Non Stop Dash to an Unknown Finish

Hey guys! Long time no blog. As you can obviously tell I never got around to finishing my san fran recap, but quite frankly, its nothing that would be incredibly interesting unless you were involved in my line of work (or my intended line of work I guess). To tell you the truth, after I made that post, no even before I made that post I've been waaaaaaaaaaaaay too busy to blog or even think about blogging. or the Internet. My internet cruising has decreased by at least 50% this semester! It's almost frightening.

Why so busy?

Since I returned from San Francisco, I've been behind in my classes. Well, actually I sorta caught up, but none the less I have been chasing deadlines for the past month and a half. I am working on the master design document for my graduating class's senior capstone game project, which occupies a lot of my time. I meet with my group at least once a week for 3-4 hours just talking about it, working out problems, and making decisions.

Also I have a single player first person shooter level to finish creating before the end of the semester with intermittent deadlines that I invariably never get around to working on until two days before said deadline. Then there is my Real Time Games class, which involves lots more documenting (I really am just writing all of the time). I have Intro to Management also, but fuck that! I took up a minor in management this semester, but I'm so dropping it after this semester. It's about as irrelevant to anything I want to ever do as possible. Since I am not interested in A) Fashion Retail Management, B) Music Management, or C) Events Planning, they really have no interest in me, or me in them.

Aside from that I've been working on the side on a project with a few of my fellow designers designing and creating a bunch of new levels for the game Portal, which if you haven't played you should play (even those of you who don't play video games!). That meets once a week and occupies at least 6-8 hours of time at home per week. This is on top of the 20 hours a week that I work at the school, and without it being a student worker job I really have no opportunity to do homework there and be lazy. Real life sucks.

I've also been trying to get internships. Anywhere, I'll move to fucking Antarctica if they'll give me a designer internship. Chances are I'm not going to get one, I've been barely making the deadlines for any that I apply for and they are already about as competitive as an internship could be. But its worth a try.

If I don't get an internship, I need to figure out what I'm doing for the summer. My lease ends May 1st, and all of my potential roommates leases don't end until August 31st. By potential I mean that one needs to get a job or he can't stay in the city, two need to talk to their roommates about splitting up, and the other is the only one totally on the boat at this point. Regardless, I either will need to find a cheap (CHEAP) sublet for the summer or *shudder*....move back to the burbs for the summer and commute to work/class at the school. To save 700 bucks a month or to not live with my parents again? This is a tough question.

Sooooooooo that's why I don't really blog too much anymore. Thankfully spring break has given me a short breather, but the pressure isn't off because the Portal levels deadline date is April 15th...yikes. I think I might have an ulcer and aneurism simultaneously this semester.

The worst part is, I kinda love being this busy. I get up at 6:30 every morning, work, go to class, meet with my groups, and rarely return before 8 or 9 pm then spend 3 more hours doing homework. I only get 5-6 hours of sleep on an average weeknight. I never have a chance to just relax and not think about anything. But I couldn't love it much more right now. Does that make me a masochist? I guess I just function well under the pressure.

On that note though, anyone need a room mate for the summer? No? It was worth a try.

Everything is so pretty in San Francisco

Okay, so I've finally decided to recount my journey to San Francisco. Let me see if I can actually do justice to the incredible experience it was (despite catching the flu from a certain friend whom I won't mention *COUGH*ben*COUGH*).

Sunday: We fly into San Francisco. Well, we try to anyways. Our flight is supposed to leave at 10:30 in the morning, but its rainy/snowy/icy stormy in Chicago, so when I get to the airport the flight is canceled. Even worse was the journey to the airport which I won't go into detail about (call cab, cab doesn't show up, drag bags down the street to catch a cab to the blue line, blue line doesn't show up for half an hour). But, still, luck was on our side and we (my professor Tom, external relation coordinator Tracy, and friend Ben) were able to squeeze onto the next flight at lile 12:30, so we had 3 hours to sit around. Which is where we made our first game industry friend. His name was Thom Yun. He writes for an well known game industry publication called Gamasutra and had good advice for us about networking at GDC, which we would later find out we desperately needed. Fast forward through the flight and settling into the hotel to dinner. We meet with the school crew (the professors and such), and decide to just wander until we think a place looks good. We end up happening upon a jazz seafood and steak place. The food was amazing, but even better was the gruff old black man playing jazz piano and singing in the corner of the restaurant. It was amazing. After that we were all tired and pretty much went back to our hotel rooms to prepare to hit GDC the next day.

Seeing that this was pretty long describing one day, I'm going to do this in several entries. That was one of the calmer days of the trip, which is absurd considering it was the traveling day. Anyways, until tomorrow/I feel like making the next entry, see ya!