Category Archives: Personal Life

House Foo

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The house hunting is apparently over. We looked at some houses on Saturday, and then some others on Tuesday, discussed them, and decided to place a bid on our top choice, down in the Federal Way area. It’s great heaping gobs of money ($236,000), but well worth it: it’s in excellent condition and suits us well. We went down and took a second look last night, then submitted the bid.

Well, the tentative answer is a big YES! I say tentative because the seller’s wife is out of town currently. He’s said yes and told his agent to mark it as in contract, but his wife still has a veto. This is fine by us, as no one is expecting any issues. So, big ol’ woohoo!
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Happy Fourth of July!

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Just sending out a quick Happy 4th of July to all of you out there. I hope you all have a lovely day. Chris and Lise are heading to the Adobe fireworks display, and Mickey and I are heading out to Port Angeles for today and tomorrow to explore Olympic National Park and in general have a good time. (I’m bringing my camera AND my sketchbook, so expect pictures later.)

I’d also like to give a shout out to my brother, who is doing something really cool. Kudos to you!

At some point in the not too distant future, I’ll sit down and fill you in on what’s happening with the house hunting process (yes, house hunting, as in seeking to purchase a house). Before you bother, yes the thought of a duplex or some other house that we could use to pull in another stream of revenue has crossed our minds. It was subsequently crossed out, as it’s not something either of us want to do right now.
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Status Update

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I sent out my packet today, which I’m pretty pleased with. The annotations turned out well, I think, and while it was two days late in going out, I’m satisfied overall with the results. I may post some of them up here later… we’ll see. Might nice to finally have SOMETHING up in my articles section.

My computer is behaving rather oddly… the Expose feature of OS X is randomly turning on… I think I’ve managed to isolate what’s happening, thought I’m not entirely sure why it’s suddenly happening now. Basically, when I’m typing with the computer in my lap, the whole thing bends juuust enough that the number lock and F9 keys are triggered. It’s very bizarre, and very VERY annoying.
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Well, Hrm

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I didn’t get the job. They sent me a very nice rejection email, though, and they actually stuck to their goal of having a decision by the end of the week. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about not getting it… I’m disappointed, but I’m also in some way relieved that I’ve once more been given a (only partially desired) reprieve from the corporate world.

Now the question really is whether I should continue to scramble to find work, or just give up the ghost, do my part-time/sporadic/on-call game testing gig for the rest of the summer, and move back to DC. With the additional income coming in from Chris (who thus far has not really impacted our normal spending whatsoever), that’ll certainly do us for the summer while we figure out what the hell is happening.
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Interview, Muahaha!

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Ahoy! Sorry for not posting recently, I’ve been exceptionally lazy. Here is a quick (happy) update: I’m currently working for VMC, testing xbox games. This is sporadic work at best, so I’ve continued to send out resumes. The Apple Store gig turned out to be a part time (10-15 hours a week) sales position, which isn’t exactly all that enthralling, especially since it’s only fractionally more than I make doing game testing, which actually has the potential to be a gateway into cooler things.

I also applied to OmniGroup, yet again, this time for a support position for their web browser, OmniWeb. I fully expected to not hear back, because I’ve never heard back before, but lo and behold, a few days ago I got an email asking to set up a phone interview.

I just had the interview, and I think it went very well. We’ll see if they share that opinion on whether or not I get the job (or at least to the physical interview). I’m pretty excited about this position, as it’s mostly just support and public relations of the sort that I’ve been doing for AVATAR for 7 years now, only I’d be getting paid for it.
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Coal Mines and Anniversaries

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First off, I’d like to wish my lovely bride a very happy anniversary. As she has already commented in her LiveJournal, we’re going out for dinner tonight, and then on Saturday we’re going to the Utah Phillips concert. A year of marriage has passed, and I’m still glad I did it. Sure, we have our rough spots and arguments, but not nearly as bad as some people, and we work through them pretty quickly. All in all, it’s a good way to be.

Second: Work! It seems that God has a very strange sense of humor… it seems like whenever I’ve about given up and decided that we’re going to have to move to DC, he throws us a crumb (not even a bone). Just enough to keep the hope of staying out here alive. On life support, but alive. So, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m now employed as an XBox game tester for the company that does the testing for Microsoft. It pays $9.25, and is extremely sporadic. Went two or three weeks calling (as it is an “on call” position) with no luck, and then finally I was supposed to work this whole week (full 5 day shift).

That fell through, the size of the shift shrank, so the new guys (like me) were cut. Enter a call from the Apple Store down the street, who have my resume and would like to interview me for a position (what position is not yet clear). I’m hoping it’s a Mac Genius position, as I think that would make me most happy of the potential roles. The interview is tomorrow.

Also enter a new job posting over at OmniGroup, for a Support Ninja position for their web browser, OmniWeb. I SO fit the qualifications, and needless to say I sent off my resume that very evening. I haven’t heard back yet, but that’s fine. I hope I do get a call back, though.

So while all that is happening… I get a call from VMC (the game testing gig), saying “So, are you available Wednesday and Thursday and possibly Friday?” Since I’d scheduled my Apple interview for after work would be getting out back when I thought I’d be working this week, my schedule was, in fact, free.
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Krelian

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As some (most) of you know, I’ve been on a MUD called AVATAR for seven years now. One of the things that really kept me playing it for so long was the sense of community that exists there. It’s like an extended family in many ways, and was made moreso by getting to know some of the players and other immortals in real life. (For instance, the owner of the MUD, Snikt, is both a friend and a business partner, and we would never have met without the MUD.)

One of our regular players died last night. Last week he had gone in for a routine tonsillectomy, and during the operation they knicked an artery. He was sent home afterwards, but ended up back in the hospital the following night, and slipped into a coma not long after. It continued to get worse, with a period during which he was brain dead for six minutes, causing irreversible brain damage even if he ever awoke from the coma. His parents signed a Do Not Resuscitate order yesterday, and he passed away at 1am last night. He was 19.
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Errata

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First: I’ve been wasting far too much time over the past day or two reading the back archives (all 1300+ entries) of Neil Gaiman’s blog. It’s delightful reading, but damned if there isn’t a lot there.

Second: Kurt Vonnegut weighs in. An interesting read, and I’ll leave it at that until someone chooses to comment about it. Thanks to Mickey for pointing it out to me, and thanks to whoever pointed it out to her.

Toodles, I’ll post more later.

Weekend in the Sun

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This past weekend was delightful, pure and simple. It started early with Mickey coming home after a half-day on Friday (if she works even just an hour longer on the rest of the work days, then that means she can take a half day on Fridays). We ate, then went shopping for various knicknacks (cross stitching materials, clothes, et cetera), then went and saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which I really, REALLY liked. It was surreal, sublime, and very much a Charlie Kaufman movie. I felt that both Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet did fantastic jobs with their roles, and there are some real moments while jaunting around inside Carrey’s head. (In particular, I’d like to point out any of the scenes where he’s a child.)

One of the interesting things about the movie (to me, anyway) was that we see the feelings and emotions and thoughts of this character who is incapable of saying it in the real world. So we (the audience) becomes endeared to the character, because we see this nakedness. WE see how much he cares about Winslet’s character. We want them to be together, and after all why wouldn’t they after that level of honesty? She’d have to have a heart of stone to not be with him after that.

And then you remember, it’s all in his head. She doesn’t know ANY OF IT, and may never.
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