absurdly terrific

WELL OKAY THEN, seeing as how it is a good couple of weeks wort of time since I have posted in this thing - and I find myself with a couple of free minutes to go on about things here, and there, in my life, so I will do just that!

First and foremost, in recent times there's been some activity in a certain major point of my life, professionally - but which I'd best keep hushed up about for the time being, and so for now I will do just that. Regardless I have been on the warpath once more, in the job-searching fashion anyway - that's never what one would call ' a wonderful time time," though while it certainly is a pain in the ass, it also is an overall chance to slant one's entire life in a more positive direction - and so for that I am not only grateful, but also quite optimistic. It should come as no surprise to those who have known me, that I have been rather unhappy in my professional life for some time. The videogame industry is quite an exciting one, but it can also be fairly exhausting - and punishing as well - even, or especially when one pours a fair amount of their heart and soul into it. But that's what on gets when they get involved with a relatively new industry, one whose nuts and bolts are still being fairly figured out (and all the while, they are evolving in spite of that). Without going on ad on about i, I will say that it is, essentially, business as usual...

So then, to the job search. I usually will not divulge much in the way of details in a public forum for obvious reasons - let's just say I am talking to plenty of people about different prospects, and they are all across the board (well, I shouldn't say any of them AREN'T things that sound like they could be good steps). Yeah, the world is a hairy place rigt now, economically, but in spite of it I am happy with the things that are on my plate. So too must I mention that I am DAMN busy right now. I am touching up a lot of my existing work (that which I am permitted to show) - lots of tightening up of things like my website, resume, cover letters, etc. Scrounging around for ideas/info about what it is I will do next. Do I wanna just plunge headfirst into "the sure thing" or something a little more unusual, even a bit more possibly daring? When things calm down with all of this headscratching, I will just sit at my desk and plow forward with the thing I desire most, which is to update my body of work, generally - that is, make some stuff that's completely mine, not just "stuff for work." I have lots of ideas floating around in my head, and I am feeling particularly inspired right now. But I would rather put that energy to prper use at the moment than just get all started with some new project off in XYZ direction, purely for the sake of that.

I have a new PC running at home, it's been sitting here largely untouched for some months now, waiting to become useful. In this period I have funally got it all tweaked out and loaded up with all the necessary apps and directories and things setup, it feels nice to have a clean slate to work with - also it's a fair sight more powerful than it's half-decade old predecessor, so it's much more of a joy/less of a pain in the ass to actually use the thing. I am trying my damnedest to keep it "all about the business" with this box, not messing around with any "bad stuff" on it, but in this day and age, there's a blur on that line at times - and today, when applying some patches to a necessary tool I unwittingly downloaded some shitty trojan onto the thing, and am presently trying to clear that up. Nerdy to complain about, but the danger is real - ALL MY NECESSARY FILES are residing on the sister drives, so if my system goes down right now, I AM gonna be prety mad. I am talking about tons of work, loads and loads of things which I need to backup properly. It's not happened yet not because I have been lazy, so much as that it has not been terribly practical - it's a pain in the ass to do it. If it goes down, I am not ruined by a long shot, but I will regret losing so many valuable files - textures, mesh files, etc - irreplaceable renders of some of my best work, and so forth. I will take tis as a warning to get the most vital stuff backed-up ASAP, and I am not trying to sound neurotic as I wonder about this - I had some serious virus problems at my office just a couple of weeks ago, within two weeks' time my HD died twice. Fortunately it didn't kick my ass, but it was enough to rattle my nerves.

Anyway - enough about all of that. So what's up besides the job hunt? Well, I am a different guy these days, in some ways - happier to have certain stressed behind me, but also mindful of the pain-in-the-ass potentially coming down the road. I have been trying to live a little, maybe a little more than I'd think is practical, but it's been a hectic and stressful time and I feel like I deserve a little reprieve at least. After this all started, I hit a crazy club in Hollywood with my friends who were trying to console me, the place was wild - like being in some swanky vegas club. Super Bowl/My birthday (argh!) followed a couple of days after that, which I celebrated by relaxing with some friends and eating lotssssss of nachos. Next week or so was pretty mellow with the work stuff, really - last weekend I met my friend for some Armenian (ah Zankou), it turned into a sunday night jaunt to Jumbo's Clown Room up the street (ah atmosphere) and then, a few beers later, over to Ruby (Hollywood and La Brea) for Beat It! ('80s dance night, used to be the shit - for real!) This past week had been busy with more of the same during the day - tweaking stuff, chasing leads, running out to the post office to devlier demos, video editing my reel, etc. Tuesday night turned into another Cinespace evening, but it kinda devolved into some shitty drama which I'd be best not writing about in here. Gave me a nice hangover which led to a fairly unproductive Wednesday, though I did manage to run several errands in spite of that (going downtown etc). Friday some of my buddies from down in Irvine decded to make the haul up to Hollywood to pay their respects, so to speak, so they brought some whiskey and we downed a bunch, then headed over to spaceland in silverlake to catch a show.