How I spent it
Had some good Dantime, where we went to see Blink 182 after however many years - he had not even seen them before. Great concert. Next day, we took our trip up to Duluth, because summer was running out. Unfortunately it rained basically all day, so we tended to the indoor activities. Played a round of Mini-golf at Thrillz, took a tour of the William A. Irvin (finally), saw an Omnimax movie that sucked, and ate dinner at Burrito Union. Upon leaving town, we noticed the Fitger's brewery and realized that we should make that part of our next trip. At least there's something to do to go back for!
Family time has also increased exponentially lately. My uncle Ricky and his family came into town for his 60th birthday as a 2-week vacation, and because we were going to have such a large birthday party, my uncle Mark also came into town and is staying here with my family for a while. They both leave tomorrow, but I feel like every day has been spent doing some sort of family thing. Today we had brunch at Tavern on France which was pretty good; the place has some major ups and downs, but overall it was cool to hang out and stuff. Last night we went to Kikugawa with uncle Mark and bauby and Steve B, and that was fun but a little too filling. At least we got to give Alex some service because he says it's a little too slow there lately. So things like that, usually with some sort of eating, have been feeling up my schedule.
Also on my calendar is this Wednesday's GRE. I've been studying with Shana's stuff for a long time now and I still feel like I'm just going to walk in and my head will explode. I can't take it too seriously, but at the same time, I'm really trying, so my concentration flips on and off when it comes to memorizing vocabulary or how the test works. What I will say, though, is that these study materials are pretty extensive. Strategies and everything, not just questions and lists.
Been applying for some sort of work constantly as I fill out grad school applications - I still have essays I need to do for those. The work search sort of sucks. I tried for a while to get a job at Andy's with Gusto as kid started going back to school, but the management basically hired other people because of some sort of urgency. I don't really get it. My application is currently up for consideration at Activision doing some sort of associate producer work as a Japanese translator. Andrew's friend works there and I guess he's talked to him about me, but I'm not going to get any hopes up since jobs seem to be a commodity these days. Other than that, I'd be perfectly fine working part-time at the Holiday by my house which, yes, I have applied to do.
Lastly, I'm officially on board to get a New Astro City arcade cab. With the upcoming acquisition of this arcade cab I've been needing games, so I check the neogeo forums and the shmups forums, not ever looking for anything too specific, and occasionally I'll check craigslist. Last Monday I saw a post on craigslist about these people clearing out their old arcade pcbs or something. I saw on the list they had a bunch of cool stuff like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter so i called and left a message but didn't think they'd call me back. After I called I checked their number on google and found that the place they're located is near where mom works. I figured the next day I'd go with Kiel to his guitar lesson up there and stop by the place to see what was up. It was a sketchy unmarked grey building with a grey awning, and a paper sign on the door that says who they are, but that was it. We stopped by before Kiel's lesson and buzzed the ringer because the door was locked, and this big woman came to the door and was like "can I... help you?" I told her about the craigslist thing so she let me in and took my info and she told me they'd probably call sometime that day. Then about when Kiel was done with his lesson, they called and asked if i wanted to stop by now that they were back, so we went back to sketchville and this guy let me in. He brought me into the back in his office and was like "yeah i got the games all set up to go for you... mortal kombat 2, street fighter 2 and marvel vs capcom... here are the manuals for all of 'em, and the big art marquees too."
At this point it was way more than i expected to get, I thought they would be bare boards but he's like "you want 'em?" and he starts filling out this statement; they only take cash or check, didn't have any credit card scanner so i had to get a little more cash at the atm across the street and ended up goin home with these awesome games for $123.76. They all work awesome, and it even turned out that SFII had a romhack installed so like, you could do hadokens in the air, and chun li could do airthrows from basically anywhere but i didn't want that crap, so poodude and i reinstalled the old roms and took off the romhack. I tried looking up what the hack was ("Quicken" by Testron, Inc.), and all of the details on where it was from, what it does, and how much it's worth but there's no information anywhere on it, just the rainbow or red wave versions of championship edition and the company that's listed as making it way back in 92 doesn't exist anymore.
So tacking those three onto the Rastan I bought for cheap from the NeoGeo forums, I am set to go as soon as the machine arrives. It will be awesome. AWESOME.
In completely unrelated news, I got an e-mail today from a booking person saying she got my e-mail from a girl I don't know asking if my "band" (JFO) would play a show at Raccanelli's in St. Louis. Flattering, but I dunno if I can make it.
That's it for now.
intractable as a mule
Family time has also increased exponentially lately. My uncle Ricky and his family came into town for his 60th birthday as a 2-week vacation, and because we were going to have such a large birthday party, my uncle Mark also came into town and is staying here with my family for a while. They both leave tomorrow, but I feel like every day has been spent doing some sort of family thing. Today we had brunch at Tavern on France which was pretty good; the place has some major ups and downs, but overall it was cool to hang out and stuff. Last night we went to Kikugawa with uncle Mark and bauby and Steve B, and that was fun but a little too filling. At least we got to give Alex some service because he says it's a little too slow there lately. So things like that, usually with some sort of eating, have been feeling up my schedule.
Also on my calendar is this Wednesday's GRE. I've been studying with Shana's stuff for a long time now and I still feel like I'm just going to walk in and my head will explode. I can't take it too seriously, but at the same time, I'm really trying, so my concentration flips on and off when it comes to memorizing vocabulary or how the test works. What I will say, though, is that these study materials are pretty extensive. Strategies and everything, not just questions and lists.
Been applying for some sort of work constantly as I fill out grad school applications - I still have essays I need to do for those. The work search sort of sucks. I tried for a while to get a job at Andy's with Gusto as kid started going back to school, but the management basically hired other people because of some sort of urgency. I don't really get it. My application is currently up for consideration at Activision doing some sort of associate producer work as a Japanese translator. Andrew's friend works there and I guess he's talked to him about me, but I'm not going to get any hopes up since jobs seem to be a commodity these days. Other than that, I'd be perfectly fine working part-time at the Holiday by my house which, yes, I have applied to do.
Lastly, I'm officially on board to get a New Astro City arcade cab. With the upcoming acquisition of this arcade cab I've been needing games, so I check the neogeo forums and the shmups forums, not ever looking for anything too specific, and occasionally I'll check craigslist. Last Monday I saw a post on craigslist about these people clearing out their old arcade pcbs or something. I saw on the list they had a bunch of cool stuff like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter so i called and left a message but didn't think they'd call me back. After I called I checked their number on google and found that the place they're located is near where mom works. I figured the next day I'd go with Kiel to his guitar lesson up there and stop by the place to see what was up. It was a sketchy unmarked grey building with a grey awning, and a paper sign on the door that says who they are, but that was it. We stopped by before Kiel's lesson and buzzed the ringer because the door was locked, and this big woman came to the door and was like "can I... help you?" I told her about the craigslist thing so she let me in and took my info and she told me they'd probably call sometime that day. Then about when Kiel was done with his lesson, they called and asked if i wanted to stop by now that they were back, so we went back to sketchville and this guy let me in. He brought me into the back in his office and was like "yeah i got the games all set up to go for you... mortal kombat 2, street fighter 2 and marvel vs capcom... here are the manuals for all of 'em, and the big art marquees too."
At this point it was way more than i expected to get, I thought they would be bare boards but he's like "you want 'em?" and he starts filling out this statement; they only take cash or check, didn't have any credit card scanner so i had to get a little more cash at the atm across the street and ended up goin home with these awesome games for $123.76. They all work awesome, and it even turned out that SFII had a romhack installed so like, you could do hadokens in the air, and chun li could do airthrows from basically anywhere but i didn't want that crap, so poodude and i reinstalled the old roms and took off the romhack. I tried looking up what the hack was ("Quicken" by Testron, Inc.), and all of the details on where it was from, what it does, and how much it's worth but there's no information anywhere on it, just the rainbow or red wave versions of championship edition and the company that's listed as making it way back in 92 doesn't exist anymore.
So tacking those three onto the Rastan I bought for cheap from the NeoGeo forums, I am set to go as soon as the machine arrives. It will be awesome. AWESOME.
In completely unrelated news, I got an e-mail today from a booking person saying she got my e-mail from a girl I don't know asking if my "band" (JFO) would play a show at Raccanelli's in St. Louis. Flattering, but I dunno if I can make it.
That's it for now.
intractable as a mule