How to spend your time unemployed

Well, like doeblert suggested at dinner the other night, spending 10 hours a week job hunting and the rest taking "vacation" seems like a good plan. I'm on it so far. Today I woke up, went to the dentist, came back, and worked on my resume for two hours, mostly updating it and converting it to various formats. (If any of you want to go find me a job, please feel free to forward it along: http://www.dr4b.org/resume/.) Then I sent it to two people so far, and I'm going to do more research on CMU staff jobs tomorrow, maybe.

I spent an hour then playing Simcity (I was very good. I did not start up SC3K until I had finished up my resume stuff), and after that got the idea it'd be funny to go to the KGB meeting, so I did that. (I had neglected to remember exactly how COLD it was outside!) Got there just as the meeting was starting and sat in the back of the room with Bayani. I even conveniently had pennies in my pocket to throw! It was sort of fun and sort of weird. Fun in that the people who know me actually were happy to see me and waved and admired my Hello Kitty earmuffs, and I got to throw pennies at Chris, and wave at people, and politely decline the opportunity to kick teki in the butt, but weird in that I've been out of the KGB loop for the most part for so long that meetings seem weird to me... you know, like since the officers aren't my close personal friends anymore the reports don't seem quite as relevant, and such. But, things seem pretty constant for KGB as far as KGB goes. I'm at least glad nobody went "aah! it's Deanna! kick her out, kick her out!" whee. And it seems like they're building up quite a membership, somewhat reminiscent of the year I think of as my "glory days" in KGB, namely 1997-1998. It is good. I saw many people on my LJ friends list there (notably damion, sleepsong, whitemage, naufiel, cdwfs and notably lacking sk4p and I guess blk. Of course Shawn has a good excuse.)

I left around 5:10 so I could go drop film from the weekend off in the UC, and get my baritone and get to Kiltie on time. I actually didn't need quite that much time and got there sort of early, but oh well. I got to warm up and all, which I really did need. My throat felt kind of icky though and I was utterly unable to play anything above a high D clearly.

I bought some snacks from Entropy and then Carl and I walked over to Mike's house after Kiltie for D&D. Except, we found out then, Tal hadn't had a chance to plan an adventure for the day and Brook wasn't showing up at all anyway. So we did a "Reading day" thing. We worked out some things like exactly how much damage Grundar does with his urgrosh, and about partial actions vs. full actions, etc. I rolled up and planned more the characters for Janthina's mission, except it seems we might just revive our old characters and go do that instead. (I like making up these other characters anyway. Just imagine how much fun the party would be with Janthina, our elven female NN 9/1/3 Ftr/Wiz/ArcaneArcher with a vendetta against Iuz questing to get her magic bow back, Kylarra, an elven female CN 4/5/4 Rogue/Wizard/ArcaneTrickster who hates vampires and Iuz just as much as Janthina does, Benedict, a human male LN 13th level Cleric of St. Cuthbert who has been assigned a holy quest of recovering an artifact of the church and bringing the Iuz followers who stole it to justice, and Narthal, a half-elf male NE Ranger/Assassin who was living in a forest in Furyondy minding his own business until followers of Iuz totally trashed it and burned it down, and has devoted his life ever since to killing worshippers of Iuz as revenge. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Lots of good fun orc bashing and Iuz-worshipper-annhilating. And probably some good inter-party squabbles.) Tal and Mike informed me that if I was a proper lower brass person, I would start singing "he is dead... he is dead... he is dead, he is dead, he is dead..." during the "Elegy for a Fallen Comrade" in Kiltie Band. Ok, more like, Mike told me people used to do that and Tal told me I ought to restart it, and Carl admitted how glad he is nobody sings that anymore.

Anyway, after a few hours we went home. I played some DDR and stuff and wrote a thingy for combinator since I hope he gets to work at PGSS this summer.

I wish the weather would get nice again. Nothing sucks more than being laid off right before it gets really fucking cold out. Why couldn't they time it better and do it when it was stll 70 degrees out?

short shameful dumb ideas

You know, much as I shouldn't think about it, I keep looking at the Katsucon web page thinking I want to go to it. I mean, Baltimore could be fun, and maybe cattchan and alternakittyn could go too and hang out and do cool Bemani stuff, and I could enter the Katsucon DDR tournament dressed as Emi (and so could Catt!), and I could try to visit my brother (he lives in Baltimore...) I guess I wish I knew people already going, that I could tag along with, rather than initiating a trip.

Or maybe waiting until April is a better idea, when Anime Central will be in Chicago, and then I can go visit happysteve and enter the DDR tournament there...

The thing is, I don't really keep up with anime at all. I go to anime cons to buy random Japanese stuff, see friends, and play video games. Which I guess I can technically do any time anyway. Well, the part where I dress up as a DDR character I can't do most of the time (and still be considered a normal human being), although I suppose it might be fun to throw a costume party one of these days.

Tuesday, Part 1

I woke up at my leisure. I messed with my computer for about an hour. I managed to fix a little error my computer was having with displaying thumbnails by changing stuff in regedit. I was really proud of myself, because I have this bad tendency to really screw things up on my computer when I mess with things like regedit. But today it was ok. Woo!

I decided I needed some motivation to go somewhere, so I ended up going to campus to eat indian food with Carl. (Carl was nice enough to get me lunch from ToI since I am slower than him and we were cutting it close already. Close enough that he showed up and got their last two lunches or something) We met up in the CS undergrad lounge and ate lunch. It was crowded as heck. It cleared up a little at 3pm because people had class, but damn. I brought Manhattan and we played two games. In the first one Carl won, beating me and Martin and Jcreed. I won the second one, beating Mlahut and Carl and Martin. After that we got out Settlers and played a 5-player game of it. Dave won due to many 10's being rolled early on. I pretty much started by cutting off one of Carl's settlements, and ended up totally cut off by the 3rd or 4th turn of the game. Actually, it was annoying - if Dan had built during his turn, then I would have built my settlement in interphase and cut off Matt, but instead he didn't build and Matt went next and built his settlement.

I went to tell Eli I was going home, but he was busy. So I visited Mark Stehlik for a bit. Josh Decesare and his wife were in Mark's office, so I talked to all of them for a while. I get to go talk to Mark again tomorrow about stuff, and Josh told me to come to Apple's info session and he'll pass along my resume. So we'll see what happens. It was only on my way home that I realized I forgot to print out my resume at all. I can do that tomorrow though.

Oh, and I ran into Charlie, who has apparently lost his roomate, and I've lost my job, so both of us are like "I'd love to go for sushi if I felt like I could afford it... wait... are you going for sushi? I'll go if you are..." heh. So one of these weeks... we'll see.

Also I called my dad this afternoon to tell him about losing my job. He was like "cool. Want the URL to learn about collecting unemployment?" I told him I might come visit him in Philly sometime soon, and he thought that sounded like a fine idea. So I will look into that as well.

Now I am home and have eaten a small dinner and have to fight a mental battle with myself. I told Rebecca I'd go to the Pitt DDR club meeting tonight, although for some reason I'm feeling like I might not want to deal with a huge group of people I don't know. I guess I should go though. That way at least it's a certainty as opposed to an uncertainty... if I have a bad time and hate everyone there, then I can decide not to go back and feel ok about it. If I have a good time, then I can go back sometime. We'll see, I guess. I think tonight is supposed to be a Samba De Amigo night anyway, which is a game I am unfamiliar with for the most part, so maybe it will be fun to learn.

I'll report back later.

Tuesday, Part 2

Hey, that wasn't so bad. I wandered down to the corner of Fifth and Craig and met up with Rebecca, Becky, Bayani, Mike, and (guy whose name I have forgotten). We drove to Mike's place in Shadyside and got out two huge bags of gratuitous music gaming stuff (damn, Rebecca's collection is about as big as mine). Set up DDR Extra Mix and played a bunch of songs. Angel showed up and he and Bayani did a bunch of maniac songs (and I and Rebecca had been doing maniac songs as well). After about an hour, the downstairs neighbors came up and complained, so we had to stop playing it.

Apparently usually they've been much better about it. I hypothesize that it was the playing of lots of MANIAC songs, because you could practically feel the place shaking. I wonder if it's any better or worse here when I play...

Anyway, this was ok, as Rebecca had brought along Samba De Amigo and her two new third-party controllers acquired from toysnjoys.com. Now let me say something - I think toysnjoys are usually pretty cool. I've ordered a lot of stuff from them and never been disappointed (although lately my PSX2 has been a little weird from time to time and I have to wonder about it - but it should still be under warranty, so maybe I'll call and bug them sometime). However, these Samba controllers had ISSUES. It wasn't that she had a burned copy of Samba2K, because we put in the normal american Samba disc and the controllers were still having issues. After many people failed to get them to work, me, who has never really played the game before except in the arcade, decided to step up and try to play. I managed to do three songs before failing! Woo! And the controllers never crapped out at all!

We have no idea, but after a while of trying to play and continually having the controllers accidentally reset the thing, eventually gave up.

For the last hour, we played things like Jammer Lammy and Bust-a-Groove, which are other music games that you can be good at if you have the skill of "knowing where the buttons are on your PSX controller and knowing how to count the beat". They are cute and somewhat worth playing if you can't play DDR due to your downstairs neighbors, but, I think I enjoy bemani games quite a bit more. At least now I know who all of the characters are that I keep seeing people dress up as (Carolee - is your name taken from the BAM character "Kitty-N"?), and I've tried new games. They were kinda entertaining and I'd probably get them if I saw them cheap or on ebay or something, but I wouldn't go out of my way.

Same for Samba actually. If it was cheap and easy to acquire I might pick it up, it'd certainly help my arm muscles much more than Para Para, but... shrug. I already find myself pretty well occupied with my deluge of dancing simulation games.

So, I'm home, and thinking about either inviting these guys over to play DDR here next week, or throwing a bemani party sometime, or both. Hmmm...

Wow, Erin (blistex) defriended me. That's the first person I actually know in real life who defriended me. I wonder if I need to be more entertaining. Oh well. That's ok. LJ is so weird that way in that plenty of people read all of the details of the lives of people they barely know across the world, yet sometimes they don't want to read about the people who live half a mile away. It's a weird notion of "friend". Anyway... heh, it is kind of funny because I always see people welcoming people to their friends list, but not saying goodbye. I guess you figure they're not going to see the goodbye anyway, right?

Anyway, I think it was a relatively good day, and maybe tomorrow I'll even wake up before noon and do some productive stuff like print out copies of my resume. Yeah.