Spooooky

It's a busy life I live these days. You'd think with doing so much, I'd have more to write about... but I can't even really remember what I did last week. Maybe I just need to update more often.

I went down to Augie last weekend for some good Homecoming fun. Katie ran a 3 mile homecoming run and finished strong like a race horse. Yes... I said it.

I saw alot of old friends who I hadn't talked to in a long while. A few of them are living in Chicago, turns out, so hopefully I see more of them.



I did that for class this week. Next week's assignment could be interesting... and then time for the final project, which hopefully is cool.

Work is still going well. I bought myself an HTML book today, because I really don't know it all that well, and I need to know it better for this job. However, I did do some good updating today. I work on this page. I know, I'm pretty impressive.

Ok, need sleep, another long day tomorrow.

Oh yea, and some guy had a seizure on the El today on my way to work. Crazy.

4 hour meetings were created by George W.

Today for work, I had to sit in a big conference room on the 10th floor of some building in the loop and take notes for a 4 hour meeting. It was part of the bitch duties of my new job. It's not the perfect job...cos it contains bitch duties, but the other side of it is really cool, so I can deal with it.

However, 4 hour meetings are fucking retarded. And yes, I mean mentally handicapped. Just like our president. I'm just gonna offend everyone I can here and say they are gay and probably dark colored as well.

This meeting was about discussing the navigation for a webpage we are doing for James Hardie, a siding company. Siding may not sound too exciting, which it isn't, but this shit is pretty impressive. Check it.

Unfortunately, there were 5 people in the boardroom and three more on the conference call, which made it really hard to figure out who the hell was talking. I'm pretty sure my notes don't make a lick of sense, but oh well. I wasn't hired for my note taking skillz. They had lunch for us though, which was some kick ass catered italian food and it was crazy delish.

There is this world boxing thing going on at the UIC Pavillion this week, and boxers from all over are competing. They also happen to be staying at a hotel on Wabash, right by DePaul. So the past two nights as I've walked to the bus stop after class, there have been groups of very intimidating men in windbreaker suits wandering about. Most of them appear to be Russian or Slovakian or Polish. You know what I mean, strong jaws, shaved heads, scars.... THIS

I'll post some new images I've made soon. They're pretty cool, and starting to look a bit more realistic. I'm really pumped because I just enrolled in next term's courses and they are both animation courses. So instead of still images, you will be getting fun little short movies to download!!! I know, I can't wait either!

I'm going down to Rock Island this weekend to see Miss Katie as well as everyone else who is gonna be there for homecoming/halloween. I really need to get my homework done so I can just party like a mofu'in rockstah this weekend. Cos that's what I want. I need to find a good costume. I was thinking of trying to find some way of going as either Link or Mario... I'm gonna try and hit up a costume shop after work tomorrow. We'll see how that works out.

That's all for now,

You like what I do

First off, here's a new 3D image I made for class a few weeks ago (sorry it took me a bit to post)

I've got some cool stuff I'm working on right now for that class, and I think they'll be much more fun to look at since I'm learning how to use the software better.

So I started the new job on Wednesday. So far it's pretty cool. It's alot more responsibility than I thought it was going to be, but I guess that's a good thing. The biggest thing is that I really like the 7 other people I work with. The office is just a relaxed place where we chat while we work, and there's actually laughter. I know, laughter in the work place, how new age.

Anyway, that's life these day. Work, school, work, school, with some video games and drinking thrown in there when I can make time. It's what I asked for though, and it's getting me places. Busy is good, I keep telling myself.

The Environment

Sometime in the recent past, perhaps yesterday, it was blogger activism day. Everyone who writes a blog was supposed to write about the environment in some way or another. My guess is they assume all bloggers are hippies and save trees. I dunno. Also, only 5 people read this blog, and I'm guessing it's the same for alot of other bloggers out there. Oh well, maybe it had an effect... maybe it ENVIRONMENT!!!!!!!!!!!

Last weekend I tried to throw a party. Back in the college days, you could send word 24 hours in advance, and your house would be full. Well, I don't know about your house, but our house would be full. We were awesome, and people knew it. This time, I gave people about 5 days to figure their shit out. No one came. Some people said they were coming, but didn't. Everyone else just didn't. I mean, Dave and Chris, and Mike, and Rich came. And Steve and Kels were there for a while... but it was just hanging out. Not a party. I still had a blast, but it was all "This isn't college anymore Bryan, in yo face biatch!" (<-- that was life talking).

ENVIRONMENT

Monday was my last day at Motorola. They actually worked me pretty hard, tying up loose ends, finishing all my projects, doing everything because no one else knows what to do... I pretty much just damned my team, mayhaps the whole company, to bankruptcy. I will not be held responsible though, because they should have seen this coming. I guess there's another few thousand being laid off this week actually. That puts the total since I started working there around 10,000 or so. Yea...great company. It's not their products, Motorola phones, headsets, cable boxes, modems, are all pretty good products. The problem is, we suck at getting them there. Wait, not we, they suck at getting them there. They lose tons of money in their poor procedures for doing everything. It takes them too long because it's a clusterfuck in there, and when they miss ship dates on products, they owe those companies money. And when companies lose money they end up ENVIRONMENT!

I just finished a midterm for my hard class. It wasn't bad. But I'm smart, so that makes sense.

ENVIRONMENT?

I start the new job tomorrow. I'm nervous. I also need to go to a dentist and look into new insurance...but the Moto insurance covers me through the month, so dentist it is.

Peace out.

ENVIR...nevermind.

Sometimes...

Soemtimes, when you have a mustache you get boogers caught in it. And then I have to sit in a two-and-a-half hour meeting with you staring at your snot coated lip-wig.

Sometimes, your ear hair looks like a blue tooth ear piece.


Sometimes...

Blue Dragon Review

My guess is, you're not interested, but I play alot of videogames. And when I'm done, I usually review them on Gamespot. So I finished Blue Dragon yesterday, wrote a review today, and now you get to read it, if you want.

Blue Dragon has some serious clout behind it, being crafted by the very hands that began Final Fantasy, my favorite game series of all time. But despite all that genius, Blue Dragon turns out to be a rather uninspired, yet solid, JRPG.

The game is graphically gorgeous, as is expected, though the depth of field trickery actually takes away from the environments. A little blur to items that would normally be out of focus might add realism in a realistic setting, but in the cartoonish and fantastical world of Blue Dragon, it is a hindrance. The story, penned by Sakaguchi of FF fame, takes pretty much the entire first disc to launch into anything of substance. And from there, it builds and builds to an almost climax, but then dithers into nothing as the story ends. The twists and turns add no drama, but rather another boring cut-scene.

The battles are monotonous, but not unenjoyable. They offer little in the way of challenge, except for sparse boss battles. I only died once in the entire 40 hour game, and that was on the final battle (and I quickly saw my error and beat it the next time around).

The music was composed by Nobuo Uematsu, famed composer of much FF music. His style was very apparent in Blue Dragons sounds, but most of the music faded into the background, leaving me without toe tapping or whistling later.

Overall, the game wasn't bad. I enjoyed my time with it, but I wasn't left with a feeling of accomplishment, or really even anything satisfying. I only finished it because it would kill me to leave it unfinished. That said, for any devoted RPG fan, Blue Dragon is worth playing.

Come On, Feel the Illinoise

Good day readers. How are you? That's good to hear. Blog time. (can't touch this)

I've added a fun little thing to the side bar of this blog, my last.fm recent tracks. It lets you know what music i've been listening to, and it's very very up to date. I checked it, and it pretty much has the one-before-current song on my iTunes listed. Pretty nifty huh? Enjoy.

Ya know, I realized today that I really love Illinois. It's a pretty damn good state. It's not in the south (+), it gets to fully experience all four seasons (+), I live here (+), and there are many other great things as well.

I think the Chicago suburbs are a near perfect place to grow up. I'm sure I complained a lot as a youth that Cary was lame, there was nothing to do (or maybe I didn't.. but probably at least once or twice). But really, it was pretty awesome. The city was close enough that I got to go live out some punk rock fantasies there; the education system was pretty stellar; and the town itself was just a good place.

I drove across the state twice this past weekend. Once down to Rock Island to visit Katie, and then back. I love driving across Illinois. Sure, it's flat, full of corn, and boring as hell, but it's a perfect boring. It was uncharacteristically warm for October on my drive, and drove with all my windows down and the music blaring. The smell of fresh bailed hay blasting into my nostrils was invigorating. I even kinda liked the smell of the farm animals, when it wasn't too overwhelming. The monotony of the seas of corn is really a great way to clear your head.

And the city. Living in Chicago is more than I could have imagined. It's amazing how quickly this has become Home. Coming back from Rock Island, heading north on 55, I could see the skyline through the haze, the Sears thrusting its antenna into the air. When I moved here, I told myself never to take that view for granted, so I make sure to look up every now and again, even if I look like a tourist, gawking at the skyscrapers.

I feel like I'm on some sort of Illinois Tourist Board.

Anyway, this past weekend was a good one. It was parent's weekend down at Augie, and there were lots of parents (imagine that). Katie's came in shortly after I got there Friday, and we went out to dinner at Olive Garden and then came back and chilled with her roommates and polished off a bottle of vodka (I made some really really bad jokes...). Saturday, we went out to brunch with her parents, and then we went to see 3:10 To Yuma, which was a really freakin cool movie. I highly recommend it.

The rest of the weekend was pretty low key and relaxing, which was good. I needed one of those.

I have my first midterm tomorrow, but I've done some good studying, and I'll get some more in tomorrow, so wish me luck.


Did you wish me luck?

Ok, thanks.

Bye.

Oh no he di'nt

Oh yes... I did.

I'm leaving Motorola, because I got a new job at SandStorm Design. I'm super excited for this new job and I can't wait to get away from Motorola. Woo. I start on the 17th.

Um, I've been way too busy recently, with the whole new job thing plus school, plus going out of town for the weekends.

Last weekend I went to Cincinnati with Dave, Cassie, Sarah, Erin, Schubchub, Russ, Pat, and Christian to visit Jeff. It was a blast! Even the 5 hour car ride, which really isn't all that bad. We went to a cubs game and just hung out. Really good to see everyone. I got a bit of a head cold and had to go to bed early Saturday night, but it was still alot of fun.

This weekend I'm going down to Rock Island to visit Katie, which is good because I was starting to miss her.

Short and sweet update for now, cos I need to actually be doing things.

~Bry