Dreams

Been awhile since I've posted about many of my dreams, and lately they have been very messed up. If you don't enjoy hearing about my oddities, feel free to skip this one.

So a couple nights ago. The dream involved me grocery shopping with my Dad. For some reason, I had to help restock a cooler, because I complained about there not being any bacon. So I got in the cooler and helped this little midget restock the cooler, which ended up taking hours. The store closed while I was restocking the cooler. So when I got out of the cooler, it was all dark. But there was still a ton of people there, just all employees of the grocery store. It was like they all lived there. I got them to let me out, and my Dad was gone. So I started walking home. This was where I realized the grocery store was by itself, miles away from the city. I walked for a bit down the highway, and my Dad eventually picked me up (not sure how he found me). After he picked me up, we drove off the highway and went off roading. And that was the end of the dream.
OH! I should mention the great products that were the main point of the grocery store trip. Apparently aside from the bacon that wasn't there, the main thing I wanted from the grocery store was Ramen (ichiban noodles). But the flavours I was looking for were Fruit Punch Ramen, and Castle Crashers flavoured Ramen. I have no idea what a video game flavour of ramen would taste like. The Fruit Punch Ramen also came with like gooey gel things you were supposed to add that were supposed to simulate soggy fruit rinds.
So yeah. That one was pretty weird.

My other weird dream lately was shorter. Much shorter. It involved my whole family moving into some large castle. It was this huge mansion, but was laid out on the inside much like a high school would have been. We were just moving in, so we were doing some large scale renovations to make it more like a house. This involved converting a lot of the space into bedrooms. Not that weird yet? So the space I end up getting as my room was originally a Men's washroom. BAM! Weird! So I the rest of the dream was about the changes I was making to this Men's room to make it a livable bedroom, and people's reactions to me living in a bathroom. Let's just say non of the changes I made involved moving anything connected to plumbing. So I ended up with this decent bedroom that just happened to have toilets and urinal's somewhat all over the place. The main area the bed was contained shower heads. No idea why I was in the bathroom.
As I remember, we all got our own wings too, so I had a bunch of other rooms in my wing. Not sure if using the bathroom as the bedroom was an order, or my idea. It was definitely the weirdest / creepiest bedroom I had ever been in though. Although there was a bit of convenience in not having to leave bed to have a shower.

And those are my creepy dream updates. Hopefully you found them enjoyable / haven't decided I am a lunatic yet.

I have Returned!

So due to various complaints, I figure it's about time to write something here.

First of all, my blog is seeing less activity. If you didn't notice, then you need help. One of the reasons for this is I'm on twitter. I can use twitter from my phone, so I update it MUCH more regularly. Then I find when I get to sit down to write on this, I've already talked about a fair bit of it. I'll find something to talk about though.

So December was hectic. I only had one final (which went well. I ended up with a 90% in the class) but I had a fair bit of work I needed to accomplish as well. For the most part I'm caught up now. Started my new class (Video Game development) which is awesome. At work I'm shifting into testing mode, so I'm writing lots of test apps, and just using the stuff I made last month. Things are starting to settle down.

I had a good Christmas holiday. The whole family thing was a bit weird. My oldest niece was at her father's house all day, and the next oldest (only one old enough to know what was happening) is very resistant to change. She was definitely NOT excited to open presents or anything. So we ended up drinking, Hot Tubbing, and playing Boom Blox on the Wii pretty much all day. My mom was so excited she could beat me at a video game. My parents caught on to Boom Blox quickly, and I''m not very good, especially when I'm drinking.

New Year's Eve was a lot of fun. We ended up having people over. It was good times. Got a loaner projector, as mine was in for repairs (sigh). Played some Rock Band, lots of drinking, and general just hanging out. Had a pretty decent turnout. We even got to count the leap second. We went with counting zero. Then there was a fair bit of drunk dialing a friend in Vancouver. We were calling from the future. It was quite humourous, but I imagine you a) had to be there, and b) needed to know the guy. So I'll save stories about it for others to tell. There might be a video floating around the internets somewhere...

After New Year's (New Year's Day, in fact) I took off to Jasper with 2 friends. Got 3 days of skiing in. Had a ton of fun. Spent maybe a touch more cash than I should have. It was totally worth it though. I had a blast. I realized how much I actually love the mountains though. Now that I have a sibling living closer to them, I might have to start making more trips. Probably not this winter, as I have some debt to clear off now, but next year!

So that's essentially the update for my December, and first 1/2 of January. Eventful, Fun, and great. I'll make another post in a week's time or so to talk about how that month has hurt my sleep program (which I'm slowly getting back on track for) and maybe leak some details on my latest (video game related) project.

School is Done!

At least for the term. I have another class next term, then it's still unknown if I'm done or not. I'm quite excited though. My class next term is Game Mechanics. I think it should be very interesting. It also lines up with my Nintendo DS memory cart coming in, which allows me to finally start playing with development for the DS. Also, my 3d Artist friend apparently is just leaving his job, to a more part time position, to focus more on getting a portfolio together. Which means I can likely suck an artist into some projects.

My class next term is a good time as well (4-5:30 Tuesday, Thursday) which means if I keep my current work hours, I can bank a lot of flex time. I'm intending to flip that flex time into working on some video game related development. I might talk to my boss to see if I can take a Thursday afternoon off, and just head to the University and do some work on game related code before class. That would give me like 4 hours a week, minimum. That would be nice. I'll have to get a laptop to develop on in that case, but I'm intending to pick up a MacBook after Christmas anyway. (At least after Christmas shopping... So I may end up with one in the next couple weeks)

So video game season is almost done. Tomorrow I can pick up my last pre-order. I've done better than I was expecting at completing a few of them before getting new ones. Not that I'm done them all, but at least a few. I'll likely be slowing down now though, as I want to focus more on programming. I'm hitting the time in my life where I need to start my move to the career I want.

Look at me, all growing up and stuff. Weird.

Hey, I have one of these

I should make a post. Time for lots of updates!

So I went for academic advising. It was a bit frustrating. They couldn't really tell me for sure if I need 1 more class that what I'm currently registered for, or not. So I'll maybe finish in spring? I was talking to the Dean of the Department as well, so I don't really know how I can escalate it to get any better answers. I might just take the class over the summer or something, if I have to. The longer I take, the less I'd have to pay work back if I leave. Not that big of a deal. Just very frustrating that they couldn't give me the answers I wanted.

I also finished my Bass project. Got all the electronics done, and have it strung and everything. I need to do some setup tweaking, like raising the action a bit, lowering the pick ups a bit, real minor things. I've been playing with it a bit though. The low B string is LOW. and with the drop trigger, it sounds pretty awesome. Definitely pushing the edge of audible tone. I have to retrain my hands though. I have some neat 3 octave things I can do now that my hands just can't find comfortable. I just have to start practicing with it more. Hopefully I can find a group to play it with. Nolto, get a live band together. We need to jam more.

Attached to that, it's still been crazy video game month. I hate that everything gets released to try and get in on the Christmas rush. As a result I have about 10 new games I've bought, and not finished. I have a lot of work to do, but I'll enjoy every bit of it. The one I want Nolto to rock with is Lips. It's a karaoke game, bu tyou can import songs from IPods, or network shares or whatever. I think it'll be a fun way fo rhim to learn his lyrics before a show. I have to start a binder of lyrics though for my basement, as it's not very good at finding them. Yet anyway. It doesn't help that some of the songs I'm doing are a bit obscure. (First song imported: Rain, from Cowboy Bebop)

I've been pretty busy at work too. Our biggest customer does this tech blackout thing all December, where they don't change anything for the month, so we've been rushing to try and get things done before that. Makes for hectic times.

On the sleep front (Don't know how many of you come here for that anymore) things are still good. I've moved my sleep setup inside to the server room, as it's colder here now. My morning nap has also slide a hair later, to closer to 9:15. Not a big deal. Due to time though, I'm running more of a 2 naps throughout the day, 23 minutes each, and about 4 hours at night. I have my afternoon nap around 3 or 3:30. I sometimes take an evening nap, if I'm getting worn out. It's still working well. I'd like to tighten it back up to 3 regular naps, and 3 hours, but I just seemed to miss my evening nap too much.

And that is all I can post. I have to head out to get lunch, and head to class right away here. I'll post some pictures of my bass later.

Entertaining Videos

I'm too lazy to embed these, and you know it's good to give credit where it should go. So I'm just going to paste a link.

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/e062d7b4d5/take-on-me-literal-video-version-from-dustfilms

It's music videos, with the words replaced with what is actually happening in the music video. The first one has been around for a bit so you may have seen it. And maybe I'm just behind the curve... But I just saw the other two. I'm excited for the series to continue. Hopefully you enjoy them.

School

I am trying so hard to make it work.

Once I finish the class I'm currently taking, I am 2 comp sci classes away from finishing my 3 year Comp Sci degree. I am already registered for one next term (A class on Video Game Design, sweet). So I'm going through my work schedule plans to see how many extra hours a week I'm spending at work. Currently, if I work 6:30-5 everyday, except Tuesday Thursday, when I'd leave at 3 (for nap, and travel time to class) I'll log about 46 hours a week. Which means I have 6 hours to work with. If I make a better effort to always get to work by 6, that bumps me up over 8 hours to squeeze one more class in. Then I can get my degree in the spring. Which would be awesome.

The hard part is finding a good time of day to fit a class. Monday Wednesday Friday classes suck, because I have to allot for travel time 3 times instead of 2, which is an extra hour a week.

Wait. Looking into it, I see that I may be able to change one of my EP classes to a CMPT equilvalent. Which means I may not need another class... That would be awesome.

So I have now booked advising next week. We'll see what the prof says I need to do to finish my degree. Maybe I can already apply to graduate.

I'm excited.

Interesting

First off, a new post! Celebrate!

I've noticed, as I monitor my traffic, that I seem to get more hits when I don't update, than when I do. I guess it's more exciting to not hear my thoughts? Maybe just as it's longer since my last post, people check more often, hoping for a new post. Maybe I'm just making it all up. Who is to say!

Ok, so today, I want to share a meme. I was quite surprised at how mine turned out. It works like this. First, you go here. It's a random wikipedia page. The first article title, mentioned in the page you end up, is your band name. (I got "Passenger Train"). Make a note of it. Then, head to here. It's a random quote page. The last 4 words of the last quote listed becomes your album name. Here I got "cannot be reasoned out". Finally head to here. It's just some interesting flicker images, somewhat random. The third image is your album cover. Now for the fun part. Take all that information, and make your album cover.

Mine all strangely worked out. I didn't load any random page twice or anything. This was the result.


I didn't alter the photo pretty much at all. I felt that to connect Passenger Train to the image, it pretty much needed the full image. I suggest all you folks with blogs do the same, have a bit of fun, and see what you come up with. I may do another one...