Blog

I went to the zoo alone today. It's the first time I've ever been to a zoo alone.
It was pretty fun. The skunk was there today. it's usually not there. I discovered it's the cutest skunk EVER. It's also morbidly obese and waddles around like a really fat cat. It's sooo cute. Unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries so I couldn't take that many photos. You'll have to take my word for it. Really fat skunks are the way to go.

Things are okay
Maybe not perfect
We beat Sindy yesterday. I messed up on LK though.

I think I woke up angry today. The bus ride up was crowded so I asked for the backdoor to be opened. The bus driver wouldn't open it for me. It was so mean!

I think that cascaded into a day of just awfulness. I got mad at people that I shouldn't have ... and ranted off more about dailies. I still think dailies are stupid (I mean I don't even read other people's dailies. It feels like it's all a ploy by management to make sure we're all working).

Anyway, then I got told that my way of time management/task tracking was driving people crazy (by the person that wasn't a programmer. I was told to trust them because they could tell other people were driven crazy by it).

I understand it's from an industry where lots of people work. I was slightly offended by the bluntness of the acusation though. It was basically a: "it sucks. don't ask me how I can tell, I just can tell. you should stop"

I'm still peeved about it. But I think I also made them angry when I got defensive. Either way, not feeling great about the whole thing. I wish I could turn back time ... although I still don't know what I would've done in that situation.

Should I have just given in and be like: okay you're right. Or should I have helped postulate better time management solutions? I could've been a better sport. I need to work on that.

I wonder if I can keep up giving feedback. At this point, I could just stop talking and let him lead the entire project. I think it'll go horribly downhill ... although maybe I should just trust him.

I got a rude awakening this summer though. I didn't speak out enough during our game competition design meetings and we ended up with nothing done and only an uber bloated design. And then I freaked.

I don't want to freak and I don't want to fight with people. I don't think it'll work out if I don't give useful feedback every once in awhile, though. Or maybe I should let them fail and learn from their mistakes? (I hope they do learn. It seems like the bloated design issue hasn't gone away yet).

Oh well. Tomorrow might be better

My team is great
Our project room is great
The Unreal Engine looks great

... but some things made me sad.
Apparently, because I got an internship this semester, I might be forced to write a 5-7 page paper on it soon. If I get lucky, I'll be chosen to present to the first years and not have to do a paper. If I'm not, I'll be writing a whole 7 page paper on the experience. This is the first time that I've been punished for getting an internship offer. I'm praying I get the presentation instead. I like presenting a lot better than paper writing.

My photo history class was interesting. The professor's this photo curator at the Carnegie Art Museum or something. She seems nice -- and rather old with plenty of stories about the days of Polaroid

The other crappy thing is that my package came with all my other electronics, but I wasn't here to pick it up. Now I have to figure out how to get the friggin thing home :( I don't want them to deliver it at 2pm because I need to be at school for TAing BVW. Gah!

And then Rob asks me for programming advice and I just tell him what I generally thought about his system. I wish he had shown it to me earlier. Basically, my suggestion was to rewrite it so it'd be more robust to new additions ... and he got upset. I'm just trying to help. I didn't think I said it too meanly either. I wish people wouldn't be so mean to me when they ask me for help.

I bought speakers. They seem to work well. Yan's speakers are cuter.

David Teot gave me his stuffed otter toy. I miss talking to him.

I got runner up for the scholarship. They're still offering me 5000, which is pretty good. Mom's not gonna be happy though. The Financial Aid office hasn't given me an award letter either. Sux

To school ...

Wow that summer went by fast. Long story short, EA was awesome. I accepted a full time offer there. I'll be doing a co-op in the spring. And this semester will probably kill me -- my team's trying to make 3 games in 1. HALP!

Anyway, my team won the intern browser competition. We all got iPads. Yay. Except Adam sold his -- where's the sentiment? the memories? I guess he wanted to forget that I was mostly a jerk throughout all of it.

I need to work on how to express my concerns (which are usually very pessimistic because that's the kind of person I am) without making people feel bad. I will rage usually ...

In other news, I kinda of dropped off the face of the planet when Rob visited this summer. And as soon as I'm alone, I'm back! I'm trying to decide which is better. When Rob's here, I'm a lot more lazy -- I stopped exercising and started going out to restaurants all the time. That also meant I gained weight, didn't work on any prototypes or games, and was overall less of an achiever.

Now that I'm back in Pittsburgh, I'm rooming with Lilian. She's like not here half the time. Coupled with the fact that police cars go by my apartment all the time, I'm almost scared for my life while living here. I'm gonna get renter's insurance -- as soon as I find Craig and ask him how to do that.

I found out that Zunes do not have asian language support until Zune HD. I think that's BS. Just FYI.

So our new project room looks nice. We have a kiwi cam running. We can watch this kiwi bird dart back and forth whenever we want. It's surprisingly the most active of the animals we've seen. Also, I've learned that kiwis are very clumsy -- maybe they'd have to be since they only have 2 legs and a head. The one we watched would trip over itself every few minutes or so. It's adorable.

I met Stephen again for the first time in a few months. I miss talking to him. Although I then promptly started critically analyzing the game he made over the summer. Which is a nice way to say that I was a jerk and shouldn't have been. The game is fun -- I really wanted to keep playing it. The difficulty curve got to me and I was a sore loser about it. Sorry Stephen!

I drew this picture of Hong and Suzuko that I'm really liking. I revised their story so that it makes more sense (unfortunately it also makes Hong less of a jerk in the process -- and that just ruins his character). Anyway, hopefully I can finish that today.

And someone remind me to finish analyzing the schedule for this semester. It's so weird to be alone for the first semester in a long time. I guess being alone has its advantages. I get to do whatever I want. Hopefully WoW doesn't eat my soul while it's lonely.

And now I need to go buy some speakers -- which is probably hard to do considering my new place is in the middle of nowhere. At least I get exercise I guess -- I need it since I'm now like borderline obese (I'm serious guys. Don't say I'm not because the charts say otherwise.)

This past week has been more busy. I went to see Toy Story 3 again and noticed this time that Woody went through a transition too. He used to think that being with Andy was his soul purpose in life. But at the end, he was able to let Andy go and accept that he was grown up.

Anyway, I tried the Sechuan restaurant and it was pretty good.

Job's been busy. I'm put on a full time person's schedule but I accidentally wrote off 2 days. I need them back T_T. It's really stressful when it seems like you're 2 days behind. I still have to ask my manager to put it back.

This weekend's a long weekend. I hope it'll be fun. Either that or the worst 4th of July ever. Yeah.