Here are some great newses

First off, I'm happy to announce that I turned my thesis in on Wednesday! I have a master's degree! How did that happen?

Should you like to read the thesis, "Effects of coda voicing on onset /n/ and /l/ duration in American English," here it is. It's hosted on Yousendit right now, so I'll have to figure something else out after a week or so. Enjoy!

Mary and I are considering attending the May graduation ceremony. She'll be getting her master's soon, too.

Second, I got my first-ever job offer. I was contacted on GAF yesterday and asked if I would be interested in writing for a gaming blog! I said I would, of course (and then in my head I said *(#$UNHFEH(#*(UR DLJLJF), and now I'm apparently being considered for the job! I was told that the editors of the site would be "watching me" on 20xx games, which means that I'm going to work on putting the best content I can on there this weekend.

I heard that having a master's degree would help me get a job, but I assumed it was because it looked good on a resume, not because it acted as a talisman to magically attract employers.

Finally, the refrigerator is finally clean. I felt stupid about not having dumped out those black beans earlier.

My wife is brilliant

(click for larger pictures)



This is a quilt that Mary made as a birthday gift for her grandmother. I think it looks great: the colors are nice (and nicely distributed!) and the nice straight lines are just pleasing to look at.







And here’s a quilt that she finished earlier this year, made of my old t-shirts. She managed to make my junky old clothes (some of which I wore from the 7th grade through college) look pretty damned awesome. And because of that extended use of the fabric, this thing is excellently, lovably soft.

I love having these handmade quilts around the house. They're about the cuddliest works of art I can think of.

Feeling a very false creativity today.

As in, I feel like doing something creative (writing, drawing, uh... other... creative... activity...) but I have [b]no fucking clue[/b] what I would do. So basically, that disproves the 'feeling creative' hypothesis straight away.

Okay, well, there is one thing I want to do, but it's impossible. I'd like to work on a Flash game. Unfortunately, not only do I not possess the Flash software, I was never able to figure out how to do the simplest animations, much less interactive software. Thumbs up!

Maybe I should just work!

Let's internship!

So you guys are all incredibly brilliant and also adventurous. I want some of that. I'm asking you to rub some of your magical success-attracting pheromones onto me (metaphorically, at least, as I'm a)really far away from you and b)kind of a germophobe) by maybe telling me how I can find an internship or a summer position. Mary recently expressed a desire to take an internship this summer, and it occurred to me that it may be possible for me to do the same thing. We're getting close to the 'employed' period of our lives, and we're probably going to end up living in Texas, so we'd both like the opportunity to live somewhere else for a little while (basically a summer) while we still have the chance. Also, now that I have a chance of having a career, I'd like to advance it, and put some bullet points on my resume that don't have anything to do with sorting shelves of Dreamcast games. Don't get me wrong, I love sorting Dreamcast games, but I also love being employed by people who feel like it's a good idea to give me money in exchange for tasks I perform in a professional environment. Probably.

Speaking of money, it would be nice to earn some for a change. My computer overheated yesterday! It turns out that my datazzz and straight FLOATING POINT KALK-U-LASHUNZZ be shit hot and my processor was all DAMN.

So yeah. I know there are people reading this who have gone all over the country doing crazy temporary things, and I am asking for any resources you know of. Also ideas for things I could do.

oh god how did this get here i am not good with computer

While Mary is in San Diego at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference, I'm here making another unordered list, containing these things I've been doing:

• Making monochromatic and kind of ugly blog templates. Well, one.


• Taking care of kittens, and trying not to bore them with my sedentary lifestyle.


• Taking care of a bunch of school work! Surprisingly.


• Enjoying some rented games.

Mostly I just wanted to make this post to brag about Mary and say how awesome she is (and also to make another list, which I can't seem to get enough of). She goes all over the place on these crazy conferences, and has these great experiences, and makes all kinds of contacts and stuff. It's just very impressive. She's a very impressive person. I would get hung up on the traveling and spend the whole trip freaked out.

On a much smaller scale, I'm also happy that I can be an independent dude every once in a while; to have confirmation that when left to my own devices, not only will I get out of bed and not waste the entire day, but I will also do things that need to be done, and feed myself and clean the house and occasionally buy groceries and even do work just like a regular person. Just like people who have to go places.

Hello Kitty +

So much to talk about!

First, I'd like to introduce you all to our new baby girl, Scout (click for larger):




We adopted her from a local shelter called Friends for Life. She's wonderful and I love her. Today was slightly sad because I had to take her in to be spayed. She's recovering well and seems happy, if... totally doped.

Second, I celebrated my 26th birthday recently, and I'm happy to say it was a good one-- hell of improved over last year's. I do feel pretty old, but that's only because I'm so old. It sucks to be 26 and jobless, but at least I sort of have direction, and I'm totally ahead in that I've already found the love of my life. Compared to that, a career is easy, right?

I hate to be crass and talk about my birthday gifts, but Mary surprised me with such great ones that I can't help it:

• The Mario .S Diorama Kit (Set C), which I put together immediately. It's really damn cool to see Mario in semi-3D on my shelf. Plus I can rearrange the peg "pixels" however I want, so I'll be changing out the Mario scene occasionally. I'd looked at these things on import sites, but it was one of those things that I idly admired but would never buy for myself. And Mary found one from a US seller and bought it for me! Yay!


• Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life,a book by Chris Kohler that talks about not only the history of Japanese games, but also the unique narrative, visual, and gameplay concepts of Japanese games that make them so different from Western games, especially the early arcade games. I've only read like 7 pages and already I love it. The dude interviews Keiichi Yano, the director of Gitaroo Man in the first chapter or so.


• One month of GameFly, which already promises to fuel a number of game blog entries.
  
• A note that said I could purchase one new t-shirt of my choice. My choice:
  
  


• Twizzlers, which Mary hates but I can't get enough of (and hadn't had for probably several years). A big bag of them, too. And a Heath bar.

Plus she made me a chocolate cake! Cake, if you haven't heard, is delicious, when eaten.

Okay, that part was really long. But it's my damn blog. Anyway, next item, also related to my birthday:

Birthday cards came from all over the place. Mary's was very sweet and had some wonderful sentiments about the fact that she apparently continues to enjoy my company (???). Mary's mom sent as a birthday card a pencil drawing of a lizard she made. And Zack and Blair sent an adorable Hello Kitty card with a sheet of temporary tattoos that make me really quite happy to wear. I don't quite understand my love for Hello Kitty, but the aesthetic makes me smile, and I love temporary tattoos. And these are sparkly!

A short note: this thread provides intense, painful LMAOs.

Finally, head over to the game blog for a special and wonderful news item, provided I, uh, write it.