On Second Thoguht

I totally changed my mind about what I want for Christmas this year.

What I'd really like is to finally be done with the transition of being completely comfortable with myself. All this time I was hoping for the people around me to get over it, but I realized something: I'm always going to be around new people, and I can't spend my entire life wishing for everyone else to be okay with who I am. I think if I was comfortable with who I am, I would care a lot less what other people think of me.

So I don't need my mom to accept me, Jason's parents to like me, any of my friends or family to accept me. I just need to accept myself and everything will start getting better.

That is the only thing I really want to come out of this year.

I Need to Start Getting More Sleep

I just applied for a small car loan at my bank which I would rather have done in person than online, but I'm running out of time and don't know how long it will take to process. I've been putting it off for a while because I'm afraid I won't get it. Without it, I won't have a vehicle and I'm moving 22 miles away from PetSmart in a little over a month. I know it's going to cost a lot to insure, fuel, and pay for, but I don't really have many viable alternatives right now.

I could try to find a super cheap apartment that's withing walking distance from my job, but that's not really likely. The cheapest I recall seeing was $600 a month, which is way too much. That doesn't include utilities and Internet access, either. Of course, I might be able to find something cheaper more toward the Mt. Clemens area, but there are two problems with that: I don't want to live in an area that's any less safe than where I live now, and I'd have to find a job that will pay me enough to live on right away.

I'm just in kind of a shitty situation right now and I don't know what to do so I stay up most of the night worrying about it. That makes it hard to work 6 to noon without feeling run down by the time I leave. And that makes it hard to create the illusion that everything is okay. And that makes me feel bad for making everyone else feel worse.

Just Another Average Post

I feel like I always let everyone down. My mom needs me to help her move all the shit from her garage by Friday (which we had been doing before her car broke down), but I don't really have a way to get there. I feel like it's sort of my fault because I've been putting off some of the bigger things and now that it needs to get done, I still don't have a car. I don't even know if I'll be able to make it there for Christmas because work might be retarded and schedule me at 6AM the day after.

That's just one of the ways the holidays have me run down. Of course, I've been working extra hours at work, taking on peoples' hours when I can, and getting a lot less sleep (which is really something considering how little sleep I normally get). But, all that doesn't really matter. I've spent all the money I have available to me. That keeps me up at night, worrying about how big of a dent my week in Tennessee is going to make on January's rent and my Mastercard. On top of that, I still don't know if I'm going to be able to get a loan for a car or find a really crappy one for the amount of money I still have in my savings.

But Christmas is wonderful, so I'm not supposed to be unhappy.

Christmas 2008

Since Black Friday marks the first day of Christmas I thought I'd share what I would really like this year. Some of them are pretty selfish, I know. My list is as follows:

1. To be free of debt

2. To be appreciated

3. To be surrounded by fewer idiots

4. To be loved for who I really am

5. For all my friends to get along together

6. Some kind of purpose for life

7. A little confidence

8. The ability to focus

9. For my parents to accept me

10. To live in a world with less conflict

I Think I Need a Vacation from Life

I paid Connie a visit yesterday. There was a network problem with her husband's computer (which Jason and I couldn't figure out), and she needed to copy a large amount of data between two USB hard drives. 375 gigs is a lot of data to move between two drives on the same interface, so I think it'll take a few days. She gave me a printer though, which I've been needing for some time. Of course, now that I have it I don't remember what I needed to print.

I saw Julie too, but she didn't really say much. Luke asked me to build some space ships out of Lego's for him, which was really fun. I don't really get to build much stuff anymore. Which reminds me, I've been working on a new theme for my blog and myspace, but I'm kind of rusty at Photoshop, so it's been taking a while.

I've also been doing some (possibly the bulk) Christmas and birthday shopping. It was mostly books, but I got my mom some nice candles at Meijer. There's not much else I can say there. I checked out the Biggby Coffee chain, which was kind of pricey, but so much better than Starbucks. I just wish there was a location a little closer than Garfield and Hall.

Coming Out Part 42

When Heather (my manager) pestered me about my personal life a week ago, I realized just how tired I really am of lying to everyone. When I added her to myspace, I also sent a request to some of the people I work with who weren't already on my list. Doug, Jonathan, Rebecca. The people I see all the time and would consider friends (I don't dislike Jonathan like I did when I started working there). Myspace probably isn't the best way to come out, but I couldn't think of a better plan.

I'm glad that everyone took it well, even though it's really sad that the phrase 'took it well' is needed in the first place. Heather obviously didn't care and we still have conversations about Jason. Looking further into it, Rebecca hasn't logged into her myspace in a few months, but that's fine. It turns out Jonathan is gay too, so it's all good. Apparently he never would have guessed because I don't 'act gay.' That made me smile.

I went to see Zack and Miri Make a Porno yesterday. The entire movie made me laugh. I would defiantly recommend it to anyone who laughs at dirty jokes. I've also been playing Spore. Even though I have a legitimate purchased copy (not necessarily by me) that had presumably been installed on less than 5 computers, I couldn't use it and had to acquire the game by other means. Nevertheless, it's still a very fun game worth picking up.

That's it for today on my hapy, happy, blog.

A Smashing Good Time

Yesterday I got to vote for the first time. That went well, except I had to get up at 7 am to do so. That wasn't so fun. Proposal 8, (rebanning gay marriage in California) went through, which is really retarded. @.@

While we were driving to Connie's house Jason turned down Rattle Run instead of Wadhams, which didn't really make that big of a difference because we would have gotten to our destination eventually. But then Jason made a right onto Palms (by my request) and turned around as soon as it turned into a dirt road. After that, Wadahms was closed, but Jason insisted that the sign was a lie. It wasn't, so we turned around again. Good times.

I spent this afternoon at Connie's, eating a nice dinner, fixing a few computers, and breaking some shit. She had a really old computer that she wanted to get rid of, but was worried about someone getting the information from her hard drive. The solution: a crowbar and an axe. Fun stuff. Dinner was really good, too. Dinosaur. Like Thanksgiving, only more pleasant.

Familiar Faces

Halloween was good. I stayed home with Steph and Jason and watched Halloween H20. I picked up some cheap vodka and some sort of cherry rum that didn't mix well with the Dr. Pepper. There were also 2 large party subs involved. The evening before I helped Steph's little cousin carve a pumpkin in exchange for some seeds. They were pretty good.

One of my managers has started asking me questions about my 'girlfriend' the other day. She first asked me how long I had a girlfriend a few weeks ago, after a particular event. Jonathan was standing directly behind me, so I didn't really say anything about it. The other day she asked me a number of questions that caught me off guard and again, I didn't correct her. I felt really awful about not saying anything, so I added her to my myspace. This morning she asked me about my boyfriend and we had a nice little conversation. Happy ending.

That's all that's really been going on. :)

I've Got a Funny Feeling We're All Born to Lose

I haven't done anything constructive since the last time I posted, hence there was no need to blog. I've been suffering severe bouts of on and off depression for the last few weeks. That's always fantastic. Last week I injured my arm in a horrific skateboarding accident. It still hurts when I rotate my lower arm, but it feels so much better than a week ago.

Sometimes I just want to be someone else. I don't care who, just anyone. I'm really dissatisfied with myself and my life. Maybe if I got out more and tried to do more constructive things I'd feel better. I don't know where to start, though.

There is nowhere I can apply myself, or I haven't found a place to. I want to do all these things with my life, but I have nowhere to start. I want to be a chef (not a short order cook), but I have neither the money to buy ingredients nor anyone to really cook for. I want to be a graphic designer, working on posters and similar media, but I don't have a subject. I want to be a filmmaker, but I have nowhere to just gather some people, pick up a camera and start shooting. I want to be a game designer, but I don't have a platform on which I could create something halfway decent without starting from scratch.

Economic Bullshit

I'm getting really sick of having to worry about small amounts of money.

15 cents. The amount I went overlimit on my MasterCard, pulling out money for an emergency. The bank then proceeded to charge me $40 for it, days after I sent in a payment, putting me back under my limit. Then they charged me a $20 fee for charging me the $40. All because I miscalculated how much the cash advance fee would be.

14 Cents. The amount I overdrafted by when Heather forgot her money for a movie ticket. Even though I put money back in the bank that night, they still transfered $50 from my credit card as "overdraft protection." They charged me $9 for that, but it put me over my credit limit again so I expect to get another $60 in charges. Thank God I transfered $165 to keep myself from going over a third time after the newest charges.

36 cents. The amount of money the $200 I once had in my Max Saver account accrued in the 3 years it was sitting there. Good thing I saved it, huh?

$100. The amount of money that magically appeared in my bank account the other day, with no trace in my statement. Too bad I already spent it on food, some pajamas, and a movie (which I probably shouldn't have gone to). I hope they don't want to take it back in a few days.

How the Hell am I supposed to be able to save for a car or education, or even a decent computer if 5/3 Bank keeps stealing all my money? It doesn't help that I live in a state where all the governor sends all our jobs overseas, forcing skilled auto workers to take the shitty jobs, and unskilled and unexperienced workers to be remain unemployed for years. Even if I had a car, gas prices are so artificially inflated that I couldn't afford to commute everyday.

Now I'm at the limit on both of my credit cards, my credit score is going down, and I have to get a student loan and financing on a car. I won't be eligible for a decent rate so I'll get something like 26.5% and end up paying about $8,000 extra that I won't have. It's no wonder so many people default on their loans and the banks are losing so much money.

And now Nelnet sent me an email telling me that my address and phone number aren't up to date and it's imperative that I change them so that I can continue making payments, even though I paid it off 2 months ago. If they fuck me now I'm not going to pay them another penny. They lent me money, I repaid it, I paid the interest, they made their money. End of story.

What the fuck are we all supposed to do?

it's All About the Games

I've revised the list of companies I'd like to work for. Here are my tops picks (in no particular order):

Insomniac Games, the developers of the Ratchet & Clank series. The reason I like Insomniac is that their games generally have strong storylines with well fleshed out characters. I've always been a fan of platformers and sometimes it's fun to forget about realistic graphics and just play. The benefits are good; 100% employer paid medical/dental/vision insurance, paid vacation, post production vacations, health insurance plans, and some really nice facilities. The catch is that the only office that's hiring much right now is in North Carolina, not my state of choice.

Rockstar games, the developers of Grand Theft Auto, among many other great games. It would be nice to get a chance to work on the next few GTA games. They have positions in many areas I'd be interested, but I'm having trouble deciding on one. The office I'd like to work at (San Diego) is a 3 hour drive from where Jason wants to go (Los Angeles), and there's also an office in NYC, in case Jason decides to go there instead.

Valve Software, creators of Half-Life and it's many branches. Unfortunately, also the creators of the Steam content delivery system. Valve has really been pushing graphics and physics forward for years with their Goldsource and Source engines. Their games are also heavily based in real science, which makes them unusually interesting. Unfortunatly, their head office is in Bellevue, WA.

Square Enix, who has produced innumerable RPGs, including Final Fantasy VII (along with the lesser Final Fantasy games). I really like RPGs and it might be fun to work on them, especially in the sci-fi genre. The US office is in El Segundo, part of Los Angeles. There really isn't much information available on Square's career page, but since the main office is in Tokyo, I'm going to assume bilingualism is a preferred skill, and I' not taking up Japanese any time soon.

I'm still left to decide which specific aspect of game design I want to go into. Right now I'm leaving it at the two main branches that interest me: programming and design.

While Perched Upon a Ladder, Cleaning Tanks

I planned exactly what I'm going to do for the next five months:

Starting now I'm going to start paying down my credit card debt. The more I can pay off before December, the better off I'll be. I also want to put as much in my savings account as I can. That means I'm really going to have to start watching what I spend and maybe get a little money somewhere on the side.

In December I'll apply for two loans: a vehicle finance loan to buy a used car from craigslist and a student loan so i can go back to school in January. I'll get a big enough vehicle loan from Fifth Third so I can get a $3500-$4500 car and pay a few months of insurance. My student loan is going to be a little different. Being a computer guy and not having a completely functional laptop poses a little bit of a problem. I could get a great PC laptop for $1500, but I'm not. I want to get a Macbook Pro because it's chic (Hypocritical, I know). It's all part of the new image I want to create for myself, but I'll talk about that another time.

January I'll start going back to school at Macomb Community College. Since I'll probably have to take basic classes for my first semester I can continue figuring out what I want my major to be. I'm going into the IT field one way or another, but I don't know specifically what I want to do yet. I want to get involved in a lot of extra curricular stuff too, but I'll figure that out when the time comes.

February is the month our lease expires, so I'll move back into my parents house. It's not the best arrangement and it'll be a pain to drive 22 miles to work and 30 to school, but I'll be able to save a lot of money not paying as much rent and utilities. That will allow me to finish paying off my credit cards, start paying insurance with actual money, save a lot more money, and hopefully make some hefty payments toward my vehicle loan.

At that point I'll try to narrow down the list of jobs I'd like to get at various companies. Rockstar, Revision3, GRC, Square Enix, and Capcom are definitely among them, but that's a new post entirely.

A Game You Can't Win

Recently I've been playing a nice browser based MMO called Travian. In the game you start out with a randomly located village. You upgrade your resource fields, construct buildings and infrastructure, create armies, band together in alliances, and so on. It's quite fun, albeit a little slow paced at times.

There's this guy in my 7X7 grid who's been raiding my village every day to get resources. At first I panicked, but then I came up with a plan and started slowly rebuilding my defensive buildings. I had founded another village a few weeks before, which I then converted into a nice little military base. I trained about 570 troops there, and about 400 in my main village, shipping them there. When I had an army, I sent all the troops to defend the main village. They held up for about 6 hours.

He sent a few of his normal attacks, consisting of 300 or so troops that I could easily wipe out. Someone from my alliance sent me some reinforcements to make the army extra strong and I thought I was all set. I replaced the few troops he managed to take out and went to work. When I got home all of my troops were dead, my wall had been destroyed, and the guy stole about 20,000 of my resources. All the strategy and effort I put into making sure my village didn't remain a farm was for nothing.

It's kind of a parallel of my life.

Two months ago, I though I was in a really good financial situation so I completely paid off my student loan and made large payments on my credit cards. Immediately, my hours at work got cut by 30%. This month I got a 50 cent raise, which I certainly wasn't expecting. Even though it's not a huge raise it does make a significant difference and I thought I could take advantage of that to quickly pay the remaining balance on my credit cards. But life happens.

I thought going to Baker college would help me get a great (paying) job within a few years. I put an enormous amount of effort into everything I did there and quickly won the recognition of my instructors, but then I ran out of money and dropped out (not really in that order). In reality, it put me in a hole that I just now, four years later, got out of. I thought moving to Chesterfield would give me a chance to save some money to go back to college. I put enormous amounts of effort into my work and trying to make living here as pleasant as possible for everyone, but I'm just digging myself into a new hole that will take another four years to climb out of.

Some days it just seems like no matter what I do and no matter how much effort I put into everything I do, the world just keeps pounding on me and nothing changes. Nothing gets better. Things only stay the same or get worse. Maybe I'm making all the wrong choices. Or maybe I'm making the right choices, but taking the wrong actions. Either way I'm doing something wrong. All I know is that there's no point playing a game you can't win unless you have fun doing so.

A Partly Interesting Day After an Entirely Boring Week

I discovered how to tell the sex of parakeets.

Teenage girls made me give them a high five while stuck in traffic.

I discussed goldfish with a mysterious, beautiful, German woman.

I used Tabasco sauce as a salad dressing.

A hermit crab pinched me and refused to let go.

I created a virus that destroyed all life on Earth.

I watched two brothers discuss The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.

How I Feel

Shit, Nothing Makes Sense

Some days I wake up with an overwhelming sense that my life has absolutely no meaning.

All the extra effort I put in at my dead end job is completely unappreciated. I work my ass off cleaning every surface in my department when I'm scheduled to do nothing for 6 hours and they cup my hours by 30% this week. I'm already using the majority of my money to repay old debts, but now I have to scrimp and save and still create new debts just to pay rent.

Even though I have a few talents and abilities, I don't really enjoy any of them. I'm good with computers. Point me in the direction of a broken computer and I can usually fix it in a matter of minutes, if I'm forced to. The truth is I really hate doing technical work. That rules out an entire field of careers I'd be terrific at and leaves me with no alternative options.

Most of my extended family hates me for one reason or another and even my parents don't really accept me for who I am. I'm never going to have any kind of family of my own. That's pretty depressing. My friends treat me as part of their family and include me in their family stuff, and even though I really appreciate it, it's just not the same. Sometimes I just feel like an intruder, even in our apartment.

On top of all that, I ultimately feel trapped. I'm not the person I want to be and even though I could easily become that person, I'm scared to do so. I've seen how terrified of change people can be, especially those close to me. People are fickle and I don't want to alienate my friends and Jason, especially when they're all I have. On the other hand, I want to grow as a person requires change, but who am I to say if any particular change is good or bad?

To Do List

I will eat healthier.

I will spend wisely.

I will exercise more.

I will be more organized.

I will start writing and stop procrastinating.

I will finish the things I start.

I will repay my debts.

I will stop hiding who I am for the benefit of others.

I will spend less time on Youtube and more time outside.

I will start acting my age.

I will stop moping so much.

I will stop being so self conscious.

I will start doing more with my life.

I will start trusting people.

I will cut caffeine out of my diet.

I will start living in the real world.

I will sleep better hours.

I will start being myself.

What the Fuck Have You Done Lately?

It seems like the more things I try to do the less I actually accomplish. I got home around three hours ago and decided that I was going to do something constructive. I put down the controller and sat down at my computer, guitar in hand. I wanted to learn to play Highway to Hell by AC/DC, but got bored after only a few minuter. I tried to work on one of the many scripts I've started, but have no direction for any of them. The only thing I managed to do was find my favorite songs from my music collection and dump them in Winamp. And I might just have the patience to finish this post.

I went to the Pickerel Tournament (a local carnival) on the 4th of July. I was pretty excited walking there from Jason's house because it had been a few years since I went to a carnival just to have fun, but my excitement was quickly drowned by the lameness I encountered. There weren't any rides worth buying tickets for. The best one would be the 1/60 scale version of the Power Tower that only worked in drop mode (opposed to launch mode). The Elephant Ears were $5.50 and greasy, the lemonade was $3 for a small and full of ice, the band royally sucked, I kept tripping over poorly placed cords, the show monkey wasn't really doing very much, the other people were assholes, and I didn't get to watch the fireworks because they were the next day and I had to work. All in all, it was a complete flop. I did, however get my hands on 10 boxes of snappers for $3. That was good.

It's amazing how much money the carnival must rake in. There was as stand where you could throw rings around old fashioned bottles to win goldfish. It cost $3 to play, and assuming you have a 33.3% chance of winning (which I think is a fair assessment assuming you must get all 3 rings around a bottle), in a best case scenario the carnival could make $9. That's a 750% return, considering a comet goldfish costs 12 cents. If they unloaded all 150 of their fish, that's $1272 a day, after paying the attendant. Add in the severely overpriced sundries, the various games, and tickets and you've got yourself quite a racket going.

The Umbrella Does Nothing

We're had a wicked storm this evening. The lightning is so bright I could see clearly for a mile and the thunder was so loud I could hear it over the hum of the various heating and cooling machines at work. It wasn't so wicked on the way home, though. It was raining so hard it felt like little bullets falling from the sky and puncturing my skin. Even though I was carrying an umbrella, I still got completely drenched, even before I slipped down from the shoulderless road into a sewage ditch.

Funny story, actually. They've been doing construction on my road for about a month and a half now, so all the traffic is jammed into two lanes on the close side of the road. There was no room for a shoulder, so they just got rid of it. Seeing as there's no sidewalk for most of my journey either, and the opposite side of the road is mangled beyond recognition, I'm forced to walk on a little hill between the road and a nice little ditch. Normally it's no big deal, but tonight it was pretty slippery and cars kept splashing me and I lost my footing and tumbled down. My groceries survived. My $3.54 Mocha didn't.

There was a group of people walking a little ways behind me. When I took my fall the girl had a nice, hardy laugh and they continued walking. I gathered my belongings and continued walking. When I got home, I met the group of people again. It turns out they either live or frequently visit the apartment downstairs and across the hall. I immediately let our guard dog out, hoping she'd at least maim one of them, but she only ran down the stairs, took a step in the rain, and ran back into the apartment. Now she'd just staring at me and moaning, waiting for me to make the rain stop.

Ah, my groceries. Two of my favorite things, especially together. Hazelnut coffee and the original Oreos. Whenever I go into a store in my Petsmart shirt, people always think I'm an employee and ask me questions, despite my shirt being the color of the sky and most places' shirts being the color of fire. Apparently it's the nametag. One lady wanted to know what to do when an item doesn't show up on the U-scan as being on sale, when it's clearly marked as such. A guy wanted to know where the flag holders were. A little old lady needed help getting a box of pasta from an upper shelf. Another lady wanted to know the difference between two espresso drinks. I took my nametag off at that point.

Since Meijer was having a sale, I picked up 2 packs of Oreos and 4 cans of coffee. I had to hold the bottom can of coffee and rest my chin on the top can because the Oreos took all the attention of my other hand. I must have been a sight because the greeter asked me twice if I needed a cart. I would have taken it had I not already been almost to the checkout. I passed the lady who was having trouble with the U-scan (who had also suggested I take off my nametag), who I don't think had been helped yet. I checked out and left. I really do prefer using the U-Scan because it's generally faster than having a trained cashier scan your items, people don't use them much so there's almost always a free one open, and after smiling at people all day sometimes I want to deal with a machine.

And I just used my Liberty City Team Deathmatch time (formerly my Building a kickass downtown area for my Sims time, but there was a horrible accident involving Service pack 3 and an ancient USB driver from a company that apparently no longer makes USB chipsets) blogging and doing laundry. Awesome.

The Enzo is Mine

The neighbors woke me up at 3:45 having some sort of a party down stairs. Those assholes randomly started playing crappy music so I couldn't get back to sleep before my alarm went off at 4:45. On my way to work some guy thought I was drunk, wandering the street and asked if I was okay. It figures that the only time I pass someone on the way to work I look like a bum and decided to wear my Every Avenue shirt over my work shirt. Then, when I got over the I-94 overpass I suddenly realized it's Sunday and the store opens an hour later, so my shift starts an hour later. Nice.

I don't work again until Wednesday afternoon, which means I have 3 entire days off, if you include today, which I completely squandered. I don't plan to do much; just catch up on some gaming I haven't been able to do in a while. I installed all my favorite PC games today, including The Sims 23 and all it's expansions (which generally takes between 3 and 6 hours to accomplish), so I plan on building a lot in the next few days. I also played enough Test Drive Unlimited to buy an Enzo Ferrari and get enough achievement points to advance to the next career level, opening up more missions.

That's all I did today. I went to see Wall-E the other day. Good movie. It was well animated and has a really great story, but apparently a lot of people are bitching about the political message being shoved down their throat. First, it wasn't really that bad. Second, sometimes politics needs to be shoved down peoples' throats so they'll pay attention. Now I'm off to build. Or race. Or both. I haven't decided.