(no subject)

You know... by laws of physics, a final exam that is twice as long as the midterms before it should not take equal or less time to finish than said half-sized midterms before it... especially when the studying for this final exam consisted of an hour rereading notes last night and about an hour and a half of rereading chapters this morning on the drive into the university and sitting by the pool zoning out to A Perfect Circle.

Not that I'm complaining or anything... not at all. I breezed through that sucker like the sucker so thoughtfully provided by the instructor. It's nice that teachers are acknowledging the necessity of sugar for a student's thought processes... or at least my thought processes. Works for me. And now my tongue is cherry red.

The only downside of such expediency is that I now have a little under five hours to kill before work. By myself. In downtown Lethbridge. Oh. The possibilities. Fear my enthusiasm. Anyone wanna guess my happiness that the computer labs are still totally open during exam time and practically deserted?

So... life or what's starting to resemble it for me.

I'm entering the final week of training before I get assigned to my tech support team. ephedran? That Three Dead Trolls clip you posted yesterday has been played about four times by my instructor as... well, inspirational material, I guess you could call it... and the scary thing is that I'm pretty much able to follow every bit of lingo used in the skit. I'm going to have to wait until I get home (LATE) tonight to check out the one you posted today.

It's... odd. I never, not really, ever thought that tech support would be one of my jobs. I know I've ranted and wibbled and OMG'd about it all in previous entries, but now I've got a binder of educational modules about two inches thick and a paycheque in my bank account for the first time this year. I've clocked a few hours on the floor with a mentor, and by the end of this week, I'm expected to be flying solo. I've walked people through power cycles, bill payments, scheduled technicians, told someone that one has to have a working computer in order to go on the internet, and spent half a call chatting conversationally about baseball.

Though fuck if I'm going to test what tech skills I've learned on my own dear and fidgety computer. I've heard my classmates chattering about that as 'practice', but gah! Am I the only one who realizes that those system requirements we've been learning are specific to the service we're supporting, and not necessarily the service we're paying for from another provider? Sorry, but I'm going to be snuggling my computer protectively and coddling it like the old and tiny bit of essential technology it is. I'm... making friends, too. It's still registering as strange for me when I went through four months of classes and lectures in the university without so much as speaking to the person sitting next to me on a regular basis... or remembering their names. Now I'm lending books and burning CDs and receiving them on such a regular basis that people wonder if it's my birthday every week. I've even been able to borrow a Diablo II Expansion CD long enough to reinstall it on my computer at home and start kicking ass with a brand spanking new Necromancer.

It seems that the majority of people I'm getting to know at work are my breed of geek. Anime, movies, Neil Gaiman, tabletop...

Through a random and thoroughly welcomed twist of being online last night, I've been able to find out that two of my Calgary friends are also in the tech support field... and that Diablo III is in the works.

I'm gonna need a new computer for that one.

Unfortunately, there are downsides to work. Next week I'm still on part-time scheduling (soon rectified), but because I'm starting at the bottom rung, I, like everyone else in my class, am being handed the late night shifts. The ones that run from late afternoon to midnight or later.

Good news? Less likely to have much of a call volume or queue, so it's not like I'm getting dumped on the second I start actually working. Bad news is that not only do I feel like crap for having to rely on my predominantly diurnal family for rides in the middle of the freaking night... I also have to rely on them for getting into the city in the first place. Night shifts are going to SUCK if I have to carpool at 7:30 am with the rest of the house. I'm pretty sure that the university's access isn't going to change all that much, so I can get me my internet time, but I'm still going to be bored as hell and away from home for most of the day. Perhaps I should join a gym or something.

Second bad part is that in every class, there's a bad seed or two. Not that these are bad people in general, but there's always one for which socializing isn't exactly a screaming priority or a skill... that talks with an utterly monotone voice of marginal tolerance and less than marginal punctuation... that complains within easy conversational distance as to why the instructor should make certain exceptions for people who can't make it into class (which they are being PAID to take) on short notice account of getting a heavy period. I was afraid I had to worry about getting TMI from callers... and I'm sure I will... but just because you're a fellow cubicle-jockey doesn't mean that you automatically gain some level of brotherhood or high-level access.

So. This job'll probably work out as long as I can keep a frame of mind like that of a helpful hologram on Star Trek, preferably one with a line or two of code that puts them perpetually on a combination of ecstacy, speed, and ritalin.

Note to self. Next weekend... dye hair blue again. You're allowed to. Exploit it.

... And I just remembered that today is Advent Children release day. Now I have two errands to run before work.

I do like having money again, instead of living off of my prosperity cheque and my tax return. Splurged on myself with some manga, some art supplies, and some music... and hopefully a new CD player sometime soon since they're so cheap and my old one is pooched and I NEED my music, thanks. And a new monitor, because my old one is starting to frizzle and tends to emit a sound on a frequency much like a dentist's drill.

Side note... if I could have anyone in the world make up a playlist for me right now, it would have to be the guy who compiles the soundtracks for CSI. Really. That show is crack on a stick enough to earn itself pop culture following to the point it gets mentioned in X-Men comic books... but the music is right up my alley and living in my trash can.

Due to scrambling around my job training, I haven't been able to write or draw as much as I thought the summer would allow me to. To all those I've spoken to about commitments to such, I know I'm behind like a bad, bad, tardy person... but in case you skipped the opening statements of my entry and yet somehow managed to find this paragraph that pertains to you, I AM DONE MY EXAMS. This semester is over. I've not another academic worry until late August.

As far as I know.

All in all, that's one major time-eater down the drain. I have made some art, most of it recreational, and I'm journeying back into my realm of watercolour painting. For an example of what I've been able to do in the past... oh, month?... wander over here for my latest colalboration with the utterly jaw-droppingly hot writer toxictattoo at 20_inkspots.

Beware, there's porn in it. Gooooood porn. With men.

I've learned that writing letters from and between fictional characters is fun like a fun fun thing. It's like roleplay, but damn, so much more precious. Instead of split-second reactions to situations or dice rolls, you have to sit down and contemplate just what someone would reveal, what someone would say, diction, phrasing, signatures, punctuation, spelling mistakes... writing a letter as several different someones is so detailed a development exercise that immediately familiarizes you with aspects that normal scene place likely hasn't touched on.

And when the characters have more than one personality, that makes it challenging and kinda cute when they disagree on what to write.

I've been listening to so much good music, I think I might take a book from ephedran's page and start adding bits of lyrics to my posts. I tend to associate music with my moods and habits so often that it probably isn't that far-fetched an idea.

Wow. My rambly motif is rusty. And long. Like a big, old, phallic nail or something.

That's it. Cutting myself off. You want more, track me down and I will babble for tea and chocolate.

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No brakes but you know we got a radio
You gotta move when we're rockin' on your stereo
We wanna hit the town with the Infidel rokkit
We love that you love us and you know it