Well, the packing is 99% done. Just need to put the computer away and I'm out the door and on the way to the airport. For all those in Chicago, I'll see you all in about 6 hours or so. ACen, good foodles and friends, here I come!

Ja! :)

For those that care, I'll be in Chicago ACen weekend. You can either rejoice or prepare for whatever you want to prepare for. I'll take whatever either way. With the semester being over and no school happening again until the Fall, I can take some time off and still get all my work hours in.

I'll have to do some serious eating while there too. Nothing "real" out here much. Miller's Pub will be a must. As well as some flavor of Chicago Style pizza. I'm sure there will be other things. I'll be out there Thursday (arriving in the evening) and returning on Monday (in the morning). It'll be nice to have a break. :)

Also, now that things are slowing down a bit, I'm looking to get @anime! going again. I'm not sure if anyone out there still watches anime and wants to write about it, but I'll be needing help as usual. Anyone want to get in on that? I'd be very grateful. :)

More when I have it. :P

 

It's been a while since I posted last, but I figured this is a good reason to post something...


The Piece of Paper, 1st of Two by *tekitsune on deviantART

16 years in the making. It took forever and several false starts, but it's finally done. I started my Associates Degree back in 1991. Several school name changes and several department overhauls later, it's finally done. I've been chasing after this for a long time. I'm glad that I was finally able to get it done. Now I've got nine or ten classes left (or 7 or 8, depending on how some things go...) and the Bachelors is done. Oh, how happy I'll be when that's finished. Life will be able to move on.

For now, I'm happy that the Piece of Paper #1 is done and in hand.

Just a quick message here as I sit for a bit before I head out again...

It's been a good day. Spent the day at BYU for the in-state rivalry game between BYU and the University of Utah.

1. Had a churro at the game. Don't usually see those outside of SoCal.
2. Had a real Chicago style hot dog with Vienna Beef hot dogs at the game. Electric green relish and everything. Don't usually see Vienna Beef outside of Chicago.
3. BYU 17, Utah 10. Utah got spanked with 1:38 left in the game. Utah had a chance to stop BYU on that last drive with BYU at a 4th and 18 but they left one of our guys wide open. Set up a nice BYU 8-point drive.
4. BYU won the Mountain West Conference football title. For the second year in a row.

Life is good today. Now I'm on my way to Red Robin to spend a chunk of a nice Gift Card I got at work for some of the recent pain and suffering that I've gone through there.

Way to go Cougars! :)

 

So, it's been forever since I've posted here in LJ. Life has been kinda funky since starting school again, so things have been kinda out of sorts...

So, since things haven't been rather noteworthy around here, here's an iKit Shuffle for the month of October.

• It's been a rough month for drawing external stuff. All the drawing I've had time and energy for has been for classes, with a few rare exceptions. Most times I don't even have time to do "homework" because of how much time work takes up. As a result, poor Alice and the Neverwonder crew have been neglected. I really need to find time to get that going again.
• Got tired of all the channels disappearing on Comcast's Basic Cable TV lineup, so we got the DirecTV turned back on. It's nice having all the old channels back. And the TiVo. :)
• After getting said DirecTV turned back on, come to find out that they're trying to charge me for 7 Adult channel pay-per-view things that they say were done in 2000. Quite a feat considering that, 1) I don't use the Pay-Per-View, 2) I wasn't living in Utah in 2000 when they claim that they were done and 3) that my service at the Utah address was turned off in October 1999 and wasn't turned back on until 2003. I first called them on October 1st and today, October 31st, it's still not resolved. And I've spent at least 3 total hours on the phone on 3 different occasions to try and get this straightened out. I was assured by the last person that I talked to, a supervisor, that someone would call me back and tell me what the story was by the 30th. And it's now the 31st and no call. I get to play hardball with them now.
• I hate charcoal. Drawing in charcoal is icky.
• I like conte crayon. Much better for doing my figure drawings.
• I also hate oil paints. While they have their appeal at times, things the last few weeks have just been frustrating... like curdling White... it's not liking the turpentine that I've been using I suppose... but it's the same as everyone else, so I'm not sure what's up there.
• Today is my Dad's birthday and it's Halloween. The family is doing the usual setup, with Pirates of the Caribbean as the theme. Little bro is dressed up as Jack Sparrow and went to his Dance class dress up this morning. I'd love to have seen the reaction...
• Since is it my Dad's birthday and there's little time for cooking because of the festivities of the day, that means it's Brick Oven pizza night. Best pizza outside Chicago.
• And finally, got a copy of Mac OS X Leopard installed on the laptop. All in all, good stuff. There have been a few little glitchy things with 3rd party stuff, like having to do some manual configuration on my PHP installation and things like Xjournal not working (switched to iJournal, which I'm using right now), but the OS is really slick. Very nice.

I think that's it for now. More babbling when I have it.

I may start using this here to cross-post art blog stuff... more when it comes.

NOTE: Just as a side note, people out there that don't want to see my blabbering anymore, please remove me from your friends lists. Thank you.

I've decided to clear this account out. Maybe sometime down the road, I'll come back and post something here again. For now, I just want to forget that this exists.

So, this last weekend I, rather unexpectedly, ended up going to the first anime con that I've ever been to where I wasn't working something at the con the entire time, Ohayocon 2007 in Columbus. I was part of the Voices For band crew and it was a kick ass weekend of fun, goofiness, music and insanity. Got to hang out with a lot of cool people. Granted, a lot of the guests that I was able to hang out with, I've met them all before and I know who they all are. They just have little to no clue who I am or that we had met before. But that's ok. TIme will take care of that...

I was happy to see everyone that I did. It was great to see yammerin_nutsak and the Noodle Man, bam2, fightdir, banzchan and Emily, goldenboyd, janscottfrazier, Monica, Brittney, Mike, Tiffany and Matt, Rikki and Tavi, Bruce... Then there's all of my ACen friends down there as well. angelmerc0, acenconchair, djopm, socialninja, Tim L., Brandi... It was a good old time. I was glad that I was able to hang out more with the likes of Doug, Jan, Bob and Emily over the weekend. Lots of fun was had. I'm glad that I was able to be there for a change. I remember why I enjoy the cons. It's to hang out with all the cool folks that I've been fortunate to meet over the last 12 years. I'll hopefully have a much bigger report written up soonly. :)

As for today, it's that time of year again. As I type this, the Macworld Keynote is going on and there's SURE to be some cool new stuff from Apple today. I'll have more on what I want to drool over later on in the day. Until then, I'm going to go back to the keynote coverage... Laters! ;)

 

In a bizarre twist, I'm on my way to Ohayocon to help with the Voices For band transportation. I'll see whoever will be there when I get there.

More later I'm sure.

 

Our party here just broke up. And I have to say that while a lot of messed up shit happened in 2006, there were a lot of really great things that happened in the Year That Was. My thanks go out to everyone, for all the happenings of 2006, good and bad. Being able to have a good mix of both the good and the bad, makes the good stuff look that much sweeter.

I've recently discovered the insane, twisted storytelling that is the band My Chemical Romance. While the overall message of their latest album is rather intense (it's dealing with cancer, death and just general angst), there's a lot of the appropriate in their stuff. Despite all the garbage that goes on in our lives, there's always something to look forward to, even in the worst of situations.

For me, despite craziness and insanity going on right now, things are in a much better place now that 2007 is here and I'm happy to be where I am with my friends around me. May the year bring great things for all of us.

We'll carry on. Happy 2007 everyone. :)

 

I'm not too sure I have the energy or desire to really go into the events of this last week here. Suffice it to say, a lot of friendships are going to end because of this last week.

And I don't have the energy to fight about all this shit anymore.

For those that care, I'm going to move my LJ from here over to my skyfall account. I don't want to see the side of this that is just going to cause me more pain, grief and stress. If you'd like to keep up on the world of me, please feel free to poke your head over to the skyfall account.

To the rest of everyone, it's been real. There's nothing more here to see. Move along.

 

You know, this has been a long week... I'm not too sure I have the energy to comment on it yet. Maybe later.

For now, we're stuck on a layover in Kansas City. Our plane has been delayed from Albuquerque. Apparently, there's weather there. Who knew? :P

We'll be getting into Chicago about 15 minutes late or so (at least that's what the dood at the podium says) so things are ok there.

I just can't want to be home at this point. -_-;;

Greetings from the layover in Phoenix. Only like 2-ish more hours to go until we're in San Diego. :)

 

Yes, it's that time of year yet again. I'm 8 hours away from being on the plane, heading to the ultimate convention, San Diego Comic-Con. It's nice to get down to SD. Nice weather that's not overly hot or overly icky. Lots of silliness always in store too. And we've got a lot of new people joining the crew down there this year. It'll be fun.

Like most years down there, I have little to no money, so I'm just going down to veg and enjoy the con. Last year I didn't really go to any panels. Not sure if I will this year... there are a few things that I noticed in the schedule. I'll have to look through again and see if there's REALLY anything that I want to go see...

We should have internet access at the hotel, so I'll still be online, but I'll be away from the computer most of the time. :)

Until I get back, have a great week everyone. To you all that are going to be down in SD, I'll see you there. :)

 

For those of you out there that think I've disappeared, I'm still alive. I think.

This last week really kicked my ass. Mainly due to the fact that Jenner & Block thought that they had contracted for an indentured servant or some sort of slave worker, and expected me to work hours that none of the management there wanted to work. After working late, getting up way early, working way late, getting up way early and then working late again, I think I slept through most of Saturday and Sunday.

Didn't hear the cellphone go off at all this weekend. I know I've missed a few calls.

convoy: I have to give you a call. Once I'm done with Round 3 with the job interview this afternoon, I'll give you a call. The email addy for the PayPal stuff is paypal@thereactor.org if that helps any in the mean time.

Now lets see if I can make it through this interview this afternoon.

 

So I got a phone call yesterday afternoon. Apparently the second phone interview went well. I have a crack at the 3rd and final interview for this job. I'm REALLY hoping that this one works out. It's exactly what I've been hoping for. I know this job will rock.

Final interview is Monday afternoon...

Then my Dad is coming to town for a convention the next day.

Next week should be good. :)

Here's to hoping this works out.

:: crossing fingers ::

 

Ok. So yesterday was rather bizarre.

Yesterday morning, there were little plans for the day. We had to get ottermama down to the Culinary School in Downtown at 10:00am to talk with the advisement doods down there and then I had a second phone interview with a potential employer scheduled for 1:30pm. Was set to be a nice simple day...

8:30am - We leave the house, heading toward Downtown. The car needs some gasoline in it first.

8:40am - We arrive at the Speedway to put gas in the car. Gas price: $3.05.

8:44am - We pull out of the gas station. Gas price: $3.25. Yes, it went up $0.20 while we were sitting there.

9:20am - We arrive on Lake Shore Drive, turning toward Michigan Avenue.

9:22am - I receive a phone call from one of the temp agencies out here, saying that there's a dire need for a designer... like, today. I tell them that I have a phone call that I'm waiting for at 1:30pm. They send my info over to the client to see if they want to use me.

10:15am - I get a call back and they say that the client wants me to come down. They want me there at 2:00pm.

11:25am - ottermama gets done with the folks at CHIC, and I tell him about the fun that has been presented for the afternoon...

12:00pm - Arrive back at home. I have just enough time to get a quick shower and get back out to Downtown, where the client is.

1:20pm - I arrive BACK in Downtown on Lake Shore Drive and head over toward IBM Plaza, where the client, Jenner & Block, is located.

1:35pm - My phone interview calls. Interview seems to have gone well. I'm SOOOOO hoping that I get this one. It's just what I've been looking for. Mostly print designing. Very little web.

2:10pm - I get to the lobby of J&B. I get the quick tour and start in on various things.

8:15pm - I finish up for the day and head home...


Yeah, it was a crazy day yesterday. Not ANYTHING like I expected it to be. It's a good thing though. This freelance stuff will help with getting into an apartment this month.

For right now, I'm down at J&B, sitting on the 46th floor, looking out on the killer Chicago area. Boy, I sure do love it in Chicago.

 

It's amazing to see how skills can deteriorate. I haven't seriously drawn much of anything since the late 80s. Never really took any "art" classes in college. And most of you out there know what happened with my latest attempt to get back into the school side of artstuffs.

So here I am, just by my lonesome having to do it manually. My Drawing I class was really cool, and I wish I could have finished it... Now I just have to keep going without the help of a "teacher".

Here's some of the latest stuff:

 

Now, mind you, I haven't done this stuff in a really long time. I know that my proportions are like WAY off. (To be honest, they usually have been. Something that I need to practice more.)

The character sketches are kinda obvious. I've been trying to get myself to work on my Secret of the Sunsword project for years and I'm trying get into a groove to get that going properly. I've been sitting on the story for 20 years now. I just need to stop being lazy and do it.

The hands on the other, er... hand, is one of the things that I'm HORRIBLE at drawing. That and eyes. Those two things are things that I really need to spend some good time working on. I'm usually ok with other things...

As for not having a teacher, well, I have all you artsy types out there. Any comments? Criticisms? Suggestions? I know it is basically ick, so no one will hurt my feelings if you tell me it sucks. :P I'm much better at copying other people's art than I am at coming up with original stuff...

 

I got the car back yesterday. The body work that was done is ok. The bumper is still lower than it should be, but after having had the same thing fixed 2 or three times and getting the same result, I don't think there's much that anyone is going to do there to really fix that.

The engine on the other hand is much worse off than before. And, like American Family, the insurance company didn't want to pay to fix any of the engine damage... Yeah, it's to a point where it's had to tell what's old stuff and what happened in this accident, but with all the talk back and forth of "we want to make sure it's fixed so that it's safe to drive again", I find it terribly ironic that no one out there wants to make the car safe as a result of the accidents with the car....

I'm just ranting. Don't mind me.

And no real reason for the catboys. Just there cause they can be. :P

 

I feel exceptionally blah.

In about 30 minutes I have to go take the car to the adjustor/repair place. I'm not sure what will happen to the car this time.

I'm kinda torn. In some ways, I want to see the car fixed like new. In other ways, I hope that they declare the car totaled.

To be honest, the car is getting a bit old. I've had it for 7 years now. It's been from Utah, to Chicago, back to Utah, back to Chicago, to Los Angeles, back to Utah, back to Los Angeles, to Chicago, back to Utah, to Kansas City and back to Chicago. It's made a few long trips in its time. It still runs well for having been beat up as much as it has. I just wonder if it's finally time to let it rest in peace and to look forward to something new.

Not that the current job situation is making that an easier prospect. And it would depend on if the insurance company decides to total the car. If the circumstances come to it and the car is totaled, I'll have to wait for work to happen again before I can look at buying a new something...

ick.

---

UPDATE: Just based on a visual inspection, the car is estimated to cost $1714.72 to fix. The repair place figures that the drop dead for totaling out the car is around $2400. If they find anything else wrong, with like the radiator (which I'm betting is messed up this time) or the engine, it's going to put this over the top. The repair guys said that they'd prolly know if anything else needed fixing by tomorrow.

I hate waiting.