Finished my first of three midterms today. Besides the fact that I completely missed a problem and spent too long on another problem, I did alright. Is it bad that I'm shooting for the mean instead of one standard deviation above the mean? I have to get my butt back into academic shape. And in a hurry. Economics was today, Quantitative Analysis is on Thursday, and then I have Accounting on Monday. Hooray!

Just a quicky. The Witch fires came within two miles of my house, but we were fortunate enough that the majority of the fires were kept to North and East of Espola in Poway. The event was tragic, and I was fortunate to have friend and family all stay safe as well as look after each other. It's great to see communities come together. I wish this can continue in less traumatic situations in the future.

A big thank you to all who got in contact with me to ensure that my family was doing fine. We're doing great because of all of you!

I keep telling myself that I have to update this blog more often. One of these days, I'll sit down and clean up my iTunes library, redo my skin for Xanga, and still have enough time to get all my other work done. The first three weeks of school have flown by, and it's definitely a change from past education experiences. I have to spend about 50% of my time doing actual work. Homework, Case Studies, and lots of reading constitute most of the labor involved. The rest of the time is spend networking. This includes going to company events, professional speakers, mixers, and doing clubwork. Clubs here seem just as important as any coursework. The groups that get formed here are going to be the people you could potentially work with for the rest of our life. There are several groups of people from the '06 and '07 class that have started companies that were formed at Rady. This illustrates the importance of making good connections and making good friends.

I have to thank my old manager at Concrete Games for suggesting that I not try to work and attend school at the same time. I think my experience would have been completely different if I was part of the Executive program. After talking with several people in the executive program last night at our regular Thursday Business Casual, I realized how important it was to make these great connections with peers which is extremely difficult if you're working at the same time.

Recently, I've been closing my posts with the hopes that I will be able to blog more regularly. I will also end this one the same way. I'll do my best to set aside 15 minutes next week to blog!

Every time I see Pauline posting, it reminds me that I should be posting about my "exciting" life. Though in my opinion, it's quite drab. Here's the Cliff Notes version: Leaving working. Starting School. Busy. Busy. Busy.

I suppose the longer version goes as follows: Work is winding down, and it was a good decision by my management to not have me work part time. As PreTerm (refresher courses on core topics and mixers) has shown, I will have very little free time outside of school for the next two years. It's interesting the collision of pivotal points all colliding into a single space in time. On September 21st (today), we have several programmers leaving the company. Most of whom are going back to school (like me). Additionally, there are a lot of other changes happening internally at the studio. These are all for the good though.

School is going to be a mess. I've been chosen as the team leader for our group for this quarter. I feel it's an opportunity to increase my interaction with the staff and faculty, but it also adds a greater workload to an already hectic quarter. I have to get used to the quarter system, and learn how to study the right way. The classes I've attended so far are quite different from classes I've had in the past. Engineering and Engineering related courses are very meticulous, whereas some of my courses will be much more personable. I've had one professor explicitly state that, "if you do not bring relevant topics to class and talk about them within class, you will be dinged and lose points."

Aladdin was right. "A whole new world"

Oh My God! I've been so busy that I can't believe I haven't posted. I have done so much, yet written so little. So this past weekend was spent at Floppy Hat Day at the Padres games. Saturday I spend shopping and then having a mystery date at Opaque. A blind dining experience is how I'd describe it. Pitch black, and you probably want to eat with your hands if you want to keep your clothes clean. Salad appetizer, chicken/meat/fish entree, and dessert too. Then after dinner we still went to Dennis' birthday party. His new house is amazing. Speakers in every room and a cabana with a light fixture in the backyard. It's nice.

Last weekend was spent at Comic Con. Friday was spent mostly wandering the floor. Got some nice prints signed. Missed out on the exclusive Penny Arcade poster. Should have gotten it as soon as I saw it. It was real nice... Saturday was spent going to the Futurama panel, which was amazing. They did a live reading of a comic book to tie the end of the last season to the upcoming DVD. After that was the Joss Whedon panel, which some people went crazy over. I enjoy his work, but he is not my master. I have no master. Oh! Friday night we listened to the Kevin Smith panel and he was promoting a new series on the CW of all things. It's called Reaper, and is a pretty good show. He's also starting to bald! How unfortunate, but soon he'll have a friar's ring!

On Sunday, we got some more great prints and then had a lunch with Geoff, Cheryl, Ameesh, Richard, Karin, Mandy. I would say that if you go to Old Towne, that Old Towne Mexican Cafe is always worth the wait, unless you can find a place of comprable food.

What did I do before those last two weeks? How about Downtown San Diego, San Bernadino, iPhone camping, Blackberry Pearl, Chuck-e-Cheese, Niban, 11 year old broken Lamy, Lucy running in her ball, Avenue Q, Sailing, and more stuff I can't remember. It's been super fun. I'll try to picture and update more later!

Oh, and I finished year 7.

At some point, I'll put more photos up, but this should be good for now....
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30354124@N00/540229371/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30354124@N00/540229049/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30354124@N00/540228663/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30354124@N00/540228439/
The photos have a timestamp so you can see when they were taken. She's getting over her cold, so that's a good thing, though the doctor's visit was 4x the cost of the rat. But her pink tail makes up for it. It's just a little pink tip at the end, and it's adorable. I'm starting to treat train her, but she's a bit harder to train than Frankie was. She's a bit of a spider rat, and climbs her new cage like a scene from Spider-man 3.

Pet news aside, my brother is coming in town this weekend for a full week. That's about all I'll say about him. Work is going good, and Karin's in love with her new job, which is a great relief for me. I could go on about what I did the past couple of weekends, but I'll spare you the long winded stories. Maybe I'll do a better post next week.

Another weekend, another concert. I to the KROQ Weenie Roast this past weekend and it was a great show. Not for the same reasons that Coachella is a good show though. Coachella is more akin to a gathering of people who love music and want to share it with other people. It's a festival, where music is the main theme. The Weenie Roast on the other hand is a corporate effort to collect more money for you and an efficient execution of short playlists with a long list of performers. The stage was set up to rotate allowing sets to break down on the back half of the stage and set up for the next groups. This allows bands to be playing almost constantly without the need for a break in the action. It's a blockbuster of big name bands. And there were plenty, The Bravery, Bad Religion, Incubus, Interpol, Korn, Linkin Park, Social Distortion, Queens of the Stone Age. These are some seriously big bands that could fill a stadium with their own playing power, but KROQ manages to bunch them all together for you. And not only that, when you pay for the good seats, you actually get, a seat! So you have the advantage of going out to get an overly expensive drink, and not having to worry about losing your seat because you were "thirsty."

In more domestic news, I got a new rat! Her name is "Lucy" and though my Flickr acct has been dormant for quite some time, I'll be sure to post some pictures of her up as soon as possible. I'm amazed at how calm and collected she is. Doesn't try to run when you pick her up, stays very calm in your hand, and doesn't even eat from your hand. She's quite the lady. But just as sharp and wily as Frankie. She's already learned how to jump out of her cage and runs around my desk looking for cover. I think she's going to be a great pet.

Comparing my life to the blogs of my friends such as Ennekube and Mudskipper remind me that my life isn't all that interesting. At least in my own eyes. But I guess the blog is a public domain to bitch and complain and talk about yourself. In an effort to keep active in the blogosphere, here's a recap of my week. Woke up late every day to work (finally figured out the problem this morning). The weekend was a throwback to weekends of old. Drinking heavily on Friday night at Henry's. Soccer on Saturday. Eating my Cinco de Mayo meal at JV's taco shop with Matt and Karin. Then bar hopping in PB with Matt, Jason, Leila, and Nick. We hit up Cass St. Bar and Open Bar. Popcorn was flying and of course the drink of the night was Mexican beer.

I guess my new goal is to get back on the once a week blog post. I don't feel like I've been very busy, but things keep piling up. I can't even make it to soccer these days. I'm a mess! But I did manage to go to Coachella with Karin last weekend. We only attended Saturday, but we camped out Friday and Saturday. Here's my grade for the bands we saw:

Yeva                         C
The Cribs                   B+
Steve Aoki                B+
DJ Heather                B
Hot Chip                   A
Peter Bjorn & John    B
Kings of Leon            B+
the Arcade Fire         B+
Girl Talk                    A
Red Hot Chili Peppers   A-
Tiesto                        B

Overall, I got to see all the bands I could given the conflict of set times. I'm definitely excited to see who's playing next year, but camping is out of the question. It was just too exhausting to camp, and you don't get any sleep.

Concrete Games has moved to its new location, so if anyone wants to take a peek at the new facilities, drop me a line and I can give you a tour sometime. It's really quite nice!

I know it's been a long while since I posted. I'm not going to go into all the details of reporting on what I've done. Two weeks ago was GDC in San Francisco, and at the convention I attended a bunch of great session and learned a lot. On top of that, the Microsoft Party was great, as usual. And I managed to get my DS Lite signed by Shigeru Miyamoto.
Work is going great, and after the one week sabbatical from work has me invigorated and cranking out the task. So I'm pretty happy. Things are going great with Karin. The weekend before GDC, we had a family dinner with me, Karin, Van, his girlfriend Heidi, and my dad. It was a great dinner.