josie

I started drinking in the office around 3. The pros of working at a chilled out game studio.

New project. Bad cold. Had a fever/really sick, decided to come into work to basically set things up to work from home. Discussed this with the new project supervisor (which is a rant in and of itself). He informed me that this project is too precious and I should suck it up. Broke my fever at work, sweated through all my clothes. Felt better the next day, but left early (as I always do) to go to teach. Received a verbal reprimand from said person about my commitment to this project. Are. You. Kidding. Me. I've been here 3x as long, have never had a problem. Followed me to lunch to let me know that he's my boss, remind me that I answer to him, must check in every hour or two to make sure "I'm on track". Baby sitting me. I have no need to be babysat. I am beyond offended and infuriated. The other new guy involved has let us all know that if we don't make the magic happen, he will lose his job. ..... the attitude on this set is not at all the general attitude/methods of this office. Head boss pulled me into a meeting yesterday to let me know what he thinks of the mess I've been tossed into now. Vindicated me, let me know he'll pull me off as soon as he can. Told me to grin and bear it, they really need me to make the damn thing work.

Guy in Dallas running the vid board is doing a pretty good job of it .

But first I get her to race one last time (she apparently earned a paltry 1.5k on the track), change her registered name to Wicked Pissah, and she wins all the cups and money, breaks her leg and dies. Also, that's just wrong. I hate that animal. But it is always better to be pissed off than pissed on.

:w00t: Hey, you never know.... Never hated an animal before. God I hate that animal.

So I've discussed my weekend volunteering hobby on here before. Today I found out that one of our rescues had a pretty interesting past. We pulled a grey/white mare from the kill pen in September. No one thought much of her other than she was well mannered despite being very very thin and had a halter that had grown into her face, which we cut off. We figured she was a thoroughbred, given her height/spirited nature. Nope. Couldn't find the telltale lip tattoo of a racer. Then someone recognized her. Discovered she was a standardbred racer, who in two years won $108,862, then was retired to pop out some babies. Registered name was Laag's Girl, foaled in 1990. We get accomplished racers from time to time, and nothing particularly famous/high earning... I just thought it was interesting. She's a great horse and fattening up nicely. Makes me really happy to do what I do. Then there's one of our other rescue residents.... if anyone's looking for a beautiful standardbred ex racer (has a freezebrand) project horse who's violent, nasty, crazy, and will pee on you at a moment's notice, boy howdy have I got the horse for you....

I had to teach him stick. He was a quick learner.

It's a small bitch, especially since I'm pulling out of a really bad spell of nasty depression, and most things are better than that, but the client at work just gave us 14 pages of feedback... a week late... and wants all the changes tomorrow. I'm very unimpressed with this producer. I can handle it- it's mostly stuff I agree with, but there's some aggravating stuff. Giving us specific stuff to be used, then telling us it's incorrect... I sent them files for approval 4 weeks ago. Some of it was approved. We were ignored for 3 weeks. The stuff that was approved? They're asking for massive design changes with it. A little grumped off.

:wub: ^what is that emoticon looking at anyways....

Good news!

Keep in mind that it is not within our culture to kiss, caress, and wash the recently deceased, especially if said deceased shuffled off their mortal coil in the throes of ebola. We have trained professionals who manage these things, not the general public. That is a large part of why ebola has spread where it has in this outbreak and past iterations. I'd be nervous if I was near a location that had reports of an outbreak on principle alone of what it is. But d4rk, I'm not moving to the Yukon with you for that reason. :)

So many little differences. In college, being one of a small number of people who drove stick, I always got the job of DD in someone's manual vehicle. Most the time it was no big deal, but man, one of my friends had some big old SUV with a manual and that thing was incredibly touchy. You barely started in 1st and were in 3rd in seconds, barely reaching 25 mph. And it would just gutter out and stall at lights. That thing had issues. And it was always full of way too many really drunk/stoned kids doing fun things like grabbing the shift knob and just wrenching at it because I guess that's funny to drunk kids. Or yelling at me for shifting too jerkily in that haphazard pile of crap. When I moved off campus and brought my car up, I was glad it wasn't auto- it meant less people could ask to borrow it.

I think it depends on the company you're with. Most people I'm friends with don't give two poops what I drive. But I am also friends with a lot of younger males who talk cars, and it invariably comes up. And when it does, it earns me some kind of cred apparently amongst them that I drive stick. It generally devolves into "josie can handle a stick heh heh" jokes pretty quickly. Maturity and all that. I gotta say, I almost gave up when I was on an exit ramp for the first time in my first car and I rolled backwards and stalled trying to go from stop to go. Almost got rear ended, got honked at, generally got flustered and freaked out, managed to restart and jackrabbit jump my way up and out of there. yeeghh. I still feel like a total tool when I occasionally stall. It happens.

How do you find a stick driver at a party? Don't worry, he/she will tell ya.

I refuse to drive auto. I paid extra/waited forever to get an Impreza with manual when trading in my last lease. My first car was a mustang with stick, and I just fell in love with manual transmission. I'm a control freak and I like being able to feel the gears/make my own decisions. I love it on a winding road, too. I may or may not be rather arrogant/proud about this choice. Also, I know it sounds kinda silly, but the necessity of paying attention to shift keeps my millennial mind off checking my phone/messing around. Keep my mind on driving. The only time I want to go back on my decision is any time I get stuck in a slow moving (not stationary) traffic jam. Massachusetts, your awful sluggish yet slightly moving traffic nearly made me amputate my leg/buy a new car. Roll as slow as you can in 1st. Ugh. If I lived in an area that constantly had that kind of traffic, I would probably reconsider. Darn tootin'

Just spoke to a class of fifth graders via skype in Cincinnati about gaming with a couple of coworkers. It was awesome to see how excited they were to talk to us. It was also awesome how much they knew- man, it is so easy to underestimate the tech knowledge of 10 year olds these days. Kinda scary, honestly. Oh. And hockey. Real hockey. Is back tomorrow.

Everyone is mad about pumpkin spice this and that and I'm just glad there's some good Oktoberfest beers out there. I had Spaten's Oktoberfest and really liked it- it had a honey taste to it that I didn't expect. Shiner has an ok Oktoberfest, and Breckenridge's Autumn Ale isn't bad (nothing is as good as their Avalanche to me though). Maybe my pumpkin aversion comes from a night in college where, liquor drunk, I thought it was a good idea to down a 6pack of syrupy Saranac pumpkin ale. Pumpkin barf is its own special kind of hell.

Not really a complaint, kind of an update on my uh... different student. Everyone is sick. One of my students has been in the hospital for over a week with viral meningitis. I've been telling everyone to up their vitamin c and wash hands, take it easy, get sleep. Special student pipes up. student "Everyone is sick" me "Yeah, it sure seems that way" student "I'm sick too. Though I think it's from picking that gunk that piles up at the back of your throat? I think that's why I threw up anyways" me "......" Rest of the week she loudly complains about her stomach, or how sick she is, how brave she is to still go to class despite being sick. Keeps touching me, my desk, saying "uh oh, gonna get you sick gonna get you siiiick" Oh man, kid... if you get me sick, you fail. On the really awesome side- my students told me that my class and one other class (taught by one of my favorite professors) are their favorite or "good" classes. one of my kids told me I'm the best prof he's had at RIT. ###### that feels good to hear. I'm enjoying it, even taking weirdo girl in stride.

:w00t: We have one of those. I made a snowgoalie on our balcony last winter using it. I also used it as part of a Casey Jones halloween costume. So did d4rk. I'll be on the lookout for ###### beat masks that I can ruin/learn on and not feel bad about.

OH dude, I have something totally awesome I forgot to post... d4rk gave me an airbrush for my birthday! I can now learn how to paint with it and eventually get to where I can work on goalie masks and motorcycle tanks! That's the plan, anyways....

I did not receive any information that there is a disability, though I was warned that it was of a high possibility that I would have a few students who are but haven't done anything to have it on their record. They're technically not allowed to tell me. I usually deal with her by ignoring her incessant pleas unless she comes to me directly (not yelling across the room), waiting turns, even signing up for review (if you have already been through review with me, I need to see the rest of the list before I can come back to you). If she continues yelping at me out of turn, I will tell her to hang on, be patient, be there in a few. She'll do something similar to the pee pee dance then. These are college kids, 20 years old or so, and I really like that my class is casual. You have a question? Shout it out, come up to me, whatever works. It's a great atmosphere. Everyone's doing great, and the shyer students I'm sure to go to and check on when I can. This girl starts yelping and everyone is like, well, that's what she does. I'm slowly conditioning her. It's only been a couple weeks, but she's not as likely to come over and put her computer on top of whatever I'm doing screaming "LOOK AT THIS GAME IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL"like she had been. She is now staying (mostly) quiet during any lessons I'm doing, and is better behaved in crits. It's just the occasional enthusiastic outburst/scribbling on the whiteboard that just cranks me. She didn't touch me as much this week either. I am a brand new adjunct, I turned 25 a few days ago, I don't really have the authority to get her kicked out. She does the work, has great comments for others in crit, is showing improvement. I guess I just also remember having kids like her in my class back in college. There's always at least one in art. Professors were kind and firm and with the exception of a kid who'd spew threats and such, largely treat them like any other student. I have a girl absolutely covered in self harm scars, too. Do I report that? I'm not here to make waves, yet. I will mention crazy lady to my other professors, next time I run into one of them. One of them has her in his class, he's probably unfazed. I'm just new and young and not used to dealing with someone quite this... enthusiastic. There was a student who tried to join my class and I couldn't let him in (class size). Turns out he had some uh... behavioural issues that hinged on criminal towards other students. A girl who won't stop jabbering/being super eccentric is nothing compared to that. It's just complaint thursday and she gets on my nerves. But thank you all for the advice, I'll definitely have to do something if things get worse/weirder. It IS RIT, this is really not that uncommon.

Nnnnope. But it is a bit like walking eggshells talking to her. One of my students is a guy who did a piece about a drag queen, because it's something he has interest in. She went off on a rant about gender, under her breath, muttering away... during crit... I stopped talking, looked at her, was about to ask if she had something to say or not (I could only hear it because she was sitting about 5 inches from me, scooching closer when she could), and she shut it. Oy. I just don't want to be the catalyst for her to go nuts or something. Sorry girl, to me you're female, a student, and here to learn, that's what your profile says. But I'm just a straight privileged white female who doesn't know or understand anything but pumpkin spice lattes, right? (I hate pumpkin flavored anything).

You just gave me such a sad.

I usually have more complaints around tuesday, when I have my weekly mental breakdown. I usually solve/find some way to cling to hope by Thursday. But I do have a student that is a bit on the... hard to deal with side. My class is going great. I love my students, I love seeing them learning and progressing. They seem to all like me, too. I'm enjoying teaching. But I have a student who seems to have some issues. Some of you may be familiar with SJWs, social justice warriors. This person, as this person refuses to go by any kind of gender pronoun, is getting on my nerves. This person doesn't interact well with others. Fine. Except this person must talk to ME every five goddamn seconds. These are college students. This person seems to need to touch me a lot. Interrupt others to bring attention to the project they are working on. Constantly. I was discussing a student's piece and said "something something crazy something" (I used the word crazy.). This problematic student had been writing randomly on the whiteboard, mostly color theory stuff. Whatever. Student stares at me in the weirdest way then starts scribbling on the whiteboard. Whatever. Ignore, help other students, class starts to let out. Several start hanging around my desk, asking me to leave with them since problem child will not stop talking nonsense at me about passions with games and stuff ( a little is fine, but there's a limit, kid). One motions to the whiteboard. Scrawled into an impossible to read diatrabe is "CRAZY IS AN ABELIST SLUR MANUFACTURED BY CISLORDS AND ANTI FEMINISTS ALL GENDER IS BINARY blah blah blah i couldn't read the rest, it got tiny and illegible. I didn't react, just wished everyone a good evening and left. Problem person now just sits and laughs out loud with headphones on. Interrupts me when I'm with other students, gets told by the entire class to shush. Problem child is not malicious, not mean, but problem child has problems. Also very talented. I'm trying to help the struggling students, not you, darling. It's easy to want to get mad, but I know there's something off. Doing my best to just be positive and supportive, and firm when necessary.

You are not alone. I hear that bass line they play all the time and want to kill. This may or may not have damaged d4rk and mine's relationship.