Ravings of an Undead Cheese Minion

A year to review computer science.  To finish my master's degree, get some certifications, get a new job, prep to move states, and redo my portfolio and demo reel.  To get my first few big  coding projects off the ground, as opposed to the little ones I've done.  To finally start producing art regularly, and get through the rest of my beginner learning materials.  To start working hard  on my writing so I can start communicating with publishers in 2025.  To self-study engineering so I can be more prepped to attend school again in 2025 or 2026 (and get it done for good). To start prototyping my dream theme park resort.  To finally run my first marathon and start putting on some muscle.  To practice music each day, actually message people back, and get through my gaming, show, and reading backlogs.  To do all the things I should've done a long time ago, that I have tried to do many times and failed, but at least am doing now. And this time will be different.  here we go

By the time I reached the train station, she was gone. The city around me was silent and filled with a cool heaviness. My breath fogged up in the late September air, but only for a brief second — a wisp of smoke ascending to the black sky that glittered with tiny winking diamonds. Skyscrapers glimmered underneath the moonlight. Mists swirled and eddied, but only at the level of my chest, as though I was wading through a river. Above me, the sky was clear, offering a dark window into deep space. An empty bullet train sat along the electromagnetic railway, at the station, destinations flashing across its LCD screen. And then it took off into the mists, without a single soul therein. I shouldered my bag and shook my head in disbelief. Was what I saw even real? Or was I chasing after my own delusions? Maybe I was finally descending into full-blown insanity. Yet I could’ve sworn I saw someone, beckoning for me to follow her, running and laughing through the gloom and the dancing fog of a

Jim Jim

I'm keeping the previous post up, but I feel a lot better now. My goal is to go back to my roots, to not really start over, but rather pick up where I left off.  Winter 2015 and Spring 2015 were my best academic semesters. I was still full of hope as I was fresh off my mission and had just entered the CS Animation premajor. I started to slip a little when I hit CS 236. I'm picking up where I left off there. My goal was to be as good at coding as the pure CS guys and be as good at art as the pure animation/illustration students. And with writing I will no longer use my variety of pursuits as a reason to not perform at my highest level. So, time to try again. At some point, I'll be valuable enough where I won't get cut, or if I do, I'll have enough of a side business going that it won't matter much. I'm still doing the MSEE though. In the future, maybe 3 years out. 

I have to run a bunch of errands tomorrow, in order to prepare for leaving town. Mostly: dropping off my cousin's Christmas present, packing, doing some last-minute shopping for the road trip, and dropping off my DreamWorks gear at UPS in order to be shipped back.  And that leads me to all these questions. Should I be canceling certain subscriptions? Do I even buy my Disney World tickets? Do I even deserve to? I registered for the runDisney race well before I got wind of any layoffs. And I just don't know what to do anymore.  It doesn't feel like a) I actually worked at DreamWorks , and on a film that everyone will see, and b) I lost that job only 13 months after getting it. My second layoff in a row, a 100% layoff rate for all the full-time jobs I have had. I had the opportunity of a lifetime, and it was taken from me. That little Windows ThinkPad with the CentOS machine in the NBCU data center -- I'll never get to use it again. I'll never participate in chats agai

It's something that I hate How everyone's disposable.  

I wrote about "debug bleed" a while back -- where you get so wrapped up in a coding problem that it takes away time to do the rest of your life, and it derails everything. Then your apartment gets messy, your hobbies are untouched, you forget to exercise, your gaming backlog grows uncontrollably, your sleep schedule is all out of whack...you know what I mean.  I was reading about the BYU ACME major because I've always been curious about it and knew some students in my early CS classes (and later math classes, for me as a lowly math minor) who were in it. I briefly considered switching to it when I first got rejected for CS Animation but it would not have been practical time-wise to do anything other than the math minor because of how behind I was in math at the time (and since I got accepted into CS Animation with my next application, it was all good).  The trap of local optimization is listed on this ACME "Benefits and Challenges" page . And I've realized

PSA: Do not set fire to random trash in the parking lot.  Fires can destroy property and kill people. Campfires are great, randomly lighting fires in the middle of the parking lot near residences is not. If you play around with open fire, you are an idiot. You think you have control of it. You don't.  That's my soapbox for today. 

I looked up engineering licensure requirements for CA, UT, and FL, the 3 states I'm most likely to reside in long-term (though most likely not Utah). It looks like a master's degree counts as long as the school's corresponding undergrad is accredited. It is also my understanding that you can take FE / PE from an area other than what you majored in, so you're not locked in by your degree.  As a result, I'm proceeding with my self-study for now, then I'll probably just do the msee on cu-boulder (coursera) once I've completed the osee on github plus some meche stuff I've added. at cu boulder online, you can take the courses for noncredit, do the homework assignments, then pay for the course and take the exams. So you can go at a slower pace and still eventually get the degree, which would work well if you've got a lot going on (I do).  this doesn't change my commitment to CS and graphics -- it's still a high priority for me, I will finish this M

it's nice to set a goal for 400 words per day, but it doesn't always seem to work?  I've made goals for art, coding, and music, and they work better if I have a more in-depth routine. I've felt my skills in each slowly improving, but not so much in writing.  So I'm starting with 30 minutes + 400 words, with 200 as an OK fallback. I doubt I'll be able to write 400 words in 30 minutes, but I can find a way to fit in 30 minutes of writing.