Felocity

My Pocket PC on wireless lets me update this, but because it is sometimes hard to type (read: tapping on the screen like a mad monkey) this can't be too long. The morning's meetings were good, thought a bit dry for my taste. Wizard also told me while I was updating that my friend list had had more than three changes. Of course, this was a bit of a shock, since I don't remember anyone deleting me. Anyway, moving away from that, I want to say hello to Mir, El Sasho, and reka.

Now to tackle emails and practice C++ for the next hour and a half so I don't look at Dr. Tao with a blank stare when he starts talking.…

Yesterday was spent outside and running around, which wasn't all that bad. I got to hang out with people I don't usually hang out with, and while Gravi is on hold until Kari gets off work, it gives me Sunday morning to relax and enjoy. The day started out pretty slow, and gradually picked up over the course of the day. After a quick Costco run, I picked up Sherylen and Sundy so we could run some errands. It was probably because I had a car, but I didn't really mind that much, and after the drive home with Sundy at Winter Break, I kind of wanted to just chill outside of work. Sometimes you forget people are more than colleagues. We hit up first the Asian Market, since Sundy wanted to do egg rolls that night. From there we went to Circuit City, Albertsons, picked up pictures at Target, got food at Jersey's, and then returned to the apartments. After unloading everything, we decided we had one last place to go, the Del Monte Shopping Center.

Now, let me just say, I don't mind shopping. Actually, sometimes, it is something I enjoy. There is something alluring about buying an item of clothing that I A) think looks cool, and B) other people think looks cool. Of course, to achieve the second, it is always good for other people to come along as well. In this way, shopping becomes a social experience. But, I am off track here. Sundy needed to get her glasses straightened in Lens Crafters, so we went there while Sherylen made a bee-line to Victoria Secret. I don't remember how long we were in Lens Crafters but when we came back, Sherylen was still inside. At this point, I really had two choices. Since there was no EB here to lose myself in, and Suncoast was on the complete opposite side of the mall, I could either sit out in the cold and freeze, or go in with Sundy and deal. What I didn't count on was Victoria Secret's "almost everything 50% off" sale. Sundy was sucked in as well, and so I just sort of hung out near her, giving honest opinions when she asked. We were amused by some of the things that were on sale, deciding that a good portion of these things were clearly not meant to be worn all day. Eventually Sundy finished up and made me make sure she didn't buy anything else. We waited idly while Sherylen finished, and then headed out. The last stop we really had was Macy's. Sundy and I wandered the store and looked at boots, clearance racks, and then some. It was good to talk and relax, and I got to partake in something I enjoy far too much and never get to - shop. At some point (after cosplay, conventions, etc settle down) I really need to do a shopping trip for clothes. I have basic stuff, but I lack t-shirts, different kinds of jeans, some new shoes, etc. XD…

Bleh, yesterday was our subject specific training. It wasn't really all that bad, but it was long. And by long I mean very long, going from 9 until about 4. As far as meetings go, that was pretty painful. The morning was full of training on a text reader application known as Kursweil. I felt like I had been warped back into Windows 3.1 or something. The program looked lame, sounded lamer, and did nothing that Omni Page and Dragon couldn't do better for almost $200 less. Jay taught his laptop to rap, I listened to the Call of the Wild at 1297 words per minute, we changed words like "the" to sound like "tah-hee", and didn't need the 40 page document to explain to us that clicking "read" reads the text (gasp). The best moment was still listening to Dr. Dre through a computer. You couldn't listen and not laugh. Finally, we broke for lunch at Taco Hole.. er Bell, and then Starbucks. Sundy is not allowed to mix Taco Bell and Starbucks again. Hyper dancing in front of the Starbucks, while funny was just, uh yeah... lol.

We returned to the meeting and got to talk about what a tutor is, which was kind of amusing. As the afternoon dragged on, we got more and more random, and Jake got all sappy and sentimental at the end of training. He basically told us all he had slacked off last semester and how he felt like he would try harder this time around. Of course, he got paid to get a C in Media Tools and hardly do any work, but that is a gripe saved for later. The meeting ended on that note, and as we all escaped into the now setting sun, there were "Hippo" noises, randomness, and me humming "Stray" on the drive home. When I got home I chilled, played some games, and called it a night.…

If you happen out on the Internet, you may have already heard about Wolf's Rain. I caught wind of it from H, and after watching the first episode, I could feel myself getting very drawn in. For as much as I act like a cat, wolves have always held a very special place in my heart. They have always been mysterious and special. Now they went and made an Anime about them. It is everything I never though about wanting in an Anime. By the end of the first episode, I had a favorite charatcer, I wanted to replay the intro, learn the words, find the mp3s, and I am craving episode 2 like a piece of steak. Mmmmm steak.

...…

The day was long, but the day was good. Things started off a bit slow for my taste, as I wrestled (yet again) with Illustrator. This time, I decided I was going to just path trace the entire thing at over 600% and not use Adobe Streamline. While I did have much better results, I also had a bit of an issue with the lack of a tablet. Creating large amounts of path based lines using only a mouse is bad for the wrist. ^^ I finally got a line art done of it, and honestly, after having the finished line art. I didn't see too much reason to color it. Honestly, it looks fine (and actually pretty good) without color. There is an example beyond the cutoff tag. This took me a bit past noon. When Kari got off of work, we went to get sandwiches and then I made a decision to go to the wharf.

The weather today was absolutely beautiful (78 + wind, sunny w/ no clouds) and I refused to stay inside while there was warm afternoon daylight to be had. There has always been something soothing about the ocean, although I am not fond of visiting it on a solitary basis. Last time I did that was somewhere down hwy 1 beyond Carmel and I think I scared the crap out of Meg as I was talking on the phone while sliding along the edge of a small cliff. ^_^ Since then I decided to go to the wharf. Anyway, it was a good relaxing time, and while out overlooking the ocean, I sort of lost track of time. Since I put an hour's time in the meter, things were fine when we got back, and with the sun telling us it was late afternoon, we made our way back to campus. When I got back, I did a bit more fighting with Illustrator, and talked with Kryn. He and Lisa came over right as DJ Skiptrack next door was getting into his Hip Flop mix. We chilled at the apartment until Eric got back, and then we all struck out for Kryn's place.…

Well, first would be the bad news, which came from ASAP today. Thanks to the wonderful hole we are in, work will be seeing some serious cuts, upwards of 25%. The direct translation is less hours, less projects, and ultimately, less pay. How this will translate fully, I'm not totally sure, but even with the raise, I may be coming up shorter than last semester. In order to break even with my projected income, I can only lose 1 out of every 6 hours in the week. Cut three hours and I am just under, cut 4 and I will probably have to scale my hours back more for that annoying thing called a second job. But enough about the lame.

I got up today and got a lot of work done, almost completely finishing the Anime Club newsletter. I want to get it proofed before it goes out though, and it will probably be a wide-distribution meaning it will reach some of the people in other clubs as well. I haven't started on the CAC stuff, and Rob has yet to get me the BAAS stuff. I should probably just call Phil Temple who does the newsletter and see if he has more information about the upcoming things so I can have those ready to go.…

That feels good.

SKU Qty Unit Price Total Name…

It felt good to avoid the computer today. I got to focus on some video games, do some reading, rest, relax, and hang out with friends. For many out of my close group of Roseville friends, this was the last hurrah. It was our final chance to "geek out" (if you will) before we all returned to our respective colleges for winter quarter / spring semester. After tomorrow, only Steve and I will be around the Roseville area. I figure I too will be returning to academic stomping grounds within a week or so, which means I get to resume work on BAAS, DFG, and a mess of other things that have been on hold while I have been -1 computer. I managed to get Visual Studio running, and the Beta revisions are coming along nicely. I had to remove my Excel 10 dependencies...

The problem with Visual Basic is the way it makes it's references to other objects in the Microsoft Windows environment. The idea behind the references library is that you can add the reference, and then be able to manipulate an object of that reference type. For example, if you add a reference to Microsoft Excel, you could then use standard Excel programming commands (like you would in a macro). Obviously, for an application to run this, the computer would also need Excel since it would be hard to create an Excel worksheet if there is no Excel installed. Now, the actual problem with the code was in the Reference itself.…

The concept of a Weblog has always amused me, all the way back to some time in 1999 when I adapted Newspro to add to my old journal on Hypermart. Sometimes I wish I had pieces of that journal around, as the earliest I have is Feb 11. Blogs are in a lot of ways IM's to the general Internet. It's like talking to yourself, and hoping someone out there overhears you and has something to say or add, starting a conversation.

Community based blogging (Livejournal and Open Diary to name a few) had once again shifted the perspective people held about blogs and their purpose. Commenting on people's thoughts, and finding other people became easy, centralized, and much more public. Now that it has happened, it is probably pointless to look back and ask if it was truly wise to create such a thing.…