Yeah... this was basic shit that they were teaching us during freshman year at DigiPen, over a decade ago. I'd assume that they're still teaching this now. Crunch is bullshit. Crunch is counterproductive. Crunch doesn't work. And yet, it's still a fairly common thing in the video game industry (and elsewhere, but mostly the video game industry, it seems). And I think that is simply asinine.

The only time I've worked crunch was for a period of maybe a week or two, tops, early in my time at TT123 while on Google Earth, like the first or second year. (EDIT) It was the second year. (/EDIT) We'd be there until like 3:00am or some shit, some days, then back in at 10:00am or so the next day. Shortly after that, I think, was when Google implemented a "no crunch" policy, so that was that.

Well, unless you count regular course load + game projects at DigiPen. That was pretty much four years of crunch time, it seemed, especially in the last month or so of each semester. ¬_¬ DigiPen didn't encourage it and, in fact, actively discouraged it, from what I remember. And yet, it just always seemed to turn out that way. DigiPen would close the computer labs at, like, midnight or whenever, which was their way of saying "Stop," but then we'd just go to someone's house and work for at least another hour or two sometimes. >_>; And yeah, this is a big part of the reason why I vehemently agree with the opinion that crunch time is horrendous horseshit which doesn't work. (I mean, it probably wasn't nearly as bad as I'm remembering it being now, 10-14 years later, but still... I do recall walking a couple of miles from DigiPen back to my condo at 1:00am at least once, which was... pretty interesting... I guess?)

Bull. Shit.

So, because I hadn't heard anything at all back from Dell since last week, I sent them an email today, requesting the status on this issue.

I got back a single line response: "Well I am really sorry to inform you that we are unable to attach the warranties as it was already invoiced. In this case I would request you to check with the New Egg people and they will help you in this case."

Again, I say: Bull. Shit.

So now I have to try to contact NewEgg to see if they will resolve this issue. God fucking dammit.

This has taught me to never buy another Dell product ever again, if nothing else, but that still leaves me with a non-functional Dell laptop that I already bought.

(EDIT) I've now contacted NewEgg via their chat thing, and then emailed some additional info to the NewEgg customer service guy, which was supposedly part of a release of info authorization on my part to the manufacturer (Dell) via NewEgg, so hopefully that has gotten the ball rolling on that and they'll be able to fix at least the warranty issue, if nothing else.

Now, however, I am still without a laptop for the upcoming job-related training thing that's supposed to take place next Monday and Tuesday. (EDIT 2) Which ended up not even happening, anyway. *weary fucking sigh* (/EDIT 2) I sent my potential employer an email today to let them know that I'll probably need to use one of their laptops for that, but haven't heard back from them yet. But then, I also haven't heard back from them at all since last Wednesday, when I went out there to do another job-related training/evaluation thing (to which I brought the now non-functional laptop, though it was still functional at the time, even though I ended up not even using my own laptop since they already had one of theirs set up for me to use), even though I sent them a follow-up email on the day after. It's somewhat ominous that I haven't heard back, but hopefully there's no issue with that. Anyway, I'm getting off-topic, so I'll just leave it at that, for now. (/EDIT)

"The truth is that the only way not to feel really terrible is to work.

But sometimes it seems easier just to feel really terrible."

-- Rust Hills, Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular (from the final chapter "Afterword: Writing in General")

( Mountain of text behind cut )

I got a call a few hours ago that my eldest sister is in the hospital with stage 4 intestinal cancer which apparently has already spread to her pancreas and possibly her liver as well. She sounded fine when I talked to her on the phone a few minutes ago, and she said they still didn't know for sure what all the options are, but all in all, after talking to my other sisters, it didn't sound like the prognosis was going to be very good.

She'd already had some surgery related to this a few years ago, and apparently had made plans to have something else to be done later next year related to this that she hadn't been planning to tell anyone about until after Christmas, but it seems like it was much worse than they thought it would be, given that she had to be brought to the hospital about it earlier this week.

In any case, I was already scheduled to fly back to North Carolina for Christmas, leaving out of Seatac at shortly after midnight this coming Sunday morning. Was originally planned to be coming back out here on Dec 31, but there's talk of maybe postponing my return trip (not, I think or at least hope, for reasons related to this, since my sister had already mentioned this possibility back in October when I first told her about the job situation).

And yeah, yeah, there's that whole job thing and all that, too, and 2013 sucks because of that as well, and it was kind of at the forefront of my mind up until now, but whatever. I don't really even care about that right now.

Man... just... fuck cancer.

I'm glad I don't have to put up with this sort of thing where I work. Then again, the full extent of how it went down where I work was that I happened to mention watching the show once in passing a few months ago during a discussion about television, my supervisor said faux-mockingly "So does that mean you are a brony?" and I said "Yeah, I guess so," we moved on to other topics, and then I never brought it up again. I just don't feel the need to advertise the fact that I watch the show in real life, outside of the occasional mention here (if you consider LJ to be "real life" at all). I'm not ashamed of it, it's just not something that needs to be shouted to the heavens. If I found someone in real life (i.e. outside of the Internet) willing to talk about it, that'd be cool, but it's not a big deal to me or anything. That said, I doubt I'd get fired even if I did wear a brony t-shirt* or bring a toy to work**. Certainly nobody has said anything about the five mostly Star Trek related images that I'm currently using as a revolving desktop background on my machine, aside from the occasional "Heh, that's pretty funny" or "I like your background." But, then, it's more "appropriate" for a guy to be into Star Trek/Star Wars/X-Men than it is for him to be into My Little Pony, so there is that to consider as well.

But, in any case, if what the guy in that article says is accurate, and he actually wasn't being a completely obnoxious douche about the whole thing, then I think he got treated wrongly here as I don't think what he (claims he) did was inappropriate at all, especially if other people were doing the same thing, but with more "manly" interests. That boss and his former co-workers sound kind of like giant asshats, at least judging from what the fired dude is saying about them. On the other hand, even if the guy was being an incredibly creepy weirdo about it, I still don't think that, in and of itself, should have been enough to get the guy fired, at least as long as he didn't do something completely over the top like, say, proposition the boss's 9 year old daughter or something. (Because, you know, all bronies everywhere are totally pedophiles, amirite u gais? But seriously, if he did actually do something like that, I would have hoped that they'd have called the cops rather then merely fire him.) Some people go on and on and on and on about sports or whatever that I would personally like to tell to STFU (but don't, because it would be impolite, so I just tune them out instead), but I don't think they should be fired over it (but again, sports is an appropriately "manly" subject). Actually, that's just a hypothetical, since while I do know some people who sleep, breathe, and eat sports, none of them exist where I work. Most of my co-workers actually tend to share my apathy about sports.

(And then I made the mistake of scrolling down to the comments under that article, which are filled with the typical "durr hurr bronies sure are creepy and weird amirite" bullshit that I should have expected would be there even before I scrolled down, given that it's gawker.)

(EDIT) With all of that said, I get that the guy may have been an at-will employee, meaning that they could fire him for whatever the hell they wanted to. Even so, it's still not cool, in my opinion. (/EDIT)

* - Which I don't own yet, but have vaguely considered buying some stuff while perusing welovefine, but then I don't buy t-shirts for any of my other fandoms so why would I for MLP?

** - Which, as I've said elsewhere, I have very little interest in, even if the toys do now look somewhat more show-accurate than they did back when I originally made that comment. (Though I'm still waiting for them to make a proper MLP:FiM video game most definitely. Come on, Hasbro, get it together. A actual, full-fledged, fully backed, official MLP:FiM video game that isn't a crappy iPhone thing would get you mad bank.)

Well, to be more accurate, they installed one new one and finally got around to refilling the old one in the other bathroom that already had one after, like, a year and a half of it not doing anything at all.

Now, every time you open the doorway leading from our office to the tiny hallway where the bathrooms are, you get a face full of a really strong vanilla scent. For the past week or so now, it has perpetually smelled like someone is trying to bake a cake out there or something. Worse is that the smell is now starting to encroach upon the office itself, rather than just the bathroom hallway. Granted, it's not an entirely unpleasant scent or anything, but it is more than a little bit cloying. >_>

The worst thing about them is that the new one is positioned just above the toilet so that if it happens to trigger while you're in there doing your business (if you're a guy anyway) it will get you directly in the face. Similarly, the old one is right next to the sink, so that it will hit you in the ear while you're washing your hands. The positioning was rather poorly chosen, in my not so humble opinion. It hasn't gotten me yet, but I fear it's only a matter of time.

MFW: http://mlp.wikia.com/wiki/File:Pound_%26_Pumpkin_Cake_almost_agitated_S2E13.png

I happened to take the bus in to work this morning because I was running a bit late. As the bus approached my stop, I noticed a couple of deer standing behind Kohl's. After I got off the bus, I took a couple pictures of them with my cellphone.

( Large images behind cut )

I saw quite a few deer during the past couple of weeks that I was in North Carolina while riding in cars and such. I don't think I've seen many while out here in Washington, though, and certainly not from just a few feet away while walking up the sidewalk.

This is the first time I've ever actually used my cellphone camera at all (either on this new phone or the old one), outside of just messing around with it for a bit when I first got the phone to make sure it worked.

When I went to bed last night, it was with the telltale fuzziness that usually indicates something bad is on the horizon and, sure enough, I woke up this morning around 5:30 or so with this crap. I just turned the alarm off and went back to sleep, only waking up again about 15-20 minutes ago. Wish it could have waited just one more day before setting in, because I was already looking to have a 3-day weekend anyway (Memorial Day being one of the very few holidays we actually get off where I work), but now it's an impromptu 4-day weekend. :(

Not sure how bad it is as far as traveling goes, though. The roads and sidewalks are white, but the roads do look driven upon. I'm going to wait an hour or two before going to work to see what the other guys are going to do, as I don't want to walk the 1.25 miles or so (through back roads and/or road construction areas, no less) and then find out I'm the only one there. For reference, DigiPen won't be opening until 10:30am, and that's what I've used as my gauge for what to do in situations like this in the past.

Current temperature is 27-28°F, according to the three different weather widgets/apps on my computer.

It doesn't seem as bad as last time though, for what that's worth.

(EDIT)

But, unlike last time, this time I decided to just stay in. I went up to the mailbox a little while ago, and on the way back I slipped and fell and slid part of the way down the hill. Arm still hurts a bit where I landed on it weird. That was when I decided I didn't need to be walking in this mess and would just stay home today.

(/EDIT)

All using different means to do so (though not all at the same time, of course). One, the Mac, is controlled using Synergy. Another, which isn't even on the same desk as the other three, is controlled using TightVNC. And the third is controlled using a switcher box. The last is the most annoying of the three, because it requires actually reaching up to the switcher box and pressing a button.