for not wanting us there, why did he have to add even MORE stress onto our shoulders by telling us we couldn’t be there?

He told us we could stay, but we couldn’t sleep. We had to “pretend” we were working so he wouldn’t get into trouble. What a load of ass. We waited for class to start and told Mateas everything that happened and wined a lot more amongst ourselves.

It was very stressful, but eventually things got fixed. Students in the future sleeping in the game lab should thank Ripholes for screwing up first!

It works like a charm! I only have to do it three times too. Im happy I dont have to hiccup all the time anymore. So when I do get hiccups, I just aikido breathe and its gone!

Thought I’d share and it might be useful for you too.

What, are we inferior because we get to program fun things? Are you jealous because we get to have fun with what we do? Are you intimidated because we’re forced to work in groups while you program alone in the dark corners of your bedroom?

I hear a lot of people say they would rather do their own work than not have to work in a worthless group. Well grow up idiots. You’re going to have to work with other people if you plan on getting a job or even do research. Our program trains us and gives us hands on experience working in a space with other humans. We not only learn everything normal CS students learn, but a whole world of more crap they can ever imagine. We know how to communicate with one another. You know why? Because not only is it a part of life, but sometimes you have to talk to other people to get work done. Apparently some college students still don’t get that.

Having the experience to work in a group is very valuable. Not only do you grow learn how to work in teams, but you go through rough times together. You laugh together, you program and pull all nighters together. You eat and starve together. You individually work 60+ hours a week on mechanics together. You bleed together. You get threatened to be expelled from school together because you slept in the lab doing late night programming together. You live with them. You work with them. You get feedback as a group, you fail and you improve. You have support, you defend, you fight and you cry with each other.

Well we didn’t cry. But Ripholes at least was on the verge of mental failure. But that’s beside the point.

The point is… the game design degree, I feel, is 100 times more valuable to a person’s experience than a normal computer science degree. You learn about life and yourself throughout the course of the senior sequence and it’s not easily replaceable. I can easily say that I learned more my senior year about programming and teamwork than my three years prior to it put together. People not in the degree and only speculate it have no right to judge what goes on in it because they have no idea what territory they are stepping into.

Sometimes I wish I could customize my brain to think certain ways.

But I guess I’m just getting old. I’m not exciting anymore! Maybe it’s because I’ve lost patience for doing things. Drawing takes a lot of time and maybe I don’t like doing it anymore because it takes a long time for me to be satisfied with what I have. I’m a perfectionist, I know it. It was also recently that I started to trash things I didn’t like. I used to always keep everything I worked on because they were important in some way. Say… I spent a couple hours on a drawing of a person that looked like crap. It’s okay, at least I learned why it looked like garbage. But it’s okay if I keep it because it contains a list of lessons learned: Don’t suck when drawing.

Well, that probably didn’t make any sense, but I felt like it was somewhat leaning towards what I really wanted to say. Anyways, I planned on maybe some downloadable layouts for people to use. When and where they will be up and located has yet to be determined. We’ll see!

Anyways, another one I made for myself is to take better care of my skin. I’ve been cleansing my face twice a day ever since I was a kid, but sometimes I get lazy and just go straight to bed. I wont do that anymore! I’m also going to tone after cleansing and exfoliate more often too.

What else…

I got sucked back into WoW via pressue and Lich King. Heh. I’m pretty good, compared to 95% of the people I know, at managing my playing time, so I’m not as worried. Hopefully no one in my group slacks off making our game because of playing another game!

Cheers to a productive new year.

Here are my results:

True Neutral- A true neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. He doesn’t feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos. Most true neutral characters exhibit a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. Such a character thinks of good as better than evil after all, he would rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones. Still, he’s not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way. Some true neutral characters, on the other hand, commit themselves philosophically to neutrality. They see good, evil, law, and chaos as prejudices and dangerous extremes. They advocate the middle way of neutrality as the best, most balanced road in the long run. True neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means you act naturally, without prejudice or compulsion. However, true neutral can be a dangerous alignment because it represents apathy, indifference, and a lack of conviction.

Detailed Results:

Alignment:
Lawful Good —– XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (17)
Neutral Good —- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (20)
Chaotic Good —- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (20)
Lawful Neutral — XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (18)
True Neutral —- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (21)
Chaotic Neutral – XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (21)
Lawful Evil —– XXXXXXXXXX (10)
Neutral Evil —- XXXXXXXXXXXXX (13)
Chaotic Evil —- XXXXXXXXXXXXX (13)

Law & Chaos:
Law —– XXXXXXX (7)
Neutral – XXXXXXXXXX (10)
Chaos — XXXXXXXXXX (10)

Good & Evil:
Good —- XXXXXXXXXX (10)
Neutral – XXXXXXXXXXX (11)
Evil —- XXX (3)

But for some reason there was no way to get to the top. Apparently the tower had no doors or stairs and no one knew how to make or use ladders. I looked in my pocket for something that may be of use. Who knows? There could be some RAID in there! WALLA! I had a device that had the same mechanic as the portal gun and was able to make gateways that lead from the bottom to the top. By the time the beetles were about 10 feet away, the device stopped working and I was still at the base of the tower, having an anxiety attack. Someone pushed me and then I started smashing the buttons. I finally made two more portals and got to the top safely, but it wasn’t until then that I realized I didn’t have control of how long they lasted. The beetles came through! AHHH!

And then I woke up. True story. As a side note, I’m going to post quotes as often as I can. It’s going to be hard to match them up the the post’s theme, so… yea.

“If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say that the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.” – George Carlin

About my excitement with SPORE… I think it all died away. I really want to hear the procedurally generated music and see the game’s core mechanics, but a lot of people claimed that gameplay wasn’t as great as it was anticipated. If anything, it’s very bland and unrealistic to a sense that what you see isn’t logically correct (ie: a creature with a hundred legs isn’t necessarily faster than one with five).

One of my biggest worries is the 3-time installation rule (see DRM). I have a desktop and laptop, that’s 2 uses already. What if I want to upgrade my desktop? What then? I want to own the game, not “rent” it, as many people have been saying. Besides, what if I find the game boring one day and decide to play it again years down the road? Like with Diablo II? I’ve reinstalled that game over a dozen times! This really hit me hard.

I was reading the ratings on Amazon yesterday and it was rated 100 one-stars, 3 four-stars, and 2 five-stars. In a period of ten minutes, it gained 4 more one-stars. Right now it’s at 1,024 one-stars! That’s crazy! Reading the posts has become quite entertaining, but I feel the same way as a majority of the posters.

Spore had me excited for three years.

While I was being nostalgic, I remembered I had uploaded the remains of some of my old websites to geocities. I did some hard thinking and I found it! The short blog brings back so many memories, bad coding, and people and dead domain names! Ah! How I long to know where those people are now and what they’re up to. Maybe if I get lucky and if these people search for me too, we can reunite!

• Mog, oh Moggy! I know where I can reach you and I’m so happy for it! I truely wish to see your designs again. They were always so crisp and sharp!
• Kelly/Arika of Crystal-kiwi.com. I remember our 2 person community forum and how you kept trying to update it to make it shiny!
• Angel from Simplyangel.net. I made a graphics site that drained tons of your bandwitdh. You were a great person, very nice, understanding and helpful!
• The Silveroracle.com staff, especially the owner. Sorry I forgot your name…it’s been five years now, but I wish I knew!

And then there were tons of other people I don’t quite remember. How soopa. Oh well, it’s very funny seeing the old designs and how some people used to be dumb-founded by their “pretty looks.” I keep face palming myself.