Bloggity, Blog, Blog, Blog

Why do I stop blogging?  I suppose I don't really have anything interesting to say, but then again, nobody even reads this thing, so that's a pretty flimsy excuse.  I've always seen blogging as more of a therapeutic thing than anything else, I know lots of people get 'famous' on the internet with their blog, but that just never seemed to be very possible for some schmuck in a small, white, Republican town like Glendora.  I don't really have any kind of an answer on why I do this, or why I don't do it, other than sometimes I feel like putting my thoughts into some kind of written document to be saved for the foreseeable future.

School is pretty blah right now, ALL of my professors suck and I'm really glad that three of the four classes I'm taking right now are coming to an end.  Only my DreamWeaver course wasn't a pain in the ass, but it was so short I'd have to call it pointless, as I was telling Diana, I probably could have learned everything we did in one day just playing around with DW on my own.  But then again, I only took it in order to make the twelve units I need for the insurance thang anyway.  Speaking of, I should probably start trying to get a job again in order to start paying bills and/or saving money.  I think I should be getting a check from DeVry within the next few weeks, so that should hold me over until then, maybe I should just get some easy job just to make a few bucks.  But that goes against my whole concept of working, although that's another blog entry altogether.

Also, Windows Live Writer is fan-frickin-tastic.  For some reason I feel better blogging in a program that posts to the internet for me than putting it straight on the internet.  Yeah, I'm nuts like that.

135 Days

Well, it's certainly been awhile, hasn't it? For some reason I just haven't been in the mood to blog much. I think part of it is because of Twitter; I can constantly keep everybody updated on what I'm doing, so why should I sit down and bang out a couple hundred words when I've already done it throughout the day? And I know I'm not the only one too, I've read a couple blogs about how full fledged blogging just doesn't have the fluidness of microblogging throughout the day. Ok, I think I've hit the quota for internet buzz words in one post so I should move on to something else.

It's been about a third of a year since I last blogged, a lot's changed and a lot's still the same. Diana and I are still good, I'm still in school, and I'm still, uh... between jobs. I had a slight school crisis a couple months ago, I wasn't sure what I was going to do about staying at DeVry or if I should find another school, maybe even change my major. I'm still mulling things over, but I'm leaning towards finishing at DeVry and doing what I can to focus on MMO development. I'm playing Warhammer Online instead of WoW and so far it's been great. Kaitlyn got married yesterday (2 days ago now, actually) which was pretty unbelievable, I never would have thought she'd be the first to get hitched out of my friends.

I guess that's enough of a post for now. See you soon?

Respect the Narrative Flow

Whew, long time no blog. I think I've started other blogs with that phrase. Anyway, I haven't really had time to blog, or the pressing urge to, so I kinda didn't. I haven't exactly been busy with anything important though. For the last... while I've been leveling up a prot pally in WoW and watching Buffy/Angel again. Having a laptop has freed me of the confines of my room to explore the exciting world of the living room, which has a DVD player in it. The pally's gonna hit 70 within a day or so, and I've been having a blast tanking every Outland instance so far, but my guild is again starting to let me down. A month ago we had a solid group of people leveling to 70 for instances and maybe even raids, but now it's about four of us regularly and a handful of others, without any hope of progression. Nothing scares me more than a lifetime of PUGs. There's also the fact that Age of Conan just came out and Warhammer in the near future.

In the real world I've got two super dull new classes. I was really looking forward to the AI class I was gonna take but it was canceled b/c there was nobody enrolled. My networking class isn't really so bad I'm just not overly interested in the subject. GSP130, however, is the dullest class I've ever taken in any school... ever. The subject matter is about as interesting as fish scales and the professor makes me want to die every time he mispronounces a word. The good thing is that they're both half over and I can get out of there and have a whole week break.

Next week happens to be my 22nd birthday. That weekend we're going to the Stone Brewery in Escondido and then going back to my house for a party. Diana's taking care of the planning so it should be fun. I guess that's about all that's going on, maybe I'll blog again soon?

Been Awhile

Again I go forever and a day between blog posts. This is kinda surprising because there have actually been a decent number of things going on.

Probably the largest event was going camping at Yosemite with Diana, Robbie, and Jen. Yosemite was amazing and made for a spectacular camping trip. The nice thing about going with Robbie and Jen is that they like to hike a lot, so there wasn't much sitting around throughout the weekend. The highlight was on Saturday when we hiked to the top of Nevada Falls. This was easily the most strenuous hike we had ever done and it took us the better part of the day to get up there, but the work was very much worth it. On the way down we got to take a much more scenic and gentle route, which gave us a nice contrast to the 7 million stairs we climbed to get up there.

After this I started a new session at school which has so far been about as boring as watching grass grow. The class I was really looking forward to, GSP290: Artificial Intelligence, was canceled due to not enough people signing up, so I'm stuck in the stupid classes for now. There's also a new GSP club starting up, which I'm not sure if I'm going to join yet or not.

Internet wise, I've signed up for some new sites that have taken up a lot of my time. I finally signed up for (and kept) a FaceBook account, which so far has been way better than myspace. I'm using a new site that hosts flash games and records high scores and little badge things, called Kongregate. For a long time I've had an account on Remember The Milk, which is just an internet To Do list, but the last few days I've actually been filling it out and making sure that I follow through with things, which has been a big help to my lack of motivation. Until just a few minutes ago I had been using the Firefox 3 beta client, but I ended up going back to FF2 just for the Google Toolbar which I love so much. FF3 is gonna be awesome when it's released and websites actually start supporting it, but I just got sick of having to switch over to IE just to use certain pages, like DeVry's eCollege.

I guess that's about it for now, I covered a lot of topics and I'm about ready for bed.

Simulated Reality

For the last 7 weeks I've been in a group called Locker15 to develop a training simulation. On the first day of class Professor Maynes picked myself and Anthony to be the two team captains for the project. After that we picked out teams, picked our names and then went to work figuring out what our simulation would be about. We chose to do ours in a GTA/Crazy Taxi fashion where you'd have a top down view and would need to pick up patients and take them to a hospital. We got a chance to use Game Maker, and even though it's super limited we managed to pull off some really neat things and even though I was skeptical from the beginning our simulation turned out pretty damn cool. I'm not sure how much it would actually teach somebody, but it was fun and it looked nice. After we had our presentations today we still had a couple hours in class so we did some four player Wii Sports and the Prof even got down on it. Overall this class has been a lot of fun and I'm really looking forward to next semester.

Locked In

The last few nights I've been playing my lock. I haven't really talked to Jenn or anything, so I'm not sure what she thinks is up, but it seems like she's usually busy so I don't think it'll be a big deal. The lock's been fun so far, I've still had shit luck as far as instances go, but at least I've been able to blow up some newbs. I can't really complain so far, and it's been fun to be back on the WoW track.

My new semester starts up tomorrow and I'm pretty excited. DeVry switched to two eight week sessions now so I've only got one class, which is GSP280: Intro to Simulation Design, with the same prof and just about the same class as my GSP240 last semester. Having half the time means we'll have to pick up the work load, but it should be a good time. If only I knew where the hell we were meeting.

Waste of Time

I was going to write a reflection paper on my CIS247 course like I did for my GSP courses, but I don't really see the point. It didn't cover much that I didn't already know, and most of the time I spent helping other students. I took the final today, drove out there and finished it in about 15 minutes, which is annoying b/c I spent more time in the car than taking the final but she wouldn't let us take it at home cause we might cheat or something, not like it was hard anyway. But whatever, I'm done with it, too bad I've got the same prof for 246 next semester =/

I guess this is a reflection paper after all.

In The Middle

I just aced my first final of the day and now I'm in the computer lab studying for my next one. I ended up with a 98% in the class, which is really good, but I'm kinda down because I spent 3-4 hours last night doing homework and a reflection paper that would have put me over 100%, but since I didn't turn them in before the test I didn't get credit for them. It's not really a big deal, on transcripts an A is an A, but I'm pretty sure the prof thought I just blew off the last assignment because I had my grade padded enough that it wouldn't matter, but I really did do them! Anyway, I've gotta get back to studying, this next final requires a lot more studying than the last one did.

Reflection Papers

As an extra credit assignment in two of my classes I had to write a short paper about what I got out of the class and how I felt the class worked. I wanted to post them here because... well because this is my blog and I can.

GSP220 Math for Game Programming:

Going into this class I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I was hoping to take out of it some of the math concepts that I would need to program games but I ended up with a lot more. I had taken up to Pre-Cal in High School so none of the concepts were really new to me, although I did need a refresher for some, but I learned a lot about how they relate to game programming. One of my favorite things was working from the first couple weeks on our Point class, then building on that for the Vector class, and finally using that along with our Matrix class to play with the shapes for the final project. I had heard the class was a lot different with other professors and I think that our class got a lot out of it that wouldn’t normally have been offered. Although this was not a C++ class and a lot of what was going on in the program we looked at was over my head, having a chance to put my hands in it and play with what’s going on was very interesting. Not to mention the things we were able to do with what we learned about matrices was just awesome.

I was very comfortable with the pacing and structure of the class, but I think that was largely due to having a basic understanding of the math and C++ coming into the class. If I had to find a flaw in the class I think it would be that some people were overwhelmed by what was going on. To improve this, the school could make a C++ class a pre- or even a co-requisite for this class. All in all though, I got a lot out of this class and had a lot of fun doing it, I’m very glad to have taken it when I did.

GSP240 Fundamentals of Game Design:

Game Design was the first class I’ve taken at DeVry that I was really excited about when I signed up for it. Having a chance to learn about the game development process was a very interesting process. In addition to all the technical terms for things that I already knew I learned a lot about what goes into making games in a professional environment and the kind of effort that needs to be put into each and every game, even though most of the games that will be pitched won’t ever be made. Professor Maynes also brought a lot to the class that had nothing to do with the book, such as the importance of pitching the game and being confident in telling stories and presenting in front of a group in a highly stressful environment. Although I did know a lot of the concepts that were explained particularly in the last chapters that were covered in class, having an actual knowledge about it is better than the general understanding I had going into this. There was also a lot that had to do with the way levels are designed and the type of information that needs to be done before any work can start on a game.

My favorite part of the class was working on our own game as well as seeing everybody else’s presentations. Working on our game and being able to play off of each other’s ideas was a lot of fun and interesting to see what we came up with. The presentation itself was also an important learning process because the Professor gave the class as a whole feedback that I had never heard in a class before. Learning about what works and what doesn’t work in a Power Point presentation was a nice bonus to the other things I learned in the class. To improve the class I would have loved to have more time to spend tweaking and refining our game, including more than one presentation to see how everyone’s game changed over time, but that isn’t going to be possible with the semester changes that DeVry is adopting.

No Extra Credit

I missed an A in COLL148 by 10 points because the prof didn't add up my Extra Credit right. I hate her.

My Legacy

I started the Martinez Legacy Challenge tonight. Shortly I'll be posting a link to my spreadsheet score card so that it will be trackable on the internets. I'm using some modified rules that I made myself, I don't have a problem with using a relationship decay mod and I'm using any items I feel like, although I'll do my best to resist using the inSIMinator. I've never really been big on money cheats, so I don't think that is gonna be an issue. I'm also starting a little early so that I can get my founder through college before Free Time comes out in a couple days, since I don't have any challenges that go along with that yet.
I also priced out my books for the next semester today and it came to just under $300 bucks on the school's site. Tomorrow I'll find em on Amazon used and compare the prices!

The Weight of the World

I'm finally done with my WaterWorld project. All in all it turned out a lot better than I was kinda fearing it would. The documentation turned out solid and even though we didn't have the best presentation, we didn't do bad, so I call it a win. Maynes was clear that even the best presentation was weak compared to what we could have done. I think he was kind of expecting that though because he more or less through us the assignment without even really telling us what we needed to have. People always say that the best way to learn to fly is without a safety net and that's pretty much what he did. Sure all of us could have done better, but what we ended up with was four solid game concepts and a shaky foundation for presentations that we could all improve upon. All in all I really enjoyed this semester even though I've been somewhat overloaded for the past week, Maynes really changed my mind about the standard of education at DeVry, you just gotta get the right prof.

Another Bitchfest

The COLL presentation went better than I thought it would. Our presentation was still shitty cause the others were complete morons, but the other groups set the par so low our badness was actually a couple of notches above all the other groups today. The first group was a bunch of kids doing lowering the drinking age. These guys weren't bad and aside from a technical issue with their videos I'd say they were pretty solid. Next was a group about sex ed. I don't really know what their stance on the issue was b/c one girl was saying that teaching abstinence was the best way, the next girl said... something, I don't really know, the con side of their argument was a bunch of stories and then the guy literally saying "That's crazy." The last guy was also con and I really don't know what he was saying either, he just kinda rambled off some statistics and then said he was done. The funniest part was that their thing was just the four of them reading off of cards, they couldn't even manage to make a power point between themselves, which lead to theirs being the dullest thing I've seen in a long, long time. Next we were up, and even though it was short we had some good points and it sparked some decent discussion. The last group was about legalizing marijuana, and even though they had some valid points on the legalization, they didn't have any kind of debate at all. Most of it was just statistics about what happens to you and then at the very end they said some negative things but I don't even know what they were b/c they didn't have a slide or anything. The thing that bothered me the most was the prof was saying how medical marijuana wasn't a good idea b/c it should be up to the FDA not voters on what constitutes medicine. The problem with that reasoning is that the FDA hasn't said that marijuana doesn't have medical purposes, in fact they haven't said anything b/c they don't test it, they just stick their thumbs in their ears and wag their tongues at the idea of marijuana. The federal government had 15 medical marijuana test subjects in the 70s and then never asked them how the treatment was working for them. I don't know about you, but that doesn't seem to be a valid way to decide on a drug that could potentially help millions of people. This has kinda turned into me talking about drug legalization, which is a whole nother blog topic. I think I'm gonna end it here.

You Can't Do That, It's Wrong

Bleh, I've actually been doing homework for the last couple nights, what a fucking drag! Now, I know what you're thinking, and really, it wasn't all bad. I had some quality day dreaming and forum posting in between and some delicious beer that made the time go a little bit quicker, but other than that being at home has been dull city the last few days. The biggest project I've worked on was our WaterWorld game for GSP240. It was fun but painful at the same time. It's a group project, but my partner wasn't exactly involved with the whole thing. It wasn't his fault as I kinda took it upon myself to do it, and the parts I asked him to do he did perfectly, I just wanted more creative control over it, I guess. In class today I managed to completely finish the project I've got due Tuesday for GSP220, which turned out fucking excellent. We've been learning how to apply matrices to transform points and I really didn't understand the point to it all, but the prof gave us a sort of test bed with some objects and we had to manipulate them in various ways and the result turned out way cool. After the short stint I had as a construction worker I had a real fondness for working with my hands, being able to look at the result at the end was a great feeling. I can confidently say that typing in code and watching a world come to life is exactly the same feeling. Programming is awesome. On the neg side, I just finished a rather craptastic PowerPoint for my oh-so-dull COLL148 class. I predict we'll be the second or third worst group, cause there's some total fucking morons in that class. The entire project was done by me b/c the two other people in my group can't handle the most basic of instructions. Now this would usually lead to a pretty satisfactory presentation, however, I just didn't give half a shit about it. I mean, it's a totally bullshit class that's designed for them to squeeze just a little more money out of you. The prof is clueless and I'm pretty sure that we'll get a pretty good grade regardless of the shitpile that is our project. The only upside to it was getting to really work with office '07, which rocks. I think that's about all for now, gotta get up early and present tomorrow >.<

EDIT: Wow, that was long as hell and I didn't even get to the point of the title and Faith-in-Buffy pic that I chose. The topic for our presentation is abortion and all of the "pro-life" reasons have to deal with how abortion is murder and blah blah blah. The whole time I was typing that out I just kept thinking about Faith mockingly saying, "You can't do that, because it's wrong!"