Sharan Volin

Well, apparently Justin's not going to Baycon and neither am I. I guess it's just as well since I really can't afford it right now. Plus, it looks like I may have to fly to Florida, because my cousin in Fort Lauderdale died last night, and the funeral is Sunday morning. Airfare is looking ridiculously expensive on such short notice right now, but if I can somehow find a flight I'll need someone to take care of Kitty and all his medications, and to check on chythar's cats, which I'm supposed to be doing this weekend. The usual cat sitter just moved out of state so I just hope Justin can help me out with this.

I just thought I'd post a quick update. Kitty came home Friday night and is doing well. I was really worried when he went nuts when they were trying to show me how to do the subcutaneous fluids at the vet, but it turns out that as long as I warm the fluids first and he gets lots of petting and attention while it happens he's actually really good about it. *whew!* He goes in to my regular vet Friday morning, so I'll know more then.

Classes also started this week and are looking good so far. Today I actually had my first class in "Intro to Fiction Writing" (since I finally decided to FORCE myself back into writing). It turns out the teacher likes SF too (William Gibson and Roger Zelazny), so that's nice!

I'm also telling all my teachers that I'll be in San Francisco at the Game Developer's Conference. My roommate and most of the rest of Infinite Monkey Factory are flying up Tuesday afternoon, but I really can't afford to miss 2 of my Game Hardware Architectures classes (which should be interesting, since it looks like we'll be learning how to program for the PS3/cell processor!). So I'm flying up first thing Wednesday morning instead.

I've also done some work on another New Years Resolution, trying to do something about getting over the long time fear of singing in public (it goes back to a bad experience with a lousy sound system at my brother's bar mitzvah - before that I was in chorus for 8 years, even made all county chorus once, and always LOVED to sing). I finally tried out Karaoke Revolution, Rock Band, and now Singstar (although I think I prefer Karaoke Revolution - it's more "fun"), and found a game that I not only enjoy, but it's the only game (other than maybe puzzle games) I've ever been able to BEAT on expert mode, and even get platinum on. I can still do the singing even if I am badly out of practice. Hopefully by the end of the year I'll either take a singing class at USC or maybe just take private singing lessons.

I also got this cool little GPS when I realized that it just might help me navigate rush hour traffic when I'm trying to get to my 6:30pm or 5pm classes on Mondays and Tuesdays. This thing's nice, and so tiny it's actually smaller than my Palm Z22. It even works for walking or bicycling.

Oh, and I'm writing on my new laptop, a Thinkpad X61 tablet convertible. I was hoping to wait until the summer to upgrade but my 3 1/2 year old Thinkpad R50p decided to force the issue a few weeks ago when the network card died. This one's going to be MUCH nicer for taking notes in class with, though. It's been an expensive year.

Of course I've discovered the joy of Vista (yeah, I know, but apparently XP tablet edition sucks even worse). Apparently I can't open a popup window without Firefox crashing, so no preview for me here. (UPDATE: problem solved! It was the Thinkpad Password Manager Firefox extension that just got installed crashing Firefox. I disabled it and popups work again!)

Well, I have to go get some stuff done, take care of Kitty, and get to sleep, since I have a 1pm class tomorrow and can't afford to oversleep or I'll have NO time to work.

I got home today to find my first story contract waiting for me! I guess that makes it official (although I was told by one person it's not a "real" sale until I get the check, but that person was only married to a SFWA member so what do they know). Well, this won't exactly get me into SFWA or HWA or anything, but to hell with the snobs who think it's not good enough, it's my first sale and I'm happy about it!:)

I didn't get much done over the weekend because the cold or whatever I had come down with drained me of energy, but my roommate and I got a Christmas tree (as he said, "An Atheist and a Jew go out to buy a Christmas Tree...". We're still trying to figure out the punch line.) It gives the cats a new place to hide out:). I also actually managed to finish a book - "A Scanner Darkly" by Philip K. Dick, which means I can finally watch the movie.

Well, I finally survived finals, and have 3 whole months of no classes to look forward to, so I may finally have time to post/read here again so I figured I'd post an update. I still don't have most of my grades (although I did get an A- in my Electrical Engineering class), but once I do I'll post them here again. I'm just glad it's over, because I was getting pretty burned out after 2 years of no real break (that summer Calculus class was a mistake I WON'T be making again!).

This week is also E3, and I kind of got a taste of what an E3 deadline is for my Mobile Game Programming class, since I had to finish my Nintendo DS game in time for the Monday deadline, and wound up pulling an all-nighter to get it done. But I'm really happy with the results, and if you want to see it in action the site for it is here. Unfortunately I never did get it working on the DS hardware (just an emulator), but I'll probably get my own hardware to be able to do that and see if I can get it working sometime this summer while I still have time. I also volunteered at E3 today, but didn't think to bring suntan lotion, and after being out in the sunlight for 5 hours straight without a break I got pretty badly sunburnt. My roommate met me there for lunch, and after that he brought me over to the people in charge and got them to let me go early because of that. I would have been happy with some suntan lotion, but it was nice to be able to go home and relax, and I wound up staying home and watching a lot of TV instead of heading back for a party I was supposed to go to tonight. I did go to the IGDA party last night, which was fun and good networking.

In other news, a lot happened that I just didn't have time to post about here over the past couple of months. My car got rear ended a few weeks ago and was almost totaled by the insurance company, but fortunately they fixed it. I was fine, at least. We also added another cat to the household. And in reference to a certain other situation I mentioned previously I've already had a few promising leads that might get me out of a sticky situation.;)

I'm actually waiting to hear if there's any fallout from an e-mail sent yesterday at work basically refusing to take a 50% pay cut. I'm going in there tomorrow so I suspect I'll know more then. If I do wind up only working for them part time at my regular rate it'll at least give me time to find other contract work and work on Rockers Online. But we'll see what happens, since everything is up in the air right now.

Friday I'm taking off to actually GO to E3, which is why I volunteered for it.