What I'm currently working on

that is all.

-John

Of Rock and Bands..

So anyone that knows me (I'm talking to the 2 people who read this...I know there are at least 2 of you), knows that I'm a huge fan of Rock Band. Love it. Probably my favorite game ever. I'm a big fan of music and a big fan of video games....so it's a match made in heaven. If they could find some weird way to incorporate Comic Books and Movies into it...you'd never see me again. I'd honestly get lost into the game and be fated to fall into an unknown obscurity. Just the way things are.

So...recently the Rock Band website was updated. Now you can buy merchandise for your Rock Band...well...band. You can have pictures taken of your characters and bands. It's all really cool. Only downside? The servers for the site are getting so slammed at the moment that it takes literally 8 hours for any pictures to get generated. On top of that...this pictures posted to the web aren't that high of quality. However some people have found ways around that and it turns out there are high rez images of any pictures you make. In the last 8 hours I have been able to make 1 picture of my in game band: Revolution Now!

below is the low rez image...click on it to get to the super mega high rez image.




The picture contains my in game character along with my room mate Chuck's in game character.


Pretty neat stuff......and that's all I got.

And Now....Ninjas

Ok....So on Saturday I went to a Birthday party for my friend Candis. The party thrown was themed Ninja Vs. Geisha. Everyone was supposed to come dressed as either a Ninja or a Geisha. I was one of 4 people to dress up...3 of us were Ninjas (My Room Mate Chuck, Our friend Eric, and myself.) and one was a Geisha (Candis). I decided to make my Ninja costume. For the first time since Home Economics in middle school (early 90's folks) I actually did some sewing and stuff. For the most part...I think it came out pretty well. I may re-use the costume for Halloween if I get lazy (you know...since it's coming up). However a lot of the costume was peiced together from random things...like tube socks, sweat pants, and a tight fitting long sleeve shirt. The rest was sewn together, though.

The following pictures were stolen from my friend Coutney's facebook account as I didn't take any pictures. These are primarily pictures of people (i.e. Me) in costume. Not pictured at the party was my friend Joe...who helped put the party together with Courtney. There were others there...but I see no need to post who they are...NOW ON WITH THE PICTURES!!!!


My costume.


Ninja Vs. Geisha round 1


Ninja Vs. Geisha Round 2


Jake and Ninja


Ninjas love to Rock....even in Rock Band.


3 Ninjas


3 Ninjas and 1 Geisha...either this is a bad internet video waiting to happen or a bad TV sitcom. You decide.


I finnally saw the need to bust out the weapons and kill some people (while flipping out)





Ninja Rock Band. Like I said...Ninjas like to Rock.


There is a Ninja hiding in this photo...can you find him?



Minutes after this picture was taken I had to kill everyone...because my identity was photographed....and now that you've seen the picture...well...don't look behind you...

My 360's Blog

So it seems my X-Box 360 has a blog. Crazy I know.

You can either check it out on the sidebar or just click this link:

http://www.360voice.com/tag/Lab Rat GR


Guess the little guy gets bored when I'm not at home playing video games.

Nerd Alert

So...someone over on the Jinxworld forums created a thread that I seem to have obsessed myself with today. And it deals with the The Kobayashi Maru Scenario from Star Trek.

You can see the thread here:

http://www.606studios.com/bendisboard/showthread.php?t=162192

My thought are thus. Fly in to try and save the Kobayashi Maru. When the Klingons show up and it becomes apparent that this is a no win situation and that they are going to capture the Kobayashi Maru vessel and probably torture the crew and passengers...fire all weapons and destroy the Kobayashi Maru. Consider it a mercy killing.

well either that or lie and claim that I'm Captain James T. motherfucking Kirk. That should at least get their boots shaking and their pants wet with urine....or whatever it is that Klingons excrement when they evacuate bodily fluids.

And that ladies and gents has been your nerd alert moment for the week.

Work sucks

So...yeah...work continues to suck.

Currently all this week I'm working a 12pm-9pm schedule to help out since 2 of our night shift techs are on vacation all of this week. I agreed to do it to show that even though I am frustrated with this job...and wanting to find way to get out, that I was still willing to help out with the department and work back towards doing the best I could instead of just coasting by.

Plus it gets pretty dead in the evenings...so I can easily sit around and write, read, or watch a movie and not get bothered too much. I'm not saying I want to work this schedule permanently or anything, though. Personally I hate working past 5 or 6pm (though I hate waking up earlier than 10AM...I'm cursed I guess).

However I still hate my job....though I'm toughing through it at the moment. I did have a small mini-meeting with my manager today. He told me how much I was getting on my bonus this next paycheck...which wasn't much. I knew it wouldn't be that big of a bonus cause honestly I've been half-assing my job as of late. Sure enough it was less than I was hoping...but around what I expected. I also got told pretty much that I need to work on my stats and they need to show a drastic improvement by the end of the year or their could be consequences. I plan on doing better, but I also plan on trying to get out of this department ASAP cause...well I hate this department more than I hate the job that I do. I don't know. We'll see what happens.

But that's been my whole week...a whole lot of suck outside of those hours where things slow to a crawl and I have to struggle to keep myself busy with something.

To keep myself busy I've been watching whatever I can on Hulu.com. Everything from new episodes of various TV shows to whatever movies they offer on there. I've also come closing to finishing a script for a short film that will probably never get made for various reasons I don't want to go into. At this point it's just to keep me busy.


Next week everything will go back to my normal schedule and my normal hatred of the bullshit that goes on here.

Well that's nice

So....I'm pretty much dead in the water when it comes to getting a loan for school. I'm still going to look into it...but at this point I'm 100% certain that I'm going to put school off till Next year. One one side of the coin it could be a good thing...as it will give me some time to get myself more financially stable. However...still sucks though. I still plan to go, though.

In other news...I've decided to move forward on a few side projects of my own just to keep myself busy outside of work. Still have some people that I need to talk to in hopes to get them involved. We'll see.

I know this weekend I'm going to play around with some video and some other things and see if I can't kick out something awesome looking. I'll obviously post a link to whatever when it's done.

A Not So Critical Update

So the weekend has passed. I've talked to a few different members of my family. I've gotten some advice in regards to my financial situation. So where am I now? In the exact same spot I was in Friday, actually.

I guess let me start by saying that as stated last week, I was denied on the loan. It's a sad truth...but it wasn't unexpected. After talking with family and friends, I couldn't get any co-signers. However, having said that...I don't think I would want a co-signer as if I somehow screw up my credit more with this, I don't want to take anyone else's credit with me. So...there we go.

I talked to my brother some more over the weekend. He states he excited for me. He's been very encouraging with all of this. He says he's going to talk to some people he knows and see if he can come up with some good advice for me in regards to getting money for school.

Talked to one of my Aunts shortly after that....which was probably a bad idea since this family member has a huge thing for the University of Houston...and doesn't understand why I'd rather go to this school instead of going there (forget the fact that I don't even LIVE in Houston...nor do I want to move back there). Her hearts in the right place, though. Sadly she has a very high opinion of the school and every time I'd explain my experience there...or explain why the school I'm trying to go to is better than UofH, she just couldn't comprehend it. Almost like I was talking about some other college that wasn't UofH. All of her advice invoved either going to UofH instead this school or involved some outlandish idea of me contacting some hollywood big-wig for advice on if I should go back to UofH or go to this school. It really irritated me because this is not what I was asking for advice on. It's like you have a craving for BBQ. You ask a friend if the local BBQ place takes credit card. Your frind then tells you that you should eat Chinese food. It's not what I'm asking...and the answer is contradictory to what I really want. It doesn't make much sense. I've been to UofH and found that they are not adequit to my learning needs. On top of that...I'm not even in Houston any more and have no intentions of ever moving back. I don't need to know more about UofH...I know what I need to know. I've also learned as much as I could in regaurds to the CSB School of broadcasting. I've done a lot of research into this place. Thinking about it...I think that's where most of my family is failing to get past. I get the feeling that they think that because this is the first time I'm talking to them about it...that I must have just discovered this school and am rushing into a decision without doing a research or putting any thought into it. They don't realize, that the perception they have couldn't be further from the truth. Luckly however...not all my family members have acted this way.

On Sunday I talked to my Aunt Carol and Uncle Chris. Chris is the person I really wanted to talk to for advice for 3 main reasons. 1.) He's always given me good advice....even if at times I didn't listen, 2.) He's typically knowledgable when it comes to money stuff, and 3.) He won't sugar coat things, while at the same time not being negative about things either. I talked to my Aunt Carol first. She was excited for me. She was excited that I was at least looking into doing something and possibly going back to school in some form and learning about something that interests me. About the only thing that I think that came out bad in my conversation with her was that I might have tried to sell her on the whole idea too hard when I never needed to sell it. I think that was mainly due to the conversation with my other Aunt. Other than that she was very supportive and told me I should talk to Chris. Later in the day I actually did just that. He seemed pretty surprised from it. He did seem a bit weary of the school. He sorta came off like he felt the school might be a scam or something...however after talking to him a bit, he seemed to trust my judgement. He also told me that he really didn't have any advice to give. Since this school isn't eligible for a government sponsored student loan, and because I got turned down by the loan company that works with the school, he said I'd probably have to just apply for a personal loan from a bank, however I probably wouldn't get it for the same reasons I didn't get the first loan I applied for. He said he would talk to some people and see if he can come up with any ideas, though. He also suggested that I talk to the school. Obviously they would want my money so maybe they have some alternative solutions if one gets turned down on the loan. I don't think they do...but who knows. I'll talk to the guys at the school sometime this week about it.

But yeah. That's it. that's as far as I've gotten on this school thing. I'll keep working on it as the week goes on...we'll see where it leads me to next.

So...not there yet.

So yeah. I looked to see if I could get a student loan through the loan company that works with the school...and I was denied. Was told I'd have to have a co-signer on the loan. Not sure I want to do that. However we'll see.

I'm also going to look into other places for loan opportunities. I figured this is where things would stall at...and they have. Doesn't mean I'm going to stop perusing this...but it's going to put a halt on things for a while.

So I've been accepted to the school

So I've now been accepted. I'm excited.

The only real concern I have now is how to pay for the tuition. I'm meeting with the head of the school today to see what kind of help I can get from the school. Most likely it will be a student load...I'll just have to go over all the details and hope to god that everything comes out ok.

I'm basically at the part that I am most worried about. On my own I can't afford to go to school. I don't think my credit is good enough for a student loan with an interest percentage that won't kill me. I also don't want anyone to co-sign on any loans or anything because I don't want my fuck-ups to hurt anyone else's credit.

We'll see what happens I guess. I'm excited...but extremely worried all at the same time.

A little depressed, a lot excited

So...I went on the tour yesterday. The place is pretty freaking awesome. I was really impressed and now want to go to school there all the more. I think I even have a really good chance of getting accepted if I applied to go to school. But...I'm getting ahead of myself.

So...on this tour I was shown all the main hands on training rooms. Giving a bit of info on exactly what they teach and how they teach it. Seems that the next trimester starts in November. Seems the 3 trimesters start in March, July, and November. The classes would be 2 days a week for 4 months. The place even helps with Job Placement when you complete school, and allows full lifetime use of the facilities of any school all over the US. Everything they are talking about is the exact type of school that I wish I would have known about after I graduated High School.

I went to college for a semester at the University of Houston. Partly my heart wasn't in it because my mother had just passed away and I don't think I was ready to handle it. Add to the fact that most of my teachers for the classes that acted towards my Major (cinematography) all basically told the class that none of us would get anywhere within the industry specifically because we were in their classes and not currently out in the field doing it. I'm sorry...but that's not how you get a class motivated. At first I thought maybe the teachers were just saying that to weed out some people and that they would work with the people who stayed. However the longer I was in the class the more I saw that the Teachers didn't care. Hell...half the time they didn't show up. One teacher actually told me to my face "Look...you're in my class so that tells me you at least have a passing interest in film. However...if you were truly serious about it, you wouldn't be in my class. You'd be out there making films in Hollywood or whatever. So since you aren't serious about it...why should I be bothered to be serious about teaching you anything." This pissed me off and I dropped out.

This place is different from that. The people there want to teach you everything you need to know. The classes are only a hand full of people so that everyone can get hands on training with all the equipment. They had teachers there helping current students on their off day because the student wasn't quite grasping something he was taught the previous day in class. In other words, the teacher came in on his day off to help teach a student. That's something you don't see very often.

So...in other words...this place wowed me. At the very end, they told me not to give them my answer on if I wanted to go there or not, but to just go home and think it over. They will call me back today and talk it over with me some more. Afterwords, if I still want to attend they'll start working with me. So that's what I did. I went home. I called and talked to my Sister about it. All she focused on was the money aspect of things. "how would you pay for it?" "How are you going to afforde a career change?" stuff like that. Mostly pointing out the monetary aspect of things. It almost seemed like she was trying to talk me out of it. I half expected her to tell me to continue working my current job even though I extremely hate it since the money is good. She came close a few times, but never did. I understand what she was saying. She was just looking out for me. She was trying to stress that if I wanted to do this, I needed to think it through completely and not make any rash decisions. I also talked to my brother who said some similar things, but seemed a but more supportive while being causious about things. He was was telling me I should do...but to be careful when it comes to certain things. Both were saying the same thing basically just different levels of it.

I also talked with my room mate, Chuck. He's being very supportive. So are my other friends. They've known me for a long time and know I've been unhappy with my job, and need a change. Chuck even pointed out that since I started looking into this school that I seem happier than normal. So that's nice I guess.

So in the title, why did I say I was a little depressed? Well..everything is great. I want to go to this school, and I have a feeling that if I applied, I'd get in. What's the problem?

The problem is Tuition. It's a lot of money. Compared to other schools of this nature, it's actually pretty cheap (I know, I went and researched all that stuff last night). However, it's still the kind of money I don't have. So there's where I'm a bit depressed. I want to go...and I'm pretty sure the school will want me. But I can't afford it. Not to mention the fact that I'm a bit hesitant to get a Student Loan cause of the fact that:

A.) I have bad credit
B.) I honestly think that if I could get approved that the interest rate would be so high it wouldn't be worth it.
C.) I don't think I'd get approved.

So there you go.

Also of note...while typing this up my manager came by to have a 1 on 1 with me. I went and talked to him for a while. Explained to him that I'm wanting to go back to school. He seemed pretty open to the idea. Even gave me some suggestions for things I could do within Dell to help out (I.E. Pointed me in the direction of some departments I might want to apply to, so I can get into a higher paygrade). I'll have to look into that.

well that's all for now.

The first step

So today I take my first step into changing my Profession. Today after work, I'm going to go on a tour of a local School Campus. On this tour, I'm told I'll get to see what goes on at the school and be able to get any questions I have answered.

Also turns out that my friend Mike has a friend there who says he'll talk with me and give me some info on what to do to go to school there as well.

Seems this school works on a Trimester system, so...from what I understand the new Trimester hasn't started yet. So who knows. Maybe I'll be able to start school ASAP...most likely not.

I'm not getting my hopes up about anything here. While things are happening really quickly (I honestly didn't expect to get a tour of the campus for a while), I'm not gonna be afraid to take my time if I need to. We'll see. I am a bit nervous.

I guess I'll post more later when I have more info.

It's time for a change I guess...

So...I'm going to preface this with something. After typing out my previous post I made the decision to try and start posting again...and I figured I'd start with posting something I've been thinking about all week. I'm just going to type this as I can think of it. What follows is about me making a big change in my life. Probably bigger than my moving to Austin.

I'm thinking about changing my profession in life. Currently I work for a major computer company doing phone tech support. I'm been doing Phone Technical Support for a little over 9 years now. It's honestly the only job profession I've ever had. I've worked for a total of 2 companies in that time span...and have worked any number of positions within that field. I've been a regular phone agent, Level 2 tech, Manager, Shift Supervisor, back to being an L2, getting a job at a different company entirely doing various things from launching a support department and so on. I've done a lot of things within the Tech Support Field. A lot of which I've done at a relatively young age (I'm only 26 and most of those things I listed happened 3 years ago or more.) I am very proud of what I've accomplished...however I can say that I've never been truly happy with what I've done. Oh sure, I've enjoyed my work at times...but for the most part I tend to really dislike my job. Especially lately.

Earlier this week I caught myself getting really frustrated or stressed about things that honestly don't matter. To the point that I was literally angry at everything and everyone that had any connection to my job. I, at one point, actually considered just walking out and quitting. I didn't. I rationalized to myself that I need the paycheck.

Afterwords, I sat myself down and asked myself why I'm doing what I'm doing. I know this job that I'm doing was never actually what I intended to do with my life. I never wanted to make this my career. I remember how I got my first job working for a local Internet Service Provider in Houston. I was still in High school and had applied to work at Wal-Mart. On the day I was going to go on my interview my brother called me up and asked if I wanted to get a better job that payed more than Wal-Mart. I said sure...and he got me an interview and I got the job. I was still in high school working in the computer technical support field and I was getting payed more than all my friends. It felt good at the time...however I had never planned to stay there.

Then I graduated. Then my mother got Cancer and I put a lot of stuff on hold: School, looking for a different Job, etc. I stayed at the job because they were very flexible with my schedule and that allowed me to take time off at a moments notice to help take care of my mother. At one point I actually had a nervous breakdown at work due to the whole thing and instead of doing what most jobs would do, my manager pulled me aside, talked to me let it slide. I took some time off and things went on. I went back to work and just stayed and worked my way up the ladder within said company. Looking back on it...I'm pretty sure I stayed at the company because I didn't want to to take any real responsibility for anything after my mom passed away...and just wanted to coast with what I had. After a few internal changes with management that I felt were for the worst I started looking for a way out. A friend of mine said he could get me a job at another, much larger company, making more money and located in Austin, a place I knew I'd enjoy living in. So I went on the interview, got the job, quit my old job, and moved to a new city. From that point, until now I think I was able to keep myself focused on my job because I moved around to different departments as I started to get burnt out on each job.

Now I'm looking back and realizing that out of the 2 jobs I've had...I never actively seeked them out. An outside person offered to get me a job at the place and I just took it wanting something better paying than what I had available to me. I did try to go to college at one point...but my heart wasn't into it as my mother had passed away shortly before, and I just dropped out (much to the annoyance of my Uncle who was trying to look after me and guide me in life after my mother's death...for that, I am sorry)

So all this comes down to the fact that I've come to the realization that through a series of events, I ended up in a profession I honestly don't want to work in. Now I'm not saying all of this was out of my control, cause it wasn't. I made choices based on what was going on in my life at the time, and while they may not have been the best choices in the long run...they were the best choices at the time I made them. At least I think they were. I accept that.

However...I feel that I'm at a point where I need to make a change. I honestly can't keep working this job anymore without at least making some sort of effort to be somewhere else. I know that working towards that change is going to take a while. And I'm fine with that. Also, if I am going to make a change, I need to do it soon while I'm still young enough that a profession change wouldn't effect my life, too much.

I think I know what I want to do, and I've already taken steps towards the path to get there. Sadly because the school semester just started...I probably won't be able to do anything till the next semester, and that's fine cause that can give me some time to prepare myself for the change that's going to bring. Who knows. Maybe something will happen that speeds up the process. Maybe it won't.

The only sad part about all this is that I know that if I do change my job...whatever job I change to, when I'm able to, I'm going to have to take a drastic pay cut. However...who knows...maybe that will be a good thing.

Until next time. Maybe I'll have something fun to post about.

-John

P.S. I wonder if anyone is going to notice that I'm updating this again without me saying anything to anyone.

Holy shit...I haven't updated in...well...forever

I haven't updated this thing in forever. It almost feels weird even posting here. wow.

who knows...maybe I might start again.



maybe not.

However just to let you know...you'll notice the old stuff is gone...or will be gone soon (depending on when your reading this). I figure I want to start fresh with this thing...that is if I do actually start it up again.