Well, this last week or so has been incredibly crazy. Get ready to spend a little bit of time reading this.

First, there's work Sunday. Sure, I knew Iwas going to have to do inventory and stuff as usual, but then I have to put up 35 pages of labels in like 30 minutes? I'd like to see someone do that, because it didn't happen.
Monday was about the only good thing that came out of this week. DeVry decided to give us our own little "rant session" as I called it, about the new scheduling and building remodeling. They still think 8 week classes are better than 15 week ones. I'd like to see THEM take physics in 8 weeks, and pass it. Its impossible. Don't even ask about this week's subject in Physics. Apparently gravity doesn't exist, and apparently every measurement ever made is invalid, right along with time, because as soon as something moves or gets measured, it changes, and time goes slower if you're moving. They say they have all there "statistics" saying that it works like 5% better according to them. Who cares? Not me. As far as I'm concerned, those statistics mean nothing. Its gonna take more than a pile of numbers that I really don't want to look at to convince me that 8 week schedules are better.

Anyway, then they talked about the remodeling and selling of the building they want to do. I dunno what kind of idiots they had come up with the idea, but its not a good one. What kind of person would want to move us to the upper floor, when all the labs are on the lower floor? Then they want to add a another school at the campus. Seriously, if they want to add another one, they need MORE room, not less, but they still insist on selling the place and basically leasing back the upper floor and about 2/3 of the lower floor. Why not keep the whole place, and pop that other one in the leftover room? I mean, it does make a whole lot more sense.

So, things still went on, and we started bringing up all kinds of other things about it, like interfering with work, group projects, and all that. They seemed to not care one bit, so that just made me even angrier over it.


After that, we brought up the WebSense issue. So, apparently the baka IT guy they have working the help desk in the mornings decided to randomly block out 99.9999999% of the Internet last Monday, including stuff we use for our classes, and even the Student Game Development Associantion's (SGDA Club) forums. Seriously, do they think we're two-year-olds on the Intenet or something? Tuesday brought even more blockings, including a quota on email usage, where you could only spend so long checking your email or sending assignments to yourself at home, to instructors, or to others.  Honestly, what in the hell was the guy thinking?

Last Friday, in our GSP class, we were working on the audio clips for the city and the office we made in 3D Studio Max, of which lagged the computers to thheir death, and gave me Z-fighting so bad that I was ready to punch about 50 holes in the monitor and then slash it to bits with a sword or something. Can't they get computers that meet the minimum requirements to run the stuff we need? Crappy onboard graphics doesn't help us any. Don't make me bring my sledgehammer in and do to the file server, the print server, and the lab computers what I did to my old motherboard after it decided to crap out on me (stupid BIOS of computer-killingness)!!! Anyway, as far as audio goes, we didn't have microphones, so we had to go online and try to find some decent sound clips.

The problem: Every page you tried to go to resulted in that damned "Blocked By WebSense" page, because they're all set as "Audio and MP3 Download Services." I was ready to either hack the server myself, or go up to the Help Desk and pound some sense into that IT guy who personally told me "I don't know how." to me asking him to fix the time on the server a few weeks ago, because the lab computers get their system time from there, and its like 15 minutes off, causing my iPod to change to that time when I plug it in (I have no choice but to use it, because the idiot is too lazy to set up my external hard drive's permissions on the server so I can use it.) Since my iPod's time gets messed up, I end up missing the bus, because I end up leaving too late. :angry: I mean, geez, it takes about 5 seconds to fix the system time, and he's too lazy to do THAT? I'd say fire the guy. He doesn't do his job. Bring back the other guy. At least he knew what he was doing.

So, we continued ranting on about WebSense, and I told the President, who was there at the meeting, that they were getting absolutely ridiculous with the blocking. He didn't really respond to it, but I'll tell you this. It must've done the trick.

I walked into CIS class Tuesday morning expecting to not be able to do a thing on the Internet, but I was suprised. I was able to get to all the sites I used to be able to go to before he blocked it all. Apparently the main server suffered a massive crash Monday night, as I was told by one of the GSP instructors as I was on my way out of CIS class. He said it was all thanks to me that they didn't turn it on after they got the server back up again, because it would do nothing but get me right back up there compaining to them again if they turned it back on. So at least we solved one problem at that little "rant session."

So, I got home, and got ready for work, and went in. 5 hours of putting up truck as usual on Tuesdays. Nothing really bad there. Just a normal tuesday evening.

When I got to GSP class Wednesday morning, I didn't think it was going to be so boring. All he did was an intro to normal mapping. What it was, how it works, etc. I was ready to fall asleep after that. Then, after that came CIS class again. We had been working on a payroll system, but he also forgot one thing that is on our final that he didn't show us, so he ended up showing that to us, and we never did get the payroll system done, even after working on it in class Thursday, so now we're expected to get at least the "Display" tab done, which I did yesterday afternoon, and it only took like 5 minutes to finish, if that. The only hard part about what he needed to show us, which was how to read and write whole objects to and from files, is remembering the includes we have to use at the top of the file. The hardest one to remember is this: using System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary, or somethig like that. At least there's IntelliSense, or I wouldn't be able to remember that, just like I forgot how to set up the Direct3D device in Managed DirectX already, and I had just been messing around with it last week. Thursday's English class was just about 20 minutes of boring final review. That's gonna be just as easy as the midterm was, and that was a total excuse. It was WAY too easy, especially for a test in an English class, so I don't even need to worry about that.

Then there's 3 hours of Physics class. You guessed it. More quantum mechanics. I seriously don't know why he even needs to teach it to us, because we won7t use anything other than vectors and classical mechanics, which were the first 6 or 7 weeks of the class, in game programming. He had us do the quiz, which I failed miserably, because I mixed up what's called the "dilated time" and the "proper time" in the formulas. There goes my grade even more. Hopefully I can get through that class, because I am NOT taking it over again.

Friday was just plain straight boring. Sure, we had an ennvironmental artist from Rainbow Studios there, but guess what the topic was: Normal Mapping. This guy showed us hhow to make and use them, and he did want us to follow along, but we couldn7t do it because the computers fail, and we can't easily install anything on them, because they have writes to all the hard drives blocked, except for our home directories. So, I downloaded the plugins anyway, and tried to install them. No luck. So after a bit of fighting with it, I grabbed what7s called "Universal Extractor," which can extract all the files from a setup program, in this particular case, InstallShield. I ran it, got the files, chucked em on the esktop in a folder, set Photoshop's extra plugins directory to there, and still had no luck. So, I plugged in my iPod, threw it in a folder on there, changed the setting in Photoshop, and it just magically started working. But it was already too late to follow along, so I had to try to remember how to do it myself. The only hard part about making those things is selecting the right areas of the texture to do the level adjustments so the deeper parts go deeper in the normal map than the brighter parts. After spending like 15 minutes making the selection, I finally got it,adjusted the levels, fired up the plugin, and there it was. So, I saved it out, and tested it in 3DS Max, and it looked pretty cool, but its a lot of work for that. I tried it out with another texture, this time a 256x256 rock texture, instead of the 512x512 brick texture I did first, and it actually took me almost a half an hour with the Magic Wand tool to get the selection right and make the normal map. It didn't come out as good as the brick one, but it did work. Trust me, I don't like staring at those things very long either. They make my eyes go "Boink!"  if I look at em too long, because of their really crazy colors:

After that, I was bored out of my mind, and hungry, so I ate and went home, and was bored to death all evening, other than attending Skulltag's weekly Friday Night Fragfest, which I pretty much dominated this time. Terminator was the game mode. Basically, there's a red ball that spawns at the start of the game, and if you grab it, you get 200 health, and sopme serious damage increases. Let's just say it makes the pistol and chaingun even more deadly than a super shotgun if you know the 100% accuracy trick. Its hilarious seeing "Such and such was tickled by your pea shooter. They're always like "OMGWTF!?!?!?" when I do that to them. Same thing goes with the railgun that Skulltag has. Comine that with a spread rune, and they're in for a lot of instagib death because of the damage bonus. Here's some shots from the scores last night: (You can probaby guess who I am in there. If not, my player name is Syaoran of course)
My first game in
Seriously owned
Not too bad
Finally lost, but not by a whole lot. It was a tough battle, and was pretty close all the way
The sucky map (I totally sucked on this one)
The long and hard battle

That's pretty much it so far. Its been one crazy week for me, and next week in gonna be even worse, because its finals week.

Well, I'm out for now.

さようなら！
-Questwizard

Well, no new icons yet, thanks to school. So, there's the ungodly difficult physics class, the boring yet time-consuming English class, the easy GSP class, and at last, the pathetically easy to pass CIS class.

Then there's work. I told them not to give me more than 25 hours a week, and they wanted to throw like 50 hours on me, which I managed to get lowered to 31 after getting angry. So now I'm stuck working more than I should on a week that I also have to work on two other papers on top of the consumerism essay that's due tomorrow for English class. That makes a whopping three essays of doom that I have to get done all at once, and then keep up with physics class. And go figure, there's a test in CIS, but I don't even need to start to think about that to get a perfect score on it. It's just far too easy.

Sleep is practically impossible anymore, because I just have too much that always has to get done, and no time to do it. Work doesn't help any either, since they always try anything they can to keep me as late as possible (mostly by not counting my register on purpose if they stick me on one), knowing I have to get up at 4 AM to get ready for class in the morning. And I have no choice but to stay late on truck day, which is Tuesday now, thanks to the distribution center changing it on us the day before :glare: they sent us 16 pallets of doom, of which 10 are still sitting in the backroom waiting to be put up, because there's no spot for any of it in the current planograms we have, so now we have to reorganize and count everything in order to put that crap up, which is why they want me to work an insane amount of hours now, even though I can't.

Oh, and before I forget:

Quote:

"Hmm... So... I've been working on this new scene in 3D Studio Max and after a friend help me out in figuring out how to change the damn thing to a inset of black (you know who ya are... and I'd like some credit in yer dang icon postings... arigato) ((next time anyway...))
I'll try and upload a picture in the coming week 'cuz I'm VERY DAMN proud of my sword texturing... which reminds me I need to go invert that pic...

So... Here's a short and sweet closing
Guten Nacht

Keri~ ^^"

Anyway, about that GAO? icon. Thanks for fiding a decent font and coming up with the border idea and helping me pick out decent colors for the updated icon (I was kind of expecting red, orange, and yellow when I asked that anyway.)! :P Its all my own fault for the crap font and color in the first one btw, and so you know, that font wasn't Comic Sans MS, it was Anime Ace, although it does look kinda similar in some ways.

Oh, and yeah, remember to invert that pic back to where the transparent stuff is white... And that its supposed to be the "Mask" in the Mask Map on the material!

Well, that's about all for now. I need to have some fun before I stay up all night trying to write that consumerism essay for tomorrow.

Here's the updated version of the GAO? icon from the last post. I think it turned out much better than the old one. Anyway, here's the icon:

ツバサ・クロニクル (Tsubasa Chronicle)

Here's some more icons from episode 37 of Tsubasa Chronicle. I still have a few more to do, and I need to find a better font for the GAO? icon, but I guess it'll work until I can find a better font for it.

ツバサ・クロニクル (Tsubasa Chronicle)

鋼の錬金術師 (Fullmetal Alchemist)

Do I really need to say any more?

Figured I might as well go ahead and answer some random questions. I'm bored to death right now anyway, seeing as I had to work the morning shift, and the place was totally dead most of the time.

So, here we go!

1) Do you have a crush on somebody?: Not that I know of.
2) Do you hate more than 3 people?: Probably not.
3) How many houses have you lived in?: One, not counting mobile homes or apartments.
4) Favorite candy bar?: I dunno. There's too many to list.
6) Have you ever tripped someone?: Probably.
7) Least favorite school subject?: At the moment, Physics. P.S.: I HATE VECTORS!!! They're too annoying!
8) How many pairs of shoes do you own?: 1.
9)Do you own a Britney Spears CD?: No, and I don't want one.
10) Have you ever thrown up in public?: A long long time ago.
11) Name one thing that is always on your mind: Anime.
12) Favorite genre of music?: J-Pop.
13) What's your sign?: Gemini.
14) What time were you born?: Late at night.
15) Do you like beer?: NO!
16) Have you ever made a prank phone call?: If you count yelling at telemarketers all the time, then yes.
18) Are you sarcastic?: Depends.
19) What are your favorite colors?: Blue, green, and red.
20) How many watches do you own?: None. Why do I need one when my computer has a clock, along with my phone and iPod?
21) Summer or winter?: Summer.
22) Is anyone in love with you?: Dunno.
23) Favorite color to wear?: Black.
24) Pepsi or Sprite?: Neither. I hate soda.
25) What color is your cell phone?: Black.
26) Where is your second home?: Don't have one, although it would be nice if I had one somewhere in Japan.
27) Have you ever slapped someone?: Too many times to count.
28) Have you ever had a cavity?: Yes.
29) How many lamps are in your bedroom?: One tiny one by the door.
30) How many video games do you own?: More than I feel like counting at the monent.
31) What was your first pet?: A cat.
32) Ever had braces?: No.
33) Do looks matter?: Sometimes.
34) Do you use chapstick?: No.
35) Name 3 teachers from high school: Mrs. Stahlbush, Mr. Getch, and Ms. Rice.
36) American Eagle or Abercrombie?: Neither.
37) Are you too forgiving?: No.
38) How many children do you want?: None yet.
39) Do you own something from Hot Topic?: I don't know for sure, but I probably have stuff from other places that's also on there.
40) Favorite breakfast meal: Ramen.
41) Do you own a gun?: No. If I did want to own a weapon, it would have to be a sword.
42) Ever thought you were in love?: A couple times.
43) When was the last time you cried?: A couple months ago.
44) What did you do 3 nights ago?: Worked on a bunch of Fullmetal Alchemist icons that I ought to get around to posting.
45) Olive Garden?: Rarely.
46) Have you ever called your teacher mommy?: No.
47) Have you ever been in a castle?: No, but I want to.
48) Nicknames?: Too many to list them all, but a couple are Johnny Blaze, Lefty, and just Jon.
49) Do you know anyone named Bertha?: As far as I know, no.
50) Ever been to Kentucky?: I used to live there.
51) Do you own something from Banana Republic?: No.
52) Are you thinking about somebody right now?: Yes.
53) Ever called somebody Boo?: Once with a guy hiding in a coffin on Halloween as I came up to the doorstep, and it scared him half to death when I did it.
54) Do you smoke?: No.
55) Do you own a diamond ring?: No.
56) Are you happy with your life right now?: Yes.
57) Do you dye your hair?: No.
58) Does anyone have a crush on you?: I dunno. You tell me.
59) Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts?: Both every once in a while.
60) What were you doing in May of 1994?: Probably playing video games.
62) McDonald's or Wendy's?: Both.
63) Do you like yourself?: Yes.
64) Are you closer to your mother or father?: Mother.
65) Favorite physical feature of the preferred sex?: ?!?!?!
66) Are you afraid of the dark?: Not one bit.
67) Have you ever eaten paste?: I don't remember.
68) Do you own a webcam?: No.
69) Have you ever stripped?: No.
70) Ever broke a bone?: No.
71) Are you religious?: No.
72) Do you chat on AIM often?: No. Wow, that's a lot of no answers in a row...
73) Pringles or Lays?: Pringles.
74) Have you ever broken someone's heart?: Probably.
75) Rugrats or Doug?: Neither. ANIME FTW!!!
76) Full House or The Brady Bunch?: ^^^See #75.^^^
77) Do you like your high school guidance counselor?: No, I didn't.
78) Has anyone ever called you fat?: No.
79) Do you have a birth mark?: Yes, but its very very hard to see.
80) Do you own a car?: No.
81) Can you cook?: Some.
82) 5 things that annoy you: Angry customers, my brother's cat, the crappy computers at school, Java, and vectors.
83) Do you text message often?: No.
84) Money or love?: Love.
85) Do you have any scars?: One on my right knee, from falling off a scooter.
86) What do you want more than anything right now?: Season 3 of ツバサ・クロニクル (Tsubasa Chronicle).
87) Do you enjoy scary movies?: Yes, but they don't scare me.
88) Relationships or one night stands?: Relationships.
90) Do you enjoy greasy food?: Not really. I tend to wipe off a lot of the grease.
91) Have you seen all the Rocky movies?: Not a single one.
92) Do you own a box of crayons?: No.
93) Who was the last person that said they loved you?: My mother.
94) Who was the last person that made you cry?: Don't remember.
95) Who was the last person that made you laugh?: A friend at school.
96) Who was the last person that instant messaged you?: A friend of mine from Skulltag.
97) Who was the last person that called you?: Manager from another store who used to work at the one I'm at.
98) Can you cook?: Didn't I already answer this once before?
99) What was your dream when you were growing up?: To be a game programmer living in Japan.
100) What talent do you wish you had?: Being able to do fancy jumps and attacks like anime characters.
101) Favorite place: Well, right now its in front of my computer, but I guess it would really be Japan, since that's where I want to go after all.
102) Favorite vegetable: Corn.
103) Last book you read: ツバサ・クロニクル (Tsubasa Chronicle) Volume 10.
104) What zodiac sign are you?: Gemini. Hey, wait... Didn't I answer this one before too???
105) Any Tattoos and/or Piercings?: No.
106) Worst Habit?: Nailbiting.
107) Do we know each other outside of lj?: Well, from the post I got this question from, yes. As for where it originally came from, I don't know.
108) What is your favorite sport?: I'm not really into sports.
109) Negative or Optimistic attitude?: When it comes to the school computers, more negative than you could imagine, but overall, Optimistic.
110) What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator with me?: Pull out my iPod and start watching anime or listening to J-Pop music.
111) Worst thing to ever happen to you?: Falling off a scooter and putting a big hole in my right knee.
112) Tell me one weird fact about you: I can draw fairly well on a computer, although I can't even make a straight line on paper.
113) Do you have any pets?: None myself, but I have to put up with my brother's cat that likes to run all over the place, scratch stuff, and run into things.
114) Do you know how to do the macarena?: No.
115) What time is it where you are now?: 16:08.
116) Do you think clowns are cute or scary?: Neither. They just tend to annoy me.
117) If you could change one thing about how you look, what would it be?: My hair. It looks AWFUL.
118) Would you be my crime partner or my conscience?: Your conscience. I like control.
119) What color eyes do you have?: Blue.
120) Ever been arrested?: No, and I don't intend to be.
121) Bottle or Draft?: Neither.
122) If you won $10,000 dollars today, what would you do with it?: Take a month off from school and work and go to Japan for a while.
123) What kind of bubble gum do you prefer to chew?: None.
124) What's your favorite bar to hang at?: None, unless you count the school cafeteria. After all, it does have a pool table.
125) Do you believe in ghosts?: Yes.
126) Favorite thing to do in your spare time?: Make icons. Could it be any more obvious?
127) Do you swear a lot?: If I'm angry, yes.
128) Biggest pet peeve?: People always wanting to know everything I do.
129) In one word, how would you describe yourself?: I dunno for sure, but I guess creative would work.
130) Will you repost this so I can fill it out and do the same for you?: I guess. After all, I only went through all this because I'm bored to death, and it'll give me something to do.

I guess this is what happens when I get bored. I went off on another icon-making spree this morning, making a whole bunch of icons based on episode 37 of Tsubasa Chronicle. That episode was hilarious when I watched it the other day, so I just had to make a bunch of icons from it. First one is animated, following through the kissing scene, where they are in that cartoonish world that Mokona made up. I'd say, Mokona has one wild imagination... The rest are just each individual icon separately.

ツバサ・クロニクル (Tsubasa Chronicle)

Well, I'm not too good at starting these kinds of things off, and I don't really have a whole lot of time right now, so I guess I'll get right to the batch of anime icons I made the other day:

1. AIR

   ツバサ・クロニクル (Tsubasa Chronicle)

   新世紀エヴァンゲリオン (Neon Genesis Evangelion)

   舞-HiME (Mai-HiME)

I know they aren't the best things in the world, but my next batch should be somewhat better. Maybe I'll even do some animated ones.

Well, that's all for now.