DIE SUPER!!! - G'morning, 2009!

[NotMiki]

Interval between having a clean-shaven face and a 5 'o clock shadow: about 17 hours. I sorta miss the days when it'd take a week for my facial hair to grow.

Beard, man.  Do it.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Interval between having a clean-shaven face and a 5 'o clock shadow: about 17 hours. I sorta miss the days when it'd take a week for my facial hair to grow.

Beard, man.  Do it.

It just itches too much when it gets past the eleven day mark. I always take roughly ten-day intervals between shavings, which lets my facial hair grow fairly freely but not uncontrollably, but I start getting past that interval and my skin starts not liking me. The longest I let my beard grow was like fifteen days - not even the depression could numb me that much to the itching. That and I realize that, to keep the beard non-ugly, I'd have to groom it more carefully than I shave, so that ends up being more work. Keeping a good beard is effort.

EDIT: It's honestly sort of a shame, because my facial hair actually grows in a manner conductive to a pretty solid, good-looking beard.

[Idun]

I s'pose this is bad luck year for my friend with the rent/car issues. Now their car won't start up. He paid two places for a diagnosis since his battery is fine. First place said it's covered under the warranty (an ECU) if fixed at the dealer. Went to the dealer and paid them to re-diagnose it. They decided to, instead of replacing it with a new one, add updates and re-program it. This is all fine and dandy, but the car doesn't start up in cold weather, making it seems like a hardware issue rather than software. Paid for them to do that. It's all warm and wet weather this week, so he doesn't know if what he paid for will help at all. They said if this doesn't work, it's then the ECU. Gotta get that replaced. And oh, the computer isn't covered under warranty because someone tampered with the ECU, regardless of it being a used car from Carmax and the current owner having no involvement in it whatsoever. But I think - if they reprogrammed it to manufacturer settings and since, that should MAKE the ECU look untampered anyways. They took two weeks off for vacation because they couldn't make it to work. At least this week'll be warm and it'll give them time to save up more money in case they do have to replace the ECU.

[Idun]

Fixed.

[OblivionKnight]

You know you're practicing medicine in West Virginia when...

1) You have an 11 year old girl come in who needs 3 different types of nicotine replacement therapy ordered because she smokes 3+ packs of cigarettes a day.

2) A 15 year old girl with end stage liver disease due drinking copious amounts of moonshine each day comes to the emergency room due to now presenting with signs of hepato-renal syndrome.

3) A patient who recently had open heart surgery goes outside to smoke.  As in, had the surgery less than a day ago. 

[Cotigo]

I am panicking and stressed and sleep deprived.

I only really announce this because I'm probably going to be nasty and bitter (more than usual) when posting until Wednesday, so please try not to take the tone of my posts too seriously 'til then.

On a related note, FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK STOP WASTING TIME ON THE INTERNETS YOU JACKASS. JESUS CHRIST EVERY TIME THE INTERNET SHOULD BE LESS INTERESTING THAN WHAT YOU'RE PANICKING ABOUT MR. ESCAPIST DOUCHE.

EDIT:  Also, Djinn, check PMs.

[Ultradude]

You know you're practicing medicine in West Virginia when...

1) You have an 11 year old girl come in who needs 3 different types of nicotine replacement therapy ordered because she smokes 3+ packs of cigarettes a day.

2) A 15 year old girl with end stage liver disease due drinking copious amounts of moonshine each day comes to the emergency room due to now presenting with signs of hepato-renal syndrome.

3) A patient who recently had open heart surgery goes outside to smoke.  As in, had the surgery less than a day ago. 

...Note to self: Avoid following in OK's footsteps.

[metroid composite]

Oh, yeah, guess this somehow hasn't spread to the DL yet:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/activision-confirms-shaba-studios-closure

Scrambling to get a good transfer.  All the studios that have expressed preemptive interest in me are outside of the bay area, so decent chance I'll have to move, too :/

[superaielman]

That really sucks, MC. Hope you can find a decent job somewhere that isn't too bad to live.

[Shale]

Man, that blows.

Glad to hear you've got people who want you already, though. It's deserved.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Oh, yeah, guess this somehow hasn't spread to the DL yet:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/activision-confirms-shaba-studios-closure

Scrambling to get a good transfer.  All the studios that have expressed preemptive interest in me are outside of the bay area, so decent chance I'll have to move, too :/

It... honestly could be worse, although I see how it sucks. Cool people are fairly near you, you like the job and all. But just the fact you have other people willing to hire you is great, and I'd recommend not skipping on that if the place you're moving to doesn't suck and it's within your desires. Changes aren't always bad, and you're sure to make good with what you have just as you've been doing through life.

[metroid composite]

Oh, yeah, guess this somehow hasn't spread to the DL yet:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/activision-confirms-shaba-studios-closure

Scrambling to get a good transfer.  All the studios that have expressed preemptive interest in me are outside of the bay area, so decent chance I'll have to move, too :/

It... honestly could be worse, although I see how it sucks. Cool people are fairly near you, you like the job and all. But just the fact you have other people willing to hire you is great, and I'd recommend not skipping on that if the place you're moving to doesn't suck and it's within your desires. Changes aren't always bad, and you're sure to make good with what you have just as you've been doing through life.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'd be fine with oh, say, working for Blizzard (if they want me), or moving back to Vancouver to work at Radical alongside some people I knew in high-school.  I'm not going to lie, it's not like I had never considered a move, the problem is more the timing.  Like...this ruins my green card application, and I need job stability because I have major surgery booked six months from now.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

* Jo'ou Ranbu nods.

Yeah, this is some bad timing. I just hope that whatever you end up picking leads to the best possible results. You might end up having to reshuffle your plans due to that, which isn't nice, but I'm pretty sure you'll be able to manage in some way regardless. From all you've shown us so far, I don't think there's any reason to doubt that. As always, I'm rooting for the best, you deserve it.

[Glen Veil]

Lets see, just got back from an Ultimate tournament two days ago, finally posting after taking a day to recover.  Things went decently, we won all four of the games on the first day, stayed at one of the team members' house instead of driving two hours back to school.  Only won one of the three games on day two, but the team was rather tired from day one and getting screwed by the ranking system of having to play two more games then the higher seeded teams even though our team had a higher RRA then all but two of them, oh well.

Mostly felt like posting this because I was one of the drivers for the team, and one of the nights that we spent at the one members' house I accidentally left my front window down, I come out to my car the next day to see that my glove box was opened and all the crap in it was lying on the car floor.  So apparently someone tried to rob me, but they failed horrible considering the wannabe thief failed to noticed the case containing my GPS behind the front seat.  At first I was kind of happy, but then I realized just how incompetent people can be, and my faith in the human race as a whole slipped down another notch.  I ended up having nothing actually stolen from my car because the would be thief failed to find the only valuable thing I keep in my car.

I also managed to get stuck behind someone driving 20 miles an hour in a 50 mph zone, upon further reflection I'm surprised I did not have an aneurysm at that point.

[Lady Door]

Andrew and I got back from SoCal with a new-to-us car (bright blue 2005 Honda Civic) on Sunday. I nearly destroy it on Monday morning because I miss the turn-off for Berkeley and end up going toward the Bay Bridge with no cash. I very excitingly dashed over 4 lanes to a side road which my GPS told me should turn us around, and yet end up on the bridge ANYWAY, without having paid toll. I nearly killed the suspension in the process, too, because the divider (where the lane splits off) happened to have a VERY deep run that didn't look so deep when I started driving over it at 60MPH.

<_<

It's raining very hard today and I love it. If I had to walk/wait for the bus, I'd hate it, but I have a car! Yay!

The dog hates the rain, though, which is going to present problems when it comes time to exercise him tonight.

[metroid composite]

Okay, my resume is spread to all Activision studios.  Now I'm looking at what non-Activision studios to apply for.  In particular, looking for stable studios (i.e. ones without mass firings) working on projects that are neat.  (For working on unsexy projects, I'm pretty sure I'll get at least one offer from within Activision, so I'm not too worried about that).

So far I've applied to Valve and Wizards of the Coast (okay, that one's unorthodox).  What about, say, Bioware and Obsidian, Insomniac, Sony first party (God of War etc).

[Grefter]

YES YES YES YES YES

[Xeroma]

Valve sounds like a good bet.

[Dhyerwolf]

Join Sony 1st team and get to make WA 6~

[metroid composite]

Join Sony 1st team and get to make WA 6~

Okay, let me be clear: Japan is off the table, period.  I don't speak Japanese, and Japan has a tendency to pay its developers half what they make in North America while expecting much longer hours.

[Strago]

YES YES YES YES YES

[Shale]

If you go to Bioware I won't be able to insult all their games in good conscience anymore, and that would make me sad. Valve sounds like a great place to work though.

[metroid composite]

If you go to Bioware I won't be able to insult all their games in good conscience anymore, and that would make me sad. Valve sounds like a great place to work though.

Oh come on, not every game I've worked on has been solid gold.  It always puzzles me when people are super hesitant to insult an Activison game in front of me.  Developers generally know better than anyone else when a game is bad, as such things often come from problems during development, like an overly short schedule or poor management or a bad engine or all the senior people being on the other project.  Usually when I read through the criticisms in a game review there's several moments of "I told you so".

On another note...hmm...Bethesda...do I even want to consider moving to a suburb of Washington DC... >_>

[OblivionKnight]

Means you'd be closer to Super and myself!

[Shale]

Eh, it's less "their stuff has certain crucial flaws" and more "everything about their games that isn't crap is either in the writing or licensed from TSR."

do I even want to consider moving to a suburb of Washington DC... >_>

Yes! Come to the east coast, it will be awesome.