Life Of A Game Software Geek

( Another student who won't graduate )
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7 Chikchan 8 Tzek 12.19.15.8.5
4 Tun, 9 Winal, 15 K'in until the end of time and counting

Yesterday at school I picked up my cap and gown.

Louis' new work-study person was bringing graduation packets around one person at a time.  It's a simple thing, six pages of personal information they want you to fill out, then run around to various departments and drop off 2-3 pages.  I had to go online at one point and fill out an "exit interview" from Sallie Mae—make sure I understood that I have to pay off the loans, I have a maximum of ten years to do so, and in order to do so I need a job that pays approximately $129,000 a year.  Or I can consolidate.

The last piece of paper went to Student Records.  I was assured that I didn't have to visit my admissions rep—she'd just talk to me about coming back to Westwood for another degree.  They asked me for my height and handed off the black square hat and dress.  Now I have to look into small lights and battery packs.

I didn't think to ask about cum laude distinctions, whether I'd get to wear a gold cord or a sash or get a scepter or something.  I blew summa cum laude a year ago, but I believe I'd be magna cum laude at any other institution.

I wore the hat back into class.  My fellow students were very interested—in wearing anything else.  "My high school class had red robes!"  "We had blue!"  "Maybe they'll let us wear something else!"

No.

Some of my classmates aren't planning on walking at all.  It's not required; Westwood sends us our diplomas snail-mail any way.  This is just something that our parents, grandparents, siblings, husbands, wives, children, friends, other relatives, other life forms get to enjoy and realize that yes, we're actually going through with this ridiculous idea of writing game software for a living.  Except for Stretch who plans on building chain-mail muscle shirts and selling them on eBay for $2500 a pop, but that's another story.
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7 Chikchan 8 Tzek 12.19.15.8.5
4 Tun, 9 Winal, 15 K'in until the end of time and counting

Last Tuesday I got pissed off over two of my teammates who didn't show up for class—one's the Project Lead, the other's the guy he gives a ride to school.  I tried texting the both of them, twice, but no response.

Every Tuesday the Lead has a team meeting and then he takes in our peer reviews.  Last Tuesday, Stretch had to run the meeting.  It's not exactly a hard job to do, it's just somebody else's.  And that guy didn't have the common courtesy of warning us he wouldn't be in; he just blew us off.

There's a lot of reasons I've been generally upset this term; they all relate to each other.  It's my last term, I'm working on the last big project, I want it to come together but there's a lot of problems.  The artists gave us non-usable artwork, and none of us thought to check it out before hand.  Part of the reason for that is they gave us movie files of the art and we assumed it was just a demonstration rather than the actual artwork—all their MAX files had one animation, the ball rolling around the track, and that's exactly what we didn't need.  Blame that on their instructor, who didn't bother to read our request which clearly stated what we needed.  Now we've got a Project Lead who isn't taking this class seriously even after 14 previous terms where he's been told "show up or fail"—and they never do fail.  And the guy he gives a ride...he couldn't take a bus?

Yesterday I watched the movie Real Genius and I saw a character with a painfully harsh attitude who still managed to complete his school work and get good grades.  I remember aspiring to be Chris Knight, the guy who could work hard but not be so damn serious or subject to pole-up-the-ass syndrome.  These two guys blew off the class, but there's eight others on the team who're working hard on the project.  I don't want to carry these two guys, if they do the work and blow off class that probably won't affect our final grade.  And I don't want to get upset over two schmucks who don't care about school as much as I do.

Of course it could already be too late for me.
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1 Kawak 2 Tzek 12.19.15.7.19
4 Tun, 10 Winal, 1 K'in until the end of time and counting

I got to deliver my lecture last Thursday on shaders.  I was a little nervous...probably because I haven't been practicing.  I was practicing when I thought I'd be delivering it on the first day...then the next day...then the next week....  But we've had that terrible lab in Augmentation Strategies and the senior project.  The lecture kept getting put off.

I had to lean on one of the students before I started the lecture.  He was finishing an assignment due in Career Management, typing it on his laptop while I was standing there staring at him.  Gotta work on that stare—not that I really need it.  Dunno if I'll be teaching anything ever again, but it was fun hassling a student.  I see why people become teachers now.

For the senior project I'm working on setting up a minimap for the racing game.  I spent a few minutes working on it on Thursday and actually managed to get a minimap to show up.  Now all I have to do is get it to work—it will display the track and everything, but it won't display any of the players.  A minor detail I'm sure; at least there's a minimap.  Technically, I've accomplished my goal.
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9 Ix 17 Sotz' 12.19.15.7.14
4 Tun, 10 Winal, 6 K'in until the end of time and counting

( I would be nicer, but you don't deserve that )
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12 K'an 7 Sotz' 12.19.15.7.4
4 Tun, 10 Winal, 16 K'in until the end of time and counting

( Big crisis, small effort, mediocre project )
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1 Ben 16 Sip 12.19.15.6.13
4 Tun, 11 Winal, 7 K'in until the end of time and counting

Not much going on this week. Kind of the norm for Westwood College. The week between terms is usually quiet, if you're not working or otherwise living a life. I have some contract work I've been doing, it's due today but.... I also have a class to teach on Thursday. Plus I have some work I'd like to do on one of the projects we'd finished last term, maybe improve on it.

But I don't feel very motivated. Or rather, I feel motivated to lie around and get the sleep that I usually lose during a term. This is my last term coming up. I wonder what it'll be like to sleep on a regular basis again. The one thing I forgot from my last experience as a college student was living on four hours of sleep a night. Probably should have learned my lesson from back then.
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9 Lamat 11 Sip 12.19.15.6.8
4 Tun, 11 Winal, 12 K'in until the end of time and counting

OK. It's been six months since I last posted to my journal. Time to post again.

Three terms have come and gone at Westwood College since my last post. That's six confirmed "A's" and one probable "A". This past term ended last Tuesday, managed to get all my work done. One of those grades is the "probable", since that instructor has given me "A's" in every class since I started.

Next term is 08MAY. This is my last term at Westwood. In 10 weeks I graduate—assuming I can hold off the aneurysm. Only two classes this term, no books, just lab work and the capstone project. Yes, we have a website for the project, and it's right here. The game is called Gelements. No, it's not a working title.

No job prospects yet. Gotta get on that.

One really weird thing happened a couple of weeks ago. Gibby came up to me and asked me if I was interested in teaching a couple of the class sessions next term. Just a couple of chapters out of the book, nothing too serious I think. I said "sure". He says it's to give me some experience, but I wonder if there isn't something more going on with this. There's only four instructors left in GSD, not counting the Program Director, and there used to be twice that. I might be reading too much into it—I quit the work-study jobs I'd previously had at Westwood. But after going down to 3 teachers, and one new guy who only taught one class, I don't know.
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6 Chikchan 8 Sip 12.19.15.6.5
4 Tun, 11 Winal, 15 K'in until the end of time and counting

It was a very quiet day yesterday.  No lectures, no chastising.  The first two class periods we sat and played games or worked on projects.  I held two meetings during Game Porting Basics, got the coders to turn in all the bug fixes and features by the end of the day—except for one guy who used an older version to make his fix, so it didn't work when I merged it.  Oh well.

I'm pretty sure the reason why we didn't have any lectures was because we had a quiz in AI for Games and he wanted us to study for it.  Short answer—I hate short answer.  Always a different way to interpret it, always something I forgot to say.  Even with an open-book quiz, short answers can be nightmares.  Brr.
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1 Etz'nab 6 Keh 12.19.14.14.18
5 Tun, 3 Winal, 2 K'in until the end of time and counting

Been out of touch the past few days, but that's only because I've been playing with my new toy: the Westwood UGT website for Project Top Secret.  That's the one I set up on Modcenter, and I've been putzing around with it ever since.

The biggest source of confusion is the free source code repository.  I set one up but I couldn't figure out how to access it until I realized that it requires THIRD-PARTY SOFTWARE to use.  I think I finally managed to start to figure it out.  I've created a directory in our repository called "test".  I'm so proud.

Modcenter uses Subversion for their version control.  Have to make the adjustment from version control systems that actually locked the files and didn't permit overwrites between checkins.  This one requires that the users actually communicate between each other, make sure of that themselves.  Horrors!  I'm trying out third-party software, right now I'm working on QSvn.  That's how I created the "test" directory.  Might not be too hard to fix.
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12 Kib 4 Keh 12.19.14.14.16
5 Tun, 3 Winal, 4 K'in until the end of time and counting