Frankly I'm surprised that I haven't gone into shock or something with how much things have turned around in the last 3 weeks. Just thinking about it is weird for me, but three weeks ago I was unsure of how long unemployment benefits would last but I knew at one point they only lasted for 6 months and I was coming within a week or two of reaching that 6 month mark. My biggest concern was, in addition to getting a job ASAP, figuring out how we would survive with our house, pets, and any of our stuff if my unemployment benefits ran out.
I pretty much still cannot believe that I got a job right at that pivotal moment. In all likelihood, with all of the legislation passed in the last two years with regards to unemployment, the benefits would have lasted for a total of 9 months (into mid September), but it's not spelled out clearly and it was a pain trying to find out. Was I going to sit on the phone for an hour or two trying to find this out, or just hope for the best because one way or another there was really nothing I could do except mentally prepare for the worst.
Now the absolutely ridiculous part of it is that I have a really awesome job, and the fact that I work at home and have no commute is incredible and a lot of people are asking how they could get the same kind of job. Thankfully my company is probably hiring more people soon, so if you have experience in Architecture, are an Analyst, Statistician, or Technical Writer then let me know!
Also it sounds like in mid-July I will start traveling for short periods of time around all of the US, which I'm hoping in addition to getting to see more of my home country will also allow me to visit many of the friends I have made through blogging and other online interactions. I will most likely be posting on here about my travels and such, so let me know if it sounds like I'll be in your area!
Really, right now it feels like I could not possibly have a better job and that's a damn good feeling. Trust me, I'm enjoying it! Also I'm going to play in E's Eberron D&D game this evening, so that will be super fun and I'm looking forward to the vegetable lasagna before hand (she's an awesome cook from what I hear)!
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Thursday, June 17, 2010
The Insidious Nature of Unemployment
I'm going to start this post off with a link, bad idea I know but it's a great post and a good set up to what I'm writing about. If you're looking for a good read on why some people are sticklers for having limited andf exact inventory in their RPGs (or any game really) then read Rob Donoghue's post about fitting square pegs into round holes (not as kinky as it sounds, really).
He ends the post with a reinforcement of an excellent saying, "constraints breed creativity".
I couldn't agree more with this statement, and then something clicked for me and I realized that this philosophy applies in so many more ways than I'd previously realized. A lot of people know that being unemployed means you have a lot more free time than when you're working. Most people think that you should be spending the majority of that time searching for a new job. In a perfect world this would be true, but in reality there are so many factors at work it is very tough to accomplish that.
For starters, at least to me, it seems like there was really only so much time you could spend searching for a job. I'd read an article about being unemployed a year or two before I was laid off, and it very wisely suggested that instead of drowning in job applications that you instead dedicate yourself to doing what you really love. It very cleverly professed that if you dedicated all of your efforts to doing what you love, you would eventually catch people's attention and hopefully be able to get a job doing exactly what you love (and getting paid for it more importantly). This is especially true when it comes to artists and other non-office job professions, if you can dive in at full steam then you're much more likely to make a living at it than someone who approaches it casually.
The problem for me was that I had a lot of free time, so procrastinating became even easier because I knew I'd have time to do anything later in the day/week/month. Worse than this is the looming thought that no matter what you're doing, you should probably be looking for a job instead. Thoughts like these led to an incredibly unproductive Danny during most of the time that I was unemployed.
What I'm finding now, however, is that with the more restricted free time I have now that I am working I have become a lot more creative and productive with my free time. This is a different angle to view the "constraints breed creativity" thought, but I find it equally as relevant for myself at the moment. There are a lot of other factors, of course, because this is real life and very high up on that list is the ability to relax a hell of a lot more and (hopefully) not worry about losing our house/pets/sanity/independence anymore.
He ends the post with a reinforcement of an excellent saying, "constraints breed creativity".
I couldn't agree more with this statement, and then something clicked for me and I realized that this philosophy applies in so many more ways than I'd previously realized. A lot of people know that being unemployed means you have a lot more free time than when you're working. Most people think that you should be spending the majority of that time searching for a new job. In a perfect world this would be true, but in reality there are so many factors at work it is very tough to accomplish that.
For starters, at least to me, it seems like there was really only so much time you could spend searching for a job. I'd read an article about being unemployed a year or two before I was laid off, and it very wisely suggested that instead of drowning in job applications that you instead dedicate yourself to doing what you really love. It very cleverly professed that if you dedicated all of your efforts to doing what you love, you would eventually catch people's attention and hopefully be able to get a job doing exactly what you love (and getting paid for it more importantly). This is especially true when it comes to artists and other non-office job professions, if you can dive in at full steam then you're much more likely to make a living at it than someone who approaches it casually.
The problem for me was that I had a lot of free time, so procrastinating became even easier because I knew I'd have time to do anything later in the day/week/month. Worse than this is the looming thought that no matter what you're doing, you should probably be looking for a job instead. Thoughts like these led to an incredibly unproductive Danny during most of the time that I was unemployed.
What I'm finding now, however, is that with the more restricted free time I have now that I am working I have become a lot more creative and productive with my free time. This is a different angle to view the "constraints breed creativity" thought, but I find it equally as relevant for myself at the moment. There are a lot of other factors, of course, because this is real life and very high up on that list is the ability to relax a hell of a lot more and (hopefully) not worry about losing our house/pets/sanity/independence anymore.
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
June, Five Years Later
In June of 2005 I was a recent college graduate and luckily managed to get hired at one of the 4-5 jobs that I interviewed with. Now it's June of 2010 and I've managed to get a job with the one company I interviewed with in the last five months. The amount of people in America right now that are unemployed is insanely large, not to mention people who have been unemployed for what is considered an extreme amount of time such as one year or more. The amount of Architects (or people with degrees/job in architecture) that are unemployed is an equivalently insane amount.
Hell, I just did a quick google search for some actual information and this March 2009 article was in the top for "unemployment by profession" - http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/mar/20/recession-unemployment-and-employment-statistics
Architects are at the top of the building trades list but with a staggering 760% increase in numbers claiming unemployment benefits from Feb 2008 to the time of that report. The funny thing is that March of 2009 is when my job cut me down to 30 hours a week, but I was still "full-time" so my salary was the same I was just working less hours for it. I lived with the reduced hours until in June I was fortunate and took a part-time job with the surveying company my friend Jacob works for where I could pick up 8-12 hours a week as needed and make up for some of the missing pay. The bigger problem was that, as everyone does, we expected my career to continue to grow and as you can see from that study 2008 was a rough year and most of us didn't get the same raises we expected. A LOT of trades didn't get what they expected, I know that, but Architects appear to be the worst hit of the construction industry and even as recent as May of 2010 this study (http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/) of employment change by trade shows Manufacturing and Education growing a small amount while Construction still decreased by a larger amount than any of those grew. Government jobs grew a ludicrous amount because of the temporary employees hired for the census, so we can write that off for that month. So the construction industry has been in a job-losing spiral since 2008, which led up to late November of 2009 when I was laid off for a complete lack of work for me to do at the company. I understood it entirely, it was just a crappy situation for everyone and the company provided us with as much as they could to transition.
I didn't expect to change jobs when I got that job five years ago in June. I didn't expect a lot of things though, and the sheer volume of information and knowledge that I acquired at that job is staggering for me to think about still. I learned that the (unfortunate) best way to get a big raise is to switch jobs. I learned it through the normal means but also because the principal at the firm that hired me left a few months later after 25 years there, and then another project architect above me left within the next year and I heard the money amounts being thrown around at the time. I worked with people who had been at the firm for 10, 15, 30, and even 50 years and I saw what not switching jobs would lead to and what changing jobs could provide. I casually tossed around the idea but by then it was already 2008 and the time had passed, I was worried if I got a new job I'd be "the new guy" and if a crash did hit (which it definitely did) I'd be the first layer trimmed off.
The firm I was with had begun lay offs a lot later than most other Architectural firms, doing the first round in March of 2009 where we lost three people and several people were cut back to fewer hours including myself. The tone was set and we all knew it would almost definitely continue before the end of the year. I dusted off my old resume and put together a whole new portfolio in April, I'm not a COMPLETE fool it seems. I applied to some gov't related jobs but nothing came through, and then interviewed for an Industrial Designer position at none-other-than ThinkGeek in August. I was off-the-walls excited about it for obvious reasons, but they ended up getting people for the job that literally built computers and monitors in their spare time, which was something I could not compete with at all in the field of industrial design. That was my first interview since early 2005 when I was still in college, thankfully it was with TG and I could just wear my TMNT t-shirt to it and everything was very chill.
Then it came to November 2009, just before Thanksgiving, and I pretty much knew what was coming - I was without a job but still working part-time for the Surveying company. Unfortunately their work had also slowed down and I decided to focus more on trying to get a job. For the first month I applied to hundreds of jobs - architecture, design, graphics, websites, anything that I had any experience even closely related to. I heard back from none of them. Finally in late January I heard back from one of the biggest architecture firms in the country (probably the world too), but they were looking for a marketing person, literally someone who trolls around and works with government bids and proposals and does the grunt work of bringing in the jobs for the architects to design. I interviewed but they knew and I knew it wasn't a great fit or even close to what I was looking for. I thought THEN that I was desperate and hopefully nearing the end of unemployment.
Fast forward to April and May and I had spent a few months only applying to two, three, or a handful of jobs a week. Thankfully there was a steady stream of new job postings, but doing ten or twenty more than what was required for unemployment was a tough thing to rationalize, when the job listings might stop coming and then what would I do to meet the quota? It was a rough time. Thankfully one of those jobs I applied to called me in early May and wanted to set up an interview. Three interviews later (one on the phone, two in person), 2-3 weeks of insanely stressful waiting, and today I have a job offer in hand, signed, and returned. I'm set to go in on Friday and pick up the equipment I need to work from home (it's a Virtual Company, so everyone works from home) and begin working on Monday. Barring some insane or unfortunate mess up with the background check or references, I'm set to go!
It was a hell of a ride, and I hope that I never have to go through it again. I'll be posting some more thoughts and musings from my time as unemployed profession (read: bum), but I do have to say that I'm sad I didn't meet any of my 5 goals I set in late January for February. I'm going t be setting some new goals now and we'll see how I do. I'm okay with not meeting goals, as long as I set new ones (possibly easier ones) and see where I stand on my ability to meet the goals I want to achieve. Getting a job should have been my #1 on that list in January, and in all honesty it really was and being mentally, emotionally, and physically hung up on that is why I believe I never got to anything else on the list. Now that one seems to be completed, so I hope I can move on.
Oh, and thank you to the Starcraft 2 beta that opened in March. That certainly made the last three months more than bearable. :D
Hell, I just did a quick google search for some actual information and this March 2009 article was in the top for "unemployment by profession" - http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/mar/20/recession-unemployment-and-employment-statistics
Architects are at the top of the building trades list but with a staggering 760% increase in numbers claiming unemployment benefits from Feb 2008 to the time of that report. The funny thing is that March of 2009 is when my job cut me down to 30 hours a week, but I was still "full-time" so my salary was the same I was just working less hours for it. I lived with the reduced hours until in June I was fortunate and took a part-time job with the surveying company my friend Jacob works for where I could pick up 8-12 hours a week as needed and make up for some of the missing pay. The bigger problem was that, as everyone does, we expected my career to continue to grow and as you can see from that study 2008 was a rough year and most of us didn't get the same raises we expected. A LOT of trades didn't get what they expected, I know that, but Architects appear to be the worst hit of the construction industry and even as recent as May of 2010 this study (http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/) of employment change by trade shows Manufacturing and Education growing a small amount while Construction still decreased by a larger amount than any of those grew. Government jobs grew a ludicrous amount because of the temporary employees hired for the census, so we can write that off for that month. So the construction industry has been in a job-losing spiral since 2008, which led up to late November of 2009 when I was laid off for a complete lack of work for me to do at the company. I understood it entirely, it was just a crappy situation for everyone and the company provided us with as much as they could to transition.
I didn't expect to change jobs when I got that job five years ago in June. I didn't expect a lot of things though, and the sheer volume of information and knowledge that I acquired at that job is staggering for me to think about still. I learned that the (unfortunate) best way to get a big raise is to switch jobs. I learned it through the normal means but also because the principal at the firm that hired me left a few months later after 25 years there, and then another project architect above me left within the next year and I heard the money amounts being thrown around at the time. I worked with people who had been at the firm for 10, 15, 30, and even 50 years and I saw what not switching jobs would lead to and what changing jobs could provide. I casually tossed around the idea but by then it was already 2008 and the time had passed, I was worried if I got a new job I'd be "the new guy" and if a crash did hit (which it definitely did) I'd be the first layer trimmed off.
The firm I was with had begun lay offs a lot later than most other Architectural firms, doing the first round in March of 2009 where we lost three people and several people were cut back to fewer hours including myself. The tone was set and we all knew it would almost definitely continue before the end of the year. I dusted off my old resume and put together a whole new portfolio in April, I'm not a COMPLETE fool it seems. I applied to some gov't related jobs but nothing came through, and then interviewed for an Industrial Designer position at none-other-than ThinkGeek in August. I was off-the-walls excited about it for obvious reasons, but they ended up getting people for the job that literally built computers and monitors in their spare time, which was something I could not compete with at all in the field of industrial design. That was my first interview since early 2005 when I was still in college, thankfully it was with TG and I could just wear my TMNT t-shirt to it and everything was very chill.
Then it came to November 2009, just before Thanksgiving, and I pretty much knew what was coming - I was without a job but still working part-time for the Surveying company. Unfortunately their work had also slowed down and I decided to focus more on trying to get a job. For the first month I applied to hundreds of jobs - architecture, design, graphics, websites, anything that I had any experience even closely related to. I heard back from none of them. Finally in late January I heard back from one of the biggest architecture firms in the country (probably the world too), but they were looking for a marketing person, literally someone who trolls around and works with government bids and proposals and does the grunt work of bringing in the jobs for the architects to design. I interviewed but they knew and I knew it wasn't a great fit or even close to what I was looking for. I thought THEN that I was desperate and hopefully nearing the end of unemployment.
Fast forward to April and May and I had spent a few months only applying to two, three, or a handful of jobs a week. Thankfully there was a steady stream of new job postings, but doing ten or twenty more than what was required for unemployment was a tough thing to rationalize, when the job listings might stop coming and then what would I do to meet the quota? It was a rough time. Thankfully one of those jobs I applied to called me in early May and wanted to set up an interview. Three interviews later (one on the phone, two in person), 2-3 weeks of insanely stressful waiting, and today I have a job offer in hand, signed, and returned. I'm set to go in on Friday and pick up the equipment I need to work from home (it's a Virtual Company, so everyone works from home) and begin working on Monday. Barring some insane or unfortunate mess up with the background check or references, I'm set to go!
It was a hell of a ride, and I hope that I never have to go through it again. I'll be posting some more thoughts and musings from my time as unemployed profession (read: bum), but I do have to say that I'm sad I didn't meet any of my 5 goals I set in late January for February. I'm going t be setting some new goals now and we'll see how I do. I'm okay with not meeting goals, as long as I set new ones (possibly easier ones) and see where I stand on my ability to meet the goals I want to achieve. Getting a job should have been my #1 on that list in January, and in all honesty it really was and being mentally, emotionally, and physically hung up on that is why I believe I never got to anything else on the list. Now that one seems to be completed, so I hope I can move on.
Oh, and thank you to the Starcraft 2 beta that opened in March. That certainly made the last three months more than bearable. :D
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Artwork - Campaign Banner
I sat down yesterday afternoon to create a banner for my D&D campaign's website, this was the quick and dirty (B&W) version I whipped up just to lay things out:
Now that circle on the right I really wanted to appear like a black, oily liquid sphere, and the left is a horizon of stars, so I continued to work on a more finished version but in the end I think the black and white is still more evocative and interesting to look at. Here's the progress on the more detailed / color version:
I'm pretty happy with how the left side has turned out, though I may add some more haze in the blue areas, but I just don't think it has the same interest and feel to it as the B&W version.
Now that circle on the right I really wanted to appear like a black, oily liquid sphere, and the left is a horizon of stars, so I continued to work on a more finished version but in the end I think the black and white is still more evocative and interesting to look at. Here's the progress on the more detailed / color version:
I'm pretty happy with how the left side has turned out, though I may add some more haze in the blue areas, but I just don't think it has the same interest and feel to it as the B&W version.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
The Course of Life Recently
It's ironic that I recently wrote a guest blog article about getting a D&D campaign that has strayed back on track when my life has seemingly done the exact same thing. Unfortunately, it's not as easy and in my control as to how quickly I can get my life back "on track".
So I graduated from college, got a job in the career I wanted to have, got married, bought two cats and a dog, then last November got laid off because the construction industry (and the firm I was working for in particular) hit the crapper. Part of me is extremely relieved, because there were people who graduated and then worked at that firm for the next 25 years and that's never really a good career choice. All of that is behind me now, and I find myself with an overabundance of spare time and a plethora of hobbies which I'm slowly getting back into. The best hobby, which is also essentially a job (I put it on my resume) is writing for Critical Hits, which I have to say I'm very happy I'm getting back into. It helps that we have a handful of excellent new guest writers that just came on board and so if I don't contribute then I'd be lost in the crowd.
So I'm unemployed and even still having trouble getting my ass in gear with producing artwork. I need some solid goals, some discipline, and something that I still don't know what it is to get going. The good news is that I've drawn some things in the last couple of days, and I'm hoping to keep that going. So enough bullshit:
Goal #1 - Draw something and post it here every other day.
Goal #2 - Keep writing for CH at least once a week, but preferably 2-3 times a week (going well so far)
Goal #3 - Organize my art supplies to help with the drawing and to get into painting again
Goal #4 - Create one painting in February
Goal #5 - Read the books I want to read, finish Shadow Rising in February
There are some goals, we'll see how I accomplish them and what needs to change with me or my life to get my goals done.
So I graduated from college, got a job in the career I wanted to have, got married, bought two cats and a dog, then last November got laid off because the construction industry (and the firm I was working for in particular) hit the crapper. Part of me is extremely relieved, because there were people who graduated and then worked at that firm for the next 25 years and that's never really a good career choice. All of that is behind me now, and I find myself with an overabundance of spare time and a plethora of hobbies which I'm slowly getting back into. The best hobby, which is also essentially a job (I put it on my resume) is writing for Critical Hits, which I have to say I'm very happy I'm getting back into. It helps that we have a handful of excellent new guest writers that just came on board and so if I don't contribute then I'd be lost in the crowd.
So I'm unemployed and even still having trouble getting my ass in gear with producing artwork. I need some solid goals, some discipline, and something that I still don't know what it is to get going. The good news is that I've drawn some things in the last couple of days, and I'm hoping to keep that going. So enough bullshit:
Goal #1 - Draw something and post it here every other day.
Goal #2 - Keep writing for CH at least once a week, but preferably 2-3 times a week (going well so far)
Goal #3 - Organize my art supplies to help with the drawing and to get into painting again
Goal #4 - Create one painting in February
Goal #5 - Read the books I want to read, finish Shadow Rising in February
There are some goals, we'll see how I accomplish them and what needs to change with me or my life to get my goals done.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Autumn in Maryland
Autumn is definitely my favorite season of the year, I was a bit hesitant about it this year because Winter, Spring, and then Summer seemed so awesome but late September and October so far have really sealed the deal. Of course now it's gotten to the point where it's starting to get "OMFG Cold" by most MD resident's standards, it's fine because we all started complaining about the cold a month ago when it was actually super nice out.
And now something that I did back in May/June and am just now getting around to:
A blogger that I know through RPG blogging, Darvin, posted this "Random Music Album Cover meme" back in May and I thought it was a very interesting idea so I did it back then, and with my typical lazy nature I didn't post it but the results amused me so much I had to save them in my e-mail somewhere. So I present to you now, the results and the instructions for the meme! I'd love to see others if you do it for yourself.
1 - Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random... Read More”
or click en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2 - Go to Quotations Page and select "random quotations"
or click www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your first album.
3 - Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4 - Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together.
---
I think the fact that my random wikipedia page ended up being "Fecal Fat Test" was amazing, and knew that I had to post this sooner or later. The absolutely stunning photo, which I unfortunately had to Photoshop the word "Fecal" onto was found randomly on Flickr and belongs entirely to Flickr user jennyBunz, I hope she doesn't mind because that photo would actually makes a really kickass album cover!
Other news: updated my slow as hell progress through Wheel of Time book 4, from 31% to 37% complete. The group just got into the Aeil Wastes so now I'll probably pick up the speed and hopefully be finished the book before the end of the year. Yes, again, I read incredibly and horrifyingly slow. I know this.
Also a week ago I posted a quick photoshop sketch I did on Parallax Perspectives, and I hope to be doing at least one of those a week as I start picking up more freelance art jobs that require me to keep in practice.
And now something that I did back in May/June and am just now getting around to:
A blogger that I know through RPG blogging, Darvin, posted this "Random Music Album Cover meme" back in May and I thought it was a very interesting idea so I did it back then, and with my typical lazy nature I didn't post it but the results amused me so much I had to save them in my e-mail somewhere. So I present to you now, the results and the instructions for the meme! I'd love to see others if you do it for yourself.
1 - Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random... Read More”or click en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2 - Go to Quotations Page and select "random quotations"
or click www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your first album.
3 - Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4 - Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together.
---
I think the fact that my random wikipedia page ended up being "Fecal Fat Test" was amazing, and knew that I had to post this sooner or later. The absolutely stunning photo, which I unfortunately had to Photoshop the word "Fecal" onto was found randomly on Flickr and belongs entirely to Flickr user jennyBunz, I hope she doesn't mind because that photo would actually makes a really kickass album cover!
Other news: updated my slow as hell progress through Wheel of Time book 4, from 31% to 37% complete. The group just got into the Aeil Wastes so now I'll probably pick up the speed and hopefully be finished the book before the end of the year. Yes, again, I read incredibly and horrifyingly slow. I know this.
Also a week ago I posted a quick photoshop sketch I did on Parallax Perspectives, and I hope to be doing at least one of those a week as I start picking up more freelance art jobs that require me to keep in practice.
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
Random Thoughts
Now that my hair has gotten longer, it's horribly apparent how much hair I lose every time I take a shower or brush my hair. I can't help but feel like after a few days, or at most a few months, of this practice I could easily go bald. Warning: this could easily be the most boring thing in the world to some of you, but these are some of the randomly stupid things I think about in life.
Looking at the actual numbers is interesting, or maybe I just have some bizarre (diagnosable) part-time obsession with math. The average human head, at least scientists believe, has between 100,000 and 150,000 hairs on it. What's surprising is that some claim the color of hair determines how many there are, that blondes have more hairs than brunettes and so on. So let's look at how much hair I lose on the average day. During a shower I'd venture a guess that I end up losing about 20-30 hairs, but let's take that to an extreme and say 50 a day, plus brushing I'll go way out on a limb and say that I end up pulling out ~100 hairs in any given day.
If this is the case, and I think the actual number is much smaller, then it would take me 1,250 days to pull out all of my hair. That's 3.43 years! Considering my hair is about down to my shoulders now, and I've been letting it grow for under two years still, I don't think I'm at much risk of going bald with my regular day-to-day practices! I'm quite relieved by this, and honestly I expected (and hoped) to find out just as much, but really when you see how freaking much hair comes off of my head you have to be amazed that I'm not bald already! (I have had a widow's peak since I was a baby, however)
Looking at the actual numbers is interesting, or maybe I just have some bizarre (diagnosable) part-time obsession with math. The average human head, at least scientists believe, has between 100,000 and 150,000 hairs on it. What's surprising is that some claim the color of hair determines how many there are, that blondes have more hairs than brunettes and so on. So let's look at how much hair I lose on the average day. During a shower I'd venture a guess that I end up losing about 20-30 hairs, but let's take that to an extreme and say 50 a day, plus brushing I'll go way out on a limb and say that I end up pulling out ~100 hairs in any given day.
If this is the case, and I think the actual number is much smaller, then it would take me 1,250 days to pull out all of my hair. That's 3.43 years! Considering my hair is about down to my shoulders now, and I've been letting it grow for under two years still, I don't think I'm at much risk of going bald with my regular day-to-day practices! I'm quite relieved by this, and honestly I expected (and hoped) to find out just as much, but really when you see how freaking much hair comes off of my head you have to be amazed that I'm not bald already! (I have had a widow's peak since I was a baby, however)
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Friday, May 15, 2009
Puppy Pictures
Some of you may not know yet, but Becky and I got a puppy (my first ever!) back in mid-march and I can't believe it's been 2 months already. I'll be uploading a bunch of photos of her, and more of the cats, as regularly as I can. You can see them here: Freyja's Flickr Set
She's now 4 1/2 months old, we stopped counting in weeks pretty quickly because it's an archaic practice that dog owners seem to be obsessed with. If you're not going to count in weeks their whole life, why not stop after 2-3 months? Once the weeks exceed 15 and the months are finally to a significant digit (2+) you should switch over. Why? Because when you say your puppy is 23 weeks old, no one REALLY knows exactly how old that is without doing math first. Said math is inaccurate also, as a month varies in the number of weeks it contains.
Josh said yesterday that my math discussions clearly define me as a huge nerd. I think he's right...
Other news, I'm attempting some motivation to get myself drawing regularly again. Parallax Perspectives had a great boost back in Feb/March thanks to an RPG blogging friend (Chgowiz), but I let him down and that died out. There must be some way to prevent this revival/death cycle my drawing seems to be in.
Oh also, you may notice on the right, I finally decided to join Twitter. My soul hasn't died yet, and it's actually a pretty fun thing to use. I do actually have a whole different set of problems with it than I thought I would, but I'll go into those later.
She's now 4 1/2 months old, we stopped counting in weeks pretty quickly because it's an archaic practice that dog owners seem to be obsessed with. If you're not going to count in weeks their whole life, why not stop after 2-3 months? Once the weeks exceed 15 and the months are finally to a significant digit (2+) you should switch over. Why? Because when you say your puppy is 23 weeks old, no one REALLY knows exactly how old that is without doing math first. Said math is inaccurate also, as a month varies in the number of weeks it contains.
Josh said yesterday that my math discussions clearly define me as a huge nerd. I think he's right...
Other news, I'm attempting some motivation to get myself drawing regularly again. Parallax Perspectives had a great boost back in Feb/March thanks to an RPG blogging friend (Chgowiz), but I let him down and that died out. There must be some way to prevent this revival/death cycle my drawing seems to be in.
Oh also, you may notice on the right, I finally decided to join Twitter. My soul hasn't died yet, and it's actually a pretty fun thing to use. I do actually have a whole different set of problems with it than I thought I would, but I'll go into those later.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Readings
You might notice the new reading progress bar I added on the right side, this is to aid my effort to read more. I'm currently 177ish pages through the 981 page long Shadows Rising, the 4th book in the Wheel of Time series. It's funny, but four books into a series is more than I've ever read, and I have no doubts that WoT will be one of the few long series of books that I ever read. The only other one I've read more than 3 books of is Dune, which I liked all 4 of the books that I read in that series too. Right now the progress bar is a % out of 100, but if I can figure out how to make it pages/total pages I will change it to that because then I don't have to do any math to get the %!
Is that a new level of lazy?
Is that a new level of lazy?
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Phrases that Make Me Want to Kill Babies
The radio is perhaps the main offender when it comes to these, but no form of media is truly innocent of these crimes:
"Now more than ever..." - $%$!#%balls$&$#! Any ad you hear on the radio has essentially been saying this to you for your whole life, but now it has added meaning because people are taking it seriously and thinking that it's true. No, not true, I'm sure there's some point in the past or future where you have/will need a sweet deal on MORE than you do right now.
"Unprecedented economic times." - BS. It's a "recession", there are tons of precedents for it. Granted this one may be more global than the last couple have been, but any previous recession still counts as a precedent for this one. It's not like we are completely clueless as to why the stock market and housing markets are down, WE KNOW.
"Change. (the believable kind)" - A great presidential slogan dragged into the desert, blindfolded, eviscerated, and abused for all kinds of foul purposes. I don't think Obama or his speech writers at any point considered getting a hamburger for $.99 instead of $3 was the change they were attempting to get. Then again we can't know for sure, because said change was never specified.
On a side note, I -do- condone puns made with the slogan in relation to monetary change. Then again I condone pretty much all puns.
"Now more than ever..." - $%$!#%balls$&$#! Any ad you hear on the radio has essentially been saying this to you for your whole life, but now it has added meaning because people are taking it seriously and thinking that it's true. No, not true, I'm sure there's some point in the past or future where you have/will need a sweet deal on
"Unprecedented economic times." - BS. It's a "recession", there are tons of precedents for it. Granted this one may be more global than the last couple have been, but any previous recession still counts as a precedent for this one. It's not like we are completely clueless as to why the stock market and housing markets are down, WE KNOW.
"Change. (the believable kind)" - A great presidential slogan dragged into the desert, blindfolded, eviscerated, and abused for all kinds of foul purposes. I don't think Obama or his speech writers at any point considered getting a hamburger for $.99 instead of $3 was the change they were attempting to get. Then again we can't know for sure, because said change was never specified.
On a side note, I -do- condone puns made with the slogan in relation to monetary change. Then again I condone pretty much all puns.
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Motivation
I feel wholly unmotivated to actually get off my ass and do the things I really want to do. I slump through and sometimes get something done here or there, but it's rare and mostly uninspired. The worst part of this is that I can't explain it to myself, or to anyone else. I don't know what's in the way of me moving forward with art, writing, and all of the other things that make up the humongous list of goals I write for myself some evenings and weekends.
I always assume it's videogames getting in the way, because I do spend a fair amount of time playing them, or even other gaming, but in the last two weeks I haven't played videogames very much at all and other gaming is pretty much limited to D&D which happens every other week. I do end up reading / planning for D&D with a lot of my spare time, but it's not that I'm forgoing doing other things to work on D&D stuff, it's more that I do D&D stuff because I'm not doing anything else.
Does anyone have any suggestions? Shock therapy, less caffiene, MORE caffiene, sex drugs and rock'n'roll? I'm going to think on it this evening and see if I can figure some part of it or maybe even try to get through it somehow.
I always assume it's videogames getting in the way, because I do spend a fair amount of time playing them, or even other gaming, but in the last two weeks I haven't played videogames very much at all and other gaming is pretty much limited to D&D which happens every other week. I do end up reading / planning for D&D with a lot of my spare time, but it's not that I'm forgoing doing other things to work on D&D stuff, it's more that I do D&D stuff because I'm not doing anything else.
Does anyone have any suggestions? Shock therapy, less caffiene, MORE caffiene, sex drugs and rock'n'roll? I'm going to think on it this evening and see if I can figure some part of it or maybe even try to get through it somehow.
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Movie update
Just realized I should update on this:
Wanted - 2 stars
Big old pile of crap in our opinion. :)
I'm writing more discussing this on Critical Hits, but I'll probably post even more spoileriffic stuff here after I do that, to really get into the nitty gritty between comic vs. movie and why a movie that people who didn't read the comic might like but those that did read the comic will cry themselves to sleep about it.
Wanted - 2 stars
Big old pile of crap in our opinion. :)
I'm writing more discussing this on Critical Hits, but I'll probably post even more spoileriffic stuff here after I do that, to really get into the nitty gritty between comic vs. movie and why a movie that people who didn't read the comic might like but those that did read the comic will cry themselves to sleep about it.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Netflix FTW
We had put our Netflix account on hold for most of 2008, as we'd just stopped watching dvd's an had borrowed or were given a lot of movies that we hadn't caught up on yet. However, just a few weeks ago the X-Box Live interface was updated and we noticed it included a Netflix feature, which I was immediately skeptical of but it turns out it is almost exactly what it should be. You can now watch any movie or tv show that you can watch online via netflix through your x-box!
In the last few weeks, we've caught up on quite a lot of our viewing and are actually enjoying the dvd's from netflix again also! We've watched:
Ratatouille - 5 stars
Enchanted - 3 stars
The Devil's Advocate - 3 stars (Becky had never seen it, I had)
Mad Max - 3 stars (hadn't seen it all the way through before, classic but not great)
Finding Neverland - 4 stars
Love Actually - 5 stars
Juno - 4 stars
Next up is Wanted and the next chance we get via instant queue Rob Roy (we love Liam Neeson).
In the last few weeks, we've caught up on quite a lot of our viewing and are actually enjoying the dvd's from netflix again also! We've watched:
Ratatouille - 5 stars
Enchanted - 3 stars
The Devil's Advocate - 3 stars (Becky had never seen it, I had)
Mad Max - 3 stars (hadn't seen it all the way through before, classic but not great)
Finding Neverland - 4 stars
Love Actually - 5 stars
Juno - 4 stars
Next up is Wanted and the next chance we get via instant queue Rob Roy (we love Liam Neeson).
Monday, December 01, 2008
Post-Holiday Gaming
Thursday was Thanksgiving, Friday was "Black Friday", and so apparently Saturday was Board Gaming Saturday. I was sad to miss the TMBG Flood concert on Friday, less sad about the Dragonforce concert as I can see that becoming boring pretty fast for me, but we've pretty much decided $25 per ticket for concerts is outside of our budget for this year at least.
Saturday afternoon started with a 6 player game of Mall of Horror, which is a survival-diplomacy game that involves secret voting and random zombie placement with some tactics based on cards and movement. The first time I played this game I really enjoyed it, but this game was significantly worse. There are definitely some rules issues with the game as published, but we also ended up playing it not by the rules which isn't too unusual for us. I'm not sure if it was a result of the way the game played out (who was in each room, what was rolled, etc) or the people that were playing but there were almost no secret or surprise votes. I ended up actually being able to decide the game, which player one or leave it to a total tie which would lead to a random (die roll) winner. I opted for the die roll, because it's very rare but also a hilarious way for a 2 hour+ game to end. Also because I think subjectively picking a winner is a bad way to go in a game like that vs. leaving it to chance.
After that Dave, Dennis, Scott and myself sat down to try the new Battlestar Galactica board game which Dave purchased and was one of the main factors in us having a get together to begin with (Dennis requested it and was in town from Florida for Thanksgiving). I have to say I was very surprised by the game, it took over 3 hours in the end I think but that includes set up, rules teaching (none of us had played it before), and me ending up being a Cylon, being stupid, and not ending the game earlier when I could have. I really want to play this game with 6 players, as it looks to have some interesting mechanics if you have more players between being the President and Admiral as well as more chances of their being cylons. A pretty accurate depiction of the first season or two of the show at least in board game form. Also seems like Fantasy Flight tried to make this game more simple and quicker than their typical licensed game. We also played this game incorrectly, due to some mis-interpreted graphics that actually made it look a lot tougher for the humans despite them winning in the end. I'm just not a very frakkin' good toaster, I guess.
After the extra-long game of BSG, we played two rounds of the new game Dominion which Dave had been telling me about for the last year based on playtest/prototypes he'd played at the various gaming conventions. Finally it's out and published, and I loved playing it! It is a tabletop card game (not collectible) that manages to recreate the feeling of deckbuilding that comes from games like Magic: The Gathering but without the cost of a collectible game. I actually dominated the second game with an accidental tactic, but my deck worked really well and it paid off in the end. Plus the game only takes about 30-45 minutes to play so I can definitely see playing this a lot and will probably pick up a copy sometime before Christmas.
People who weren't playing in these games generally hung around the basement, watched TV, played Incan Gold, Classic Dungeon, or RockBand 2. The whole thing ended into the morning hours with Josh and I playing Left 4 Dead, which is hands down the most fun I've had in a multiplayer console game in a LONG time. Possibly since Goldeneye. It's eaten up a lot of my evenings/weekends lately and will probably do just that for a few more weeks to come at least.
Saturday afternoon started with a 6 player game of Mall of Horror, which is a survival-diplomacy game that involves secret voting and random zombie placement with some tactics based on cards and movement. The first time I played this game I really enjoyed it, but this game was significantly worse. There are definitely some rules issues with the game as published, but we also ended up playing it not by the rules which isn't too unusual for us. I'm not sure if it was a result of the way the game played out (who was in each room, what was rolled, etc) or the people that were playing but there were almost no secret or surprise votes. I ended up actually being able to decide the game, which player one or leave it to a total tie which would lead to a random (die roll) winner. I opted for the die roll, because it's very rare but also a hilarious way for a 2 hour+ game to end. Also because I think subjectively picking a winner is a bad way to go in a game like that vs. leaving it to chance.
After that Dave, Dennis, Scott and myself sat down to try the new Battlestar Galactica board game which Dave purchased and was one of the main factors in us having a get together to begin with (Dennis requested it and was in town from Florida for Thanksgiving). I have to say I was very surprised by the game, it took over 3 hours in the end I think but that includes set up, rules teaching (none of us had played it before), and me ending up being a Cylon, being stupid, and not ending the game earlier when I could have. I really want to play this game with 6 players, as it looks to have some interesting mechanics if you have more players between being the President and Admiral as well as more chances of their being cylons. A pretty accurate depiction of the first season or two of the show at least in board game form. Also seems like Fantasy Flight tried to make this game more simple and quicker than their typical licensed game. We also played this game incorrectly, due to some mis-interpreted graphics that actually made it look a lot tougher for the humans despite them winning in the end. I'm just not a very frakkin' good toaster, I guess.
After the extra-long game of BSG, we played two rounds of the new game Dominion which Dave had been telling me about for the last year based on playtest/prototypes he'd played at the various gaming conventions. Finally it's out and published, and I loved playing it! It is a tabletop card game (not collectible) that manages to recreate the feeling of deckbuilding that comes from games like Magic: The Gathering but without the cost of a collectible game. I actually dominated the second game with an accidental tactic, but my deck worked really well and it paid off in the end. Plus the game only takes about 30-45 minutes to play so I can definitely see playing this a lot and will probably pick up a copy sometime before Christmas.
People who weren't playing in these games generally hung around the basement, watched TV, played Incan Gold, Classic Dungeon, or RockBand 2. The whole thing ended into the morning hours with Josh and I playing Left 4 Dead, which is hands down the most fun I've had in a multiplayer console game in a LONG time. Possibly since Goldeneye. It's eaten up a lot of my evenings/weekends lately and will probably do just that for a few more weeks to come at least.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Chill of Winter
It's November 21st, and it's snowing here in Maryland. Considering the last few years this seems like a rare occurrence, to see flurries before Christmas is typical but before December from what I remember is pretty rare.
There's a certain primal joy that comes to most people's faces when they realize it's snowing. One of the little things in life that I enjoy observing in others.
There's a certain primal joy that comes to most people's faces when they realize it's snowing. One of the little things in life that I enjoy observing in others.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
All Along the Western Front
I'm very into the band MGMT right now, haven't listened to much of the alternative "psychadelic" music in a while. Becky says that it will most likely get on her nerves by the end of the week, but I tend to do that to her when it comes to electronic music that I like.
On a good note I am sketching a bit more these days, managing to get a few little things down either in off times at work or when I get home / on the weekends. Not quite every day, but I am missing two entire months (not consecutive) out of my sketchbook so far in 2008 and I view that as a bad thing. Will hopefully get to posting drawings on here sooner or later. Also I'm reading through The Dragon Reborn pretty well right now, ~450 pages through. Most people have told me to stop reading the Wheel of Time series somewhere around this book or book 4, but I've been alternating between WoT and a few other series so we'll see how far I get. Definitely picking up a bunch of Phillip K Dick after this book though. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is sitting on my desk right now, I made the mistake of reading the first few pages and so now I can't wait to get to it. There's a lot behind what inspired Blade Runner that I am really anxious to read.
On a good note I am sketching a bit more these days, managing to get a few little things down either in off times at work or when I get home / on the weekends. Not quite every day, but I am missing two entire months (not consecutive) out of my sketchbook so far in 2008 and I view that as a bad thing. Will hopefully get to posting drawings on here sooner or later. Also I'm reading through The Dragon Reborn pretty well right now, ~450 pages through. Most people have told me to stop reading the Wheel of Time series somewhere around this book or book 4, but I've been alternating between WoT and a few other series so we'll see how far I get. Definitely picking up a bunch of Phillip K Dick after this book though. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is sitting on my desk right now, I made the mistake of reading the first few pages and so now I can't wait to get to it. There's a lot behind what inspired Blade Runner that I am really anxious to read.
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Fighting a Swarm
This short quiz is funny if not only for the premise and some interesting questions, find out hypothetically how many five year olds you'd be able to fight at once:
26
26
Created by OnePlusYou - Free Dating Site
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Finally Over
Already I'm noticing the lack of political vitriol that has been eating away at my cognizance for the last YEAR. A year, probably much more than a year really, and I already feel better. I didn't even really care that much which candidate won, so long as it was OVER. However, I do have to say that McCain's conceding speech and particularly Obama's acceptance speech really helped me feel better about the whole process.
Google, always impressing me at pretty much every turn (even with Google Ads lately), has election coverage added into their maps feature, I highly recommend it as you can look at the entire US split by votes, or at each individual state split by COUNTY. Very interesting to look at:
http://maps.google.com/help/maps/elections/index.html#2008_election
Why is it that cities are ALWAYS dominated by democrat votes? If you did voting by square miles of land owned, then it looks like Republicans would win 100% of the time. Is there something about the density of population, the proximity to other people? Does it boil down to the simple factors, like acceptance of varied cultures and how that relates to the democratic party core values? I'm not quite willing to accept that as the only influence, but it's the only big one I can think of right now...
Anyway, it's over, I'm happy with the result even though I may have been MORE happy if McCain had won simply because I believe that would have lead to lower taxes, and I feel lower taxes lead to a boon in the economy which is what I think most people would like the most right now. Somehow Obama's campaign values became associated with low gas prices, global warming, separation of church & state, pro-abortion legislation, and a better economy. I'm pretty sure most of those will not be directly affected by his decisions / presidency.
Google, always impressing me at pretty much every turn (even with Google Ads lately), has election coverage added into their maps feature, I highly recommend it as you can look at the entire US split by votes, or at each individual state split by COUNTY. Very interesting to look at:
http://maps.google.com/help/maps/elections/index.html#2008_election
Why is it that cities are ALWAYS dominated by democrat votes? If you did voting by square miles of land owned, then it looks like Republicans would win 100% of the time. Is there something about the density of population, the proximity to other people? Does it boil down to the simple factors, like acceptance of varied cultures and how that relates to the democratic party core values? I'm not quite willing to accept that as the only influence, but it's the only big one I can think of right now...
Anyway, it's over, I'm happy with the result even though I may have been MORE happy if McCain had won simply because I believe that would have lead to lower taxes, and I feel lower taxes lead to a boon in the economy which is what I think most people would like the most right now. Somehow Obama's campaign values became associated with low gas prices, global warming, separation of church & state, pro-abortion legislation, and a better economy. I'm pretty sure most of those will not be directly affected by his decisions / presidency.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Writes more than just Sci-Fi
Orson Scott Card is a name that I've seen but not paid much attention to for YEARS. When a friend's father is a science fiction author with a last name that starts with "Ch", you quickly learn to find the spot between Orson Scott Card and C.J.Cherryl (another author I've seen for a long time but haven't read yet). Unfortunately lately the gap between those two has disappeared, hopefully someday the same last name will fill that space again.
I started to take serious note of Card when he jumped into (or was pulled into) comics to write the Ultimate IronMan series, which he chose to do as an origin story. Overall it was decent, but the writing itself was understandably fresh for comics, coming from a seasoned science fiction author of full-length novels. I still haven't picked up and read any of his books, right now I'm making good progress through The Dragon Reborn because Jordan has some mystical way of sucking me into his books that I really do want to finish the whole series someday. I'm sure I'll pick up a Card book within the next 5 years.
The reason I mention this is that my good friend Dennis e-mailed out a newspaper article that Card wrote about journalists today that really speaks to me. He goes hugely off in the direction of criticising democrats and Obama, but I haven't seen or heard ANYTHING to refute the points he makes other than what seems like misdirection and deflection so I can't begrudge him that TOO much. That said, he does a great job of calling out journalists today and how biased they almost all are.
I wouldn't go quite so far as saying all democrats are evil or that all republicans trying to stop the corruption, as his article implies, but it's definitely some food for thought.
I started to take serious note of Card when he jumped into (or was pulled into) comics to write the Ultimate IronMan series, which he chose to do as an origin story. Overall it was decent, but the writing itself was understandably fresh for comics, coming from a seasoned science fiction author of full-length novels. I still haven't picked up and read any of his books, right now I'm making good progress through The Dragon Reborn because Jordan has some mystical way of sucking me into his books that I really do want to finish the whole series someday. I'm sure I'll pick up a Card book within the next 5 years.
The reason I mention this is that my good friend Dennis e-mailed out a newspaper article that Card wrote about journalists today that really speaks to me. He goes hugely off in the direction of criticising democrats and Obama, but I haven't seen or heard ANYTHING to refute the points he makes other than what seems like misdirection and deflection so I can't begrudge him that TOO much. That said, he does a great job of calling out journalists today and how biased they almost all are.
Article: http://www.ldsmag.com/ideas/081017light.htmlThis housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.
It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.
What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.
The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.
They end up worse off than before.
This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.
I wouldn't go quite so far as saying all democrats are evil or that all republicans trying to stop the corruption, as his article implies, but it's definitely some food for thought.
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