MIC CHECK MIC CHECK

This thing on?


You (being *YOU*, whoever still has an ear on the rail road tie, wistfully looking down the tracks as the sun dips in the distance, wondering when Ixo will whisper sweet nothings in ... uhh... that other ear that isn't pressed to the tracks) may have noticed I don't post much any more.

Not for a lack of things to talk about! My last one was some garbage about some lame android tablet, which was swiftly returned for an iPad2 (which remains with me to this day), and before that there was some nonsense about elemental airs or something.

To be perfectly honest (and air my dirty laundry), that interview at 38 studios way back when ended up leaving a sour taste in my mouth about blogging, because my blog ended up being a negative point with them on many different fronts. One, because I violated the Warhammer NDA with a wiffle ball bat even way-er back-er when-er, and another because right after the grueling interview-a-thon I blogged about the exact schedule of how long I was interviewed for and by whom, which was horribly unprofessional.

Heavy sigh.

I followed up on all THAT with "fuck a story line, I want an MMO made by the team who designed Mario Galaxy" which pushed me further out into the ocean by those touting the fourth pillar as what will 'save the genre'. Curt Schilling (bless the man, don't get me wrong) wrote me an email saying how disappointed he was that I felt that way.

Zzzz. So then I got all emo and stopped blogging.

But that's not all! I also got a job doing IT again, and have been very busy with that. I like to blog about *what I do*, and I'm torn with the idea of writing IT crap here. On that note, though, I basically stomped my way to the head of the class on several fronts jobwise, which has done wonders for my paycheck (yes, talking about money is silly-- I'll stop, but I'm making a point), but mainly goes to prove one of the last points on my "gaming resume" that I was trying so desperately to get in people's hands.

I don't have the file in front of me, but it went something along the lines of:

YES I HAVE NO EXPERIENCE MAKING GAMES SPECIFICALLY, BUT I HAVE DONE X, Y, AND Z ABOVE AND BEYOND THE CALL OF DUTY IN MY PREVIOUS LINES OF WORK, AND I ALSO HAVE TWO FUNCTIONING HANDS AND A BRAIN THAT WON'T LOCK UP WHEN PRESENTED WITH A PROBLEM. I CAN PRETTY MUCH DO ANYTHING YOU SET BEFORE ME, OR WILL FIGURE IT OUT ASAP.

I swear to god there are so many incompetent people on the planet that are willing to just show up and do nothing! In my time in Japan I saw these same people, but I think I wasn't as acutely aware of how little they did as I wasn't 100% fluent in the language. Back in an American office environment I'm confronted with so much half-assing that it's shocking. Then I listen to NPR or whatever on the way to or from work and people are crying about the economy and how hard it is to get jobs, or crying because they got laid off.

Getting laid off means one of two things happened:

1) you were a good, hard worker; but the office supplied something no one wanted/needed and shut down.

2) you were a lazy ass, the office does supply something that's needed, but they realize they certainly don't need YOU leeching away at the bottom line

I was given someone's job after being where I am now for less than a year. This guy was laid off at a previous job (which is still in business, warning flag one), and loved playing Call of Duty on the clock (flag two). He wasn't even very subtle about it. Think of that one scene in office space where Peter is playing Tetris. He tried to face his monitor away from the door, but then wore these big dumb headphones that made it pretty obvious. Fingers on WASD. Clicking furiously. So they gave me his job, and he got butthurt because less is expected of him now. How he still even gets a check is beyond me, at one point he was dual boxing his main rig and a laptop in Farmville, digging "his neighbors" pigs for truffles or something retarded

wait.


~♪~ Let's take a brief interlude ~♪~

I know I mentioned the thing about not being very professional on my blog and how these people I was trying to impress took it poorly.

I'm over it.

The fact stands that had I not had a blog in the first place, and had I not done what it is I did (which culminated in me saying "FUCK HATERS, I'M GOING TO DRIVE TO IRVINE WITH A RAID DUNGEON TYPED UP") I never would have gotten some random email from Curt Schilling in the first place or flown out to Boston for some interview that didn't work out. For them to then say "well if you didn't have a blog blah blah blah" is pretty stupid. For me to even listen at all is stupider. More stupid. Whatever.

The fact also stands that the next job interview I had ended up liking me enough to give me a shot, and I've since delivered on providing them with all kinds of new shit they didn't have before, and that I didn't even have any idea HOW to do before, until I sat down and figured it out.

During spring break, we finally gave my Deployment server the full run instead of using it on random boxes for new staff, and I re-imaged all the student PCs on campus in one day. Including the renderfarm that I built from the 30 machines we got at auction when CafeFX shut down. I have student idle machines on campus kick in and join the farm when no one is using them to render big maya projects. I've implemented a full printer tracking system that can show us who's wasting all our paper and crap on craigslist postings. I've got parts on my desk that will be a new Hyper-V server when I get back to the office. These side projects are all in addition to doing my normal job, which started as handling tickets, and has become handling the entire helpdesk.

I'm not trying to toot my own horn, here. This just all goes back to people who come in and are content to spend the first entire hour of their day making coffee, updating their fucking status (jesus, facebook, don't get me started), and then maybe they'll open their email and see what someone who does shit has assigned them to do for the day.



And so this is what I do on vacation ;) I blog. Again.

Haters gonna hate, but fuck em.



Yes I'm a bit coarse around the edges, but you had your chance to have lovely ol Ixo on the team, and your products would have shone that much brighter as a result. I'm one of those people that gets shit done. I think I may make that my resume, and just push that around if I go looking for work again; not that I will any time soon. Aside from a few bad apples, we have a pretty solid staff, and I don't see the college shutting down any time soon.

Phew. Just had to get that out of the way before I can continue to write again. I miss it dearly, especially the cursing it seems. Hm.



ANYWAY. I'm heading to Japan to visit the family on Monday. For those following the series, I got folks in Okayama, which is 500km from Fukushima, so don't sweat the geiger counters. I'll be there for ten days, then the wife and kids will be staying on until August, which means I may have some quality time with the W,A,S, & D keys myself in the evening when I come back.

I reckon I'll reactivate WoW for the free week I just got sent in the mail. I should probably be able to get my UI working how I like it just in time for that to wear off. I also have one untapped gamecard, but I'm more curious about anything else out there that I should spend some time on. I haven't been following game sites too closely (lots of time on Microsoft's technet and the like), but there was a bunch of hype around RIFT, so I reckon I'll need to give that a swing. Star Trek Online? lol? I may give it a try if it's still even going just to get in general chat and tell number 1 to give me a number 2.

Anything else I missed?




...is this thing even on?