the new and the new old school

Mario Kart 64.  Man.  KB is addicted.

I love that she's so into N64 gaming.  It's the new old school.  I took it over to her house when she was tending her nephews for the night and left it there.  She has been playing ever since.

That being said, this semester is all about gaming for me.  I'm taking four classes and I think that I've had the most busy first two weeks of my college career.  Senior project is coming along nicely.  I've been working mostly on the sound and getting it to sound good.  We don't have a whole lot of good sounds to add yet (other than the ones already added, that is) so the music is very limited.  But nonetheless, I've been working like crazy to get what I can working.

My artificial intelligence class is going to be hard.  I can already tell.  Our first assignment is due in two days, and it is using python.  I have no idea how to use it, and the tutorial (homework 00 -- a non-credit assignment, but negative points if you don't do it) gave me a basic understanding, but I'm still worried.  I got my book in the mail.  1100 pages.  If I could convey sarcasm over a blog, I would tell you about how much I love carrying my book.  I have it at school with me today, and I'm not really thrilled.  Yes, class is almost over and then I'm going home, and I still haven't opened it.  Looks like other homework took priority and I didn't have time to get any of the hard class stuff done.  Awesome.  The funny thing is that the entire class is focused on Pacman.  Ha.

I have two film classes, one is a continuation of a class from last semester called Game Development 1. The unambiguously titled class (Game Development 2) is at night and is hard to stay focused after a long day.  My other film class is the only class I have on two weekdays.  Yeah.  I'm not a fan of classes all day two days a week and then ONE class on its own days each week.  I hate driving to school for one class.

And although I'm complaining, my earliest class this semester is 12:30.  Not too shabby.

So back to the fun part of gaming.  I did something crazy.  Or should I say, Krazy.  I bought a Kinect.

For those who don't know, that's for the Xbox 360.  It's made for playing your Xbox without controllers.  YOU are the controller (Microsoft's slogan for its new product).  It's pretty fun.  I played Kinect Sports and I was sore for days.  I'm excited for it to come.  

The reason that I decided to get my Xbox (which I haven't actually gotten yet) is because I wanted a console that I could play my game I'm making on.  It should be ready for me some time this week, so the Kinect should come about the same time I get my Xbox.  Now I just need to make sure that I don't waste my precious time on.  

Crap.  Now I'm sure that I'm going to waste my time.  I guess I can take it over to KB's house, but then I wouldn't be able to play my game on it for homework.  Why isn't self-control easier?

five. laura luisa triana aguayo

About the Loan

Location:	Guayaquil (Paraiso), Ecuador		Repayment Term:	14 months (more info)
Sector:	Services		Repayment Schedule:	Monthly
Activity:	Sewing		Currency Exchange Loss:	N/A
Loan Use:	For the purchase of a sewing machine.		Default Protection:	Not Covered

Laura designs and sews clothing from her home. She lives in a periurban zone called Paraíso de la Flor, located in an area characterized by its dirt roads and mountains.

As a child she learned how to sew because she enjoyed it. But having had her children without their father, she decided to begin working on a sewing machine that she bought when she was young. Little by little she was able to sew and have some regular customers.

Currently, she does her design and alteration business from home. She works from 9am until her orders are done. She completes her work mending, sewing and designing by the end of the week.

With this loan she wants to buy a sewing machine, cloth and string, because what she has is old. In the future, she wants to have a different location for her business and to be secure in old age.

Translated from Spanish by Flavia Garcia (vol), Kiva Volunteer

Laura, confecciona y cose ropa en su casa. Vive en una zona periurbana llamada Paraíso de la flor ubicada en una zona caracterizada por sus caminos de tierra y montañas.

Desde pequeña ella aprendió a coser porque le gustaba. Pero al ya tener a sus hijos sin un padre decidió comenzar a trabajar en una máquina de coser que se la compro cuando era joven. Poco a poco pudo coser y tener ya un número definido de clientes. En la actualidad tienen su taller de costura y confección en su casa, trabaja desde las 09h00am hasta que termina sus pedidos. Realiza su trabajo haciendo enmendaduras, cociendo y confeccionando para entregarlo el fin de semana.

Con el préstamo quiere comprar una máquina de coser, telas, hilos porque la que tiene ya esta vieja. En el futuro quiere tener un local para su negocio y asegurar su vejez

i'm tired and i want to go home

What can I say?  I've been horrible about writing.  And I know that I could just "vow to write more often" but we all know that won't happen.  I've been busy and blogging has been the last thing on my mind.

For those of you who haven't dabbled in my other blog that I have to keep for school, I would say, "why would anyone want to read this?"  So don't bother.  Sadly, it's linked up to my Google Buzz account, so everyone who is following me gets to read it.  Ha!

The last few weeks have been really hard on me and I've taken it out on those who are around me, and for that I'm sorry.  My classes are not going as well as I had hoped.  I started out this semester with an attitude that I was going to like every class.  I even told myself that about a computer systems class which is very hard.  I thought, "I'm going to be really busy, but it is going to be fun none-the-less."  Sadly, it hasn't been the case, and this week has really showed me how unstable I am in school.

I've been spending as much time as I can in my hard class, but we have a midterm tomorrow and I don't know how to do any of the problems on the practice test.

I have to build a unix shell (for the same class I have the midterm) and I don't even know where to start.

I have a film project due tomorrow and I haven't even started it yet.  I hope to get it done this weekend, but even then, that might be a stretch.

My other film class isn't going well either.  I have to have a working game by Thursday, and we can't even import the models for the player, let alone the environment, correctly.  We were put on "warning" and our game is probably going to get scrapped.

The only other class is my senior project which is surprisingly going well, but I hate being that guy who is leaning on the work of my group.

I spend so much of my time going from school work to emails to everything else.  On average I get 25+ email a day that I have read and respond to.  I'm overwhelmed.  Luckily today has been kind and I've only gotten about 10 or so, but the day is still young.  I'm stressed and I can't wait for some sort of break to come.

On top of that, I haven't been sleeping well... for weeks.  I don't remember the last time I made it through the night.  Huzzah.  I'm sure it's stress-related, but I'm almost to the point of not functioning.  I tried exercising, and KB was kind enough to come with me, but 6am was too early and I quickly lost motivation AND a running partner.

I'm sorry that this has turned into a pitty party, but I'm on my last leg...

and I can't buy lunch because I couldn't find my wallet this morning.  I'm starving.

back to work

Well, with a new (-to-me) computer, the semester is back in full swing.  And with school being in session, that means that I'm back to work!  Yay!

We had a demonstration to highschool teachers today and I think that it went pretty well.  We have a lot of cool things to show them and I'm really excited about how well our presentation went.  From the looks of it, we had the most entertaining and involving 30-minute block and our new group works extremely well together.  We even have a teacher that has come up to us a few times to talk to us about what her students can do to get into computer science.  Sweet!

happy flinstones day

Yeah, you heard me.  The Flintstones turned 50 today.  The amazing things you learn from using Google.

So we're (my classmates and I) sitting in class now waiting for the capstone class to start.  It seems that our game gained popularity.  More-so than we expected... or wanted.  We've been working hard to make our game look good in our presentation that we had on Tuesday, but we really don't want to work on it much longer.  It's a great idea and concept, but it's outside the scope of the class.  We could hack together a game pretty quickly, but making it fun to play and leveling out the players is going to me a ton of work.

For those that don't have any idea what I'm talking about, you can check out my other blog post (on the other blog) that I keep for the class.  So... yeah.

Other than that, life has been quite uneventful.  School keeps me so busy that I feel like I don't have a social life. Although, with the new computer, I was really sad that my pictures were lost, but I found some on the desktop in our home office.  How awesome is that?  I found some gems:

er is ready. :-)

setbacks

Temporary set back... mojolappy is out of commission. A tumble leads to a new computer. More on this story after the break... that is, when my new comput