I finally beat Oasis on Insane. Were this 2004, when the game actually came out, it would likely be much more exciting. Nonetheless, Oasis has provided me with months of gameplay, and was totally worth the $6 I paid for it. On a similar note, rumors have it that a version of Civilization will be coming to Facebook this June. Aside from my occasional Scrabble obsession (and whenever someone flings a Pathwords invite at me), I’m not a big Facebook gamer. Yoville got tedious, and I haven’t logged into my account in months now. There’s a bunch of others (Mafia Wars, Farmville, etc.) I signed up for, played once, and then promptly forgot about. I think a problem with these games is that they’re mostly about doing the same thing over and over to acquire more stuff and build your character. None of which is all that interesting to me. One thing that is immensely interesting, however, is Civilization.

Job prospects = still slow. Didn’t get the job I interviewed for this past Friday. They might have a temporary use for me for a project that may or may not happen, however, which would be nice. I’d like to get more hours at Liberty, as though the pay is meager, it’s actually pretty fun to jump around by the side of the road all day long. Also, I don’t think I’ve ever felt this healthy in the middle of winter before.

I wish another Chick-fil-a would open up out here. This is because I want to do another First 100. Preferably without the blizzard this time around. I also really just want to eat chicken constantly, because it is so freaking good.

I finished reading “Jonathan Norrell & Mr. Strange” by Susanna Clarke recently. It was fabulous, a very British early 1800′s take on magicians and magic, quite long and involving with quirky characters, I highly recommend it. I’m currently reading “Nature Girl” by Carl Hiaasen, which is quite funny.

Finished watching Evangelion. Apparently the ending was poorly executed due to budget issues, and I thus need to see a movie called “The End of Evangelion” for proper fulfillment. I really liked the concept behind the ending, and we can hopefully get our paws on the movie sometime soon. Started watching Bleach, am enjoying it but with mixed feelings. The more it veers away from the “I need to kill this giant Hollow” plots, the more I like it.

Oh yeah, I totally scored some free fabric off of Craigslist. Giant bag, some scraps and some decent-sized pieces. I’ve got a pair of black shorts with a drawstring that never really fit me right, and I’ve got this great idea to convert it into a skirt, adding some fabric to the bottom in ruffles or something. I’ve got plenty of fabric to do this, now it’s simply the matter of locating said shorts. There’s this black hole that follows me sometimes, and likes eating things I’d prefer not to have eaten. I picked up a tank top from Old Navy with the final dregs of my gift card, and as a tank top it’s entirely too long, but with some fabric on the bottom it would make an awesome dress. I need to find a fabric really similar to the tank top’a fabric to execute this, however. Now, once I have made these items, I need to find or create circumstances where I would actually wear a skirt or a dress. Pants are just such a nice default, but it’s a shame that I keep making all of this crap and never wear it anywhere for the most part.

Oh yeah, crispy chocolate in my near future. Old Towne Arvada is having some sort of chocolate festival, whereupon I will enter items into their cookie contest and, with any luck, will win a giant pile of chocolate. Which would be good timing, as our Christmas chocolate is slowly running out!

Anyhow, feel free to check out my updates at varoper.com!

Job hunt is still working it’s dismal business. Or not working, as the case may be. I kinda wish my resume wasn’t all over the board. I also kinda wish I’d gotten my degree in something other then freaking illustration. Or at least double-majored, or something. I am still super-excited about trying to go back to school, but I suspect that it may be easier for me to grab a 2nd bachelor’s before attempting grad school. I want to do computer science, and, while I did take several math and CS courses during my first runaround in school, it’s not nearly enough to be able to get into grad school with. Meaning that even if I got accepted, I’d still need to take many undergrad courses. At grad school pricing. So, taking them as undergrad would be more financially astute. That, and apparently to get into the grad school I’m looking at (University of Colorado), one needs four letters of recommendation. My current job recommendation list of people wouldn’t translate so well into recommendations for grad school, and most of my undergrad teachers barely knew I was there where I was in their class, much less 8 years after the fact. Albeit, when I was actually in college, my dilemma was of the “my adviser is a landscape painter, this helps me not for computer-related grad school programs” sort of issue as well. And, I’d also need to retake the GRE. And study for the GRE. Err, and move to Colorado first, and get a permanent address there so that in a year’s time, when I actually start school, I’ll be considered in-state and quality for the much-lower tuition rate.

And then I’ve got these ingrown ideas about how I’m really just supposed to be doing art. I suspect is has to do with labeling. From when I was young I was the Artist to my parents (no Prince involved, mind you), and continued being the Artist for quite some time, despite having other things I was also good at and also enjoyed. So I tried the ‘art for a living’ thing (though the ‘art’ part is arguable), it’s called ‘painting bunches of identical urns over and over and over again until your brains fall out’. There are other ways to achieve ‘art for a living’ but they tend to involve painting many things that all seem similar, giving yourself a ‘look’, and then continuing to paint with that look so that people feel you’re consistent enough in what you create to trust you to create something for them. The whole ‘look’ think is tedious, to me. I find value in having the flexibility to create a range of art types.

In any case, developing a site/application to me is pretty much like drawing&painting a picture anyhow. You get this idea in your head of how it’s gonna look/work by the end, you map out what you’re gonna do (sketching a framework, or writing out a framework and setting up basic files with empty classes and functions sketching your future intentions with them). Or, if you’re like me, you neglect your framework and jump on in, leaving lots of correction for later (I’ll paint something so the shading ends up completely inconsistent with things I do later, and needs correcting/I’ll write out logic so a little part of my application becomes awesome, but needs complete rewriting later to become consistent with the rest of the larger application and to not have ridiculous redundancy). And in the end, I always have touchups. I’ll go back and darken/lighten things for better contrast, or I’ll go back in and add comments and change whole sets of variable names, just for better readability. In any case, I think doing art and writing code are exceptionally similar tasks.

And on a final note, I need to stop thinking that brownies are the ideal breakfast food, they’re not exactly the Breakfast of Champions here.