Sharan Volin

There's been a lot of stuff going on lately that I haven't posted about here, so I thought maybe it was time for an update. I just finished a serious Semester From Hell. So bad, in fact, that I have decided not to go for the masters at USC. I'm really fed up with the whole student group projects thing, and the masters is very project heavy. Besides, I've realized I probably don't even need the masters to get a game programming job. If I do anything (and I suspect I'll take some time off first) I will probably do something more on the music/audio side, since I really do want to specialize in game audio.

Things outside of class haven't been so great either. As I posted the Universal job ended, and I've had some promising leads but so far I'm still unemployed (breaking my record of being unemployed for 1 month in the middle of the dot com crash). I had an interview at a game company on Friday, and I have a phone interview for contract work tomorrow, so hopefully something will happen.

On top of everything, a couple of months ago Justin announced that he was moving out. After being roommates for over 6 years I'm understandably not too happy, and I miss him and the cats (he took 3 of them, including Kitty Cat, who had decided he was my cat and was sleeping on my bed every night (I really miss him:(). Also having my rent double just when I lost my job did not exactly help matters at all. I don't want another roommate, though, and I couldn't anyway because we cleared out the storage locker so this place is pretty full. It's going to take a while to get things straightened out even now that classes are over.

Also, Kitty's been diagnosed with a bunch of medical problems lately. He spent a week at an emergency hospital and was diagnosed with chronic renal failure. Then more recently the doctor was worried about him breathing heavily and they thought he had heart problems. They did tests and his heart was in the normal range but he had a lump in his lung. He's been on antibiotics and he seems to be breathing better, so it may just have been an infection. But his heart was still beating really fast so the doctor gave him heart medication to slow his heart down, and it seems to have done wonders, since he's more active and alert than I've seen him in years (if ever). Fortunately he's adjusted well to the other cats leaving. He seems to like having the place to himself. The other cats, on the other hand, were totally traumatized by the move.

With all this chaos and some unrelated crap going on I can't really talk about it's really starting to look like Baycon probably won't be happening. I don't even know if Justin's going and if he doesn't go I definitely can't afford it. Plus, finding a pet sitter to deal with all Kitty's medical needs at the last minute would not be easy.

Yesterday I decided to get out of the house and went to a meeting of the Greater Los Angeles Writer's Society, which was nice. They were talking about Writers of the Future and showed a DVD which featured an interview with edgreen86, among other people. I even got a copy of the dvd.

I did also get to go see Asia again at the Canyon Club a couple of weeks ago, which was nice. Another great show! But I also had to unfortunately miss Symphony X for financial reasons. I already had the Asia tickets at least.

So there's been a lot going on, including a lot of stuff that hasn't been fun. But I'll get through it eventually. *sigh* At least I survived another semester. And unless I decide to take a full time game job and cut back my classes I'll actually be graduating in December! At this point I'm really looking forward to this being over with.

Damn, I still have so much I want to do this summer and there are only about 6 weeks left before it all starts over again with the classes! And the next few weeks will be busy, since I'm seeing Rush at the Hollywood Bowl on Monday, Dream Theater at the Gibson Amphitheater on Friday, heading to either Las Vegas or Comicon for the weekend (I'm not sure which yet), seeing Symphony X the following Tuesday (maybe Monday too if we're back and I feel up to the trek down to Anaheim. EDIT: apparently the Anaheim show just got moved to Santa Ana), and then I head to NY on Thursday the 2nd for 9 days. I'm exhausted just thinking about it!

In other news, when I head off to NY I'll also be headed back to only occasional work status at the current job as I go back to work for my roommate's company. He just signed a 6 month contract for a website with a 3d game component that should be interesting! If you know any good programmers in the L.A. area (or are one) let me know, since he's going to be hiring!

There's also news on the Rockers Online front. I finally got fed up with my old web host screwing up my site and my e-mail and switched to a new one. Then I fixed a few bugs (including my rss feed, which I had no idea was down for so long, and my forum activation, which the old host broke by changing the server on me). Last weekend I finally added the first new band in years, Queensryche (and damn, do they have a lot of sites devoted to them!). I think it's probably safe to say I now have the most comprehensive list of links on the band on the net:). Also my roommate decided as a test to pay someone to write up news for my site for a month to see if it increases traffic, and I'm on the 3rd day of that (so there will actually be things posted to rockersonline).

Of all my goals for the summer, the one I was most on track for (at least until I blew it last week and I'm hoping to make up the difference this week) is reading at least 1 book a week. I finally finished "The Harlequin" By Laurell K. Hamilton this morning and will be working on the new Demon Hunting Soccer Mom book by Julie Kenner next. Now those are fun books! They really are like if Buffy retired and got married and had kids and suddenly started getting attacked by vampires again. It should be a quick read so maybe I'll make 2 books this week:).

I think I finally figured out what the problem is with the new Laurell K. Hamilton books. ( My opinions here... )

O.K. This was such big news (if you happen to be a fan of the original Asia like I am, anyway) I had to post it somewhere:

http://www.originalasia.com/

The tour news might affect my plans to head out to the Northeast this summer and follow them around on tour for a week, but the studio news is huge! I can't wait for that one!

*whew!* Another week is just about done. My parents were in town until Wednesday morning, and between that and being up late every night they were here because I wanted to get some work done on Rockers Online it was a crazy week. But it's just about over and it looks like my goal of actually launching things this weekend are pretty much on track. I have 3 bands pretty much ready to go live in the new format, and I'm hoping to get at least 1 or 2 more ready before it launches.

It definitely needs to be this weekend, because there's only 1 week left until classes start, and next weekend is the Def Leppard/Journey show. It's hard to believe classes are coming up so fast! The insanity has already started! At the beginning of this week I managed to get myself into the MIDI class I really wanted to take (if I do want to go into game audio like I'm considering it'll really help, and my adviser said he can work with it for my degree), and no more than 5 minutes after registering I found out another class I really wanted, AI for Video Games, was canceled because only 3 people registered for it.:( Of course that meant I had to drop the regular AI class too (I'm not taking one without the other) and I've spent all week juggling and re-juggling my schedule to try to come up with something that works. I think I'm close now, but I'm registered for another class, Pipelines for Games and Interactives, that only has 5 people registered for it now, so that might be canceled, too. (believe me, the lack of enthusiasm for the classes for my new major has me a little worried. I guess they all want to go out and get boring web jobs after they graduate.) The good news is, if that IS canceled I'll be able to arrange my schedule so I only have classes on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. I'd have 2 full days to work, and 4 whole days to prepare for the next week of classes. I really like that idea! I'm half tempted to drop the class now for that, but I'll at least wait and give it a chance to be offered. Even with it that means my only class on Thursdays isn't until 5.

The great thing about the no class on Thursdays is, it'll make a few things much easier: no driving up to USC for the day during Worldcon, and I won't have to worry about the Asia Long Beach show (on a Wednesday night, so I can see them twice - I already got tickets for the Canyon Club show), or the Stratovarius show at House of Blues on Wednesday, October 4th (the day before Queensryche show at the Gibson Amphitheater I already ordered fan club tickets to, so it'll be a busy week!).

Well, I'm pretty much done here (I was waiting for things to get pushed live) so I'm going to head home so I can spend the weekend getting Rockers Online launched (and other things I want to get out of the way before classes start)!