Stress Refief

"Go[ing] with the flow will make your transition ever so much easier."

I went out to dinner with roommates/senior capstone teammates Sara Seffels and Alexander May and received this fortune cookie. With graduation just a few weeks away, it felt very fitting to receive this (although unfortunately I couldn't eat the cookie.. explained later). We had spent the whole day working with our team on Mountain, and it's really coming together. We've finished up a lot of the meshing, and most of our mechanics are in and ready for Beta on Thursday. We are SO CLOSE, and I can feel us creeping towards completion.

Other than working on senior team, my other classes are going smoothly. I was a bit out of commission for a few days because I had a lot of dental work done. I had a root canal and crown put on and ended up being at the dentist for 4 hours. It was a pretty intense experience, but I'm happy it's done, and it was important for me to do. All in all it ended up being really expensive, but it could have been a lot worse if I had waited any longer. It's made it difficult to eat (yay soups!), and Advil has been my best friend. It was definitely something to remember.

Spending the day on Mountain was exactly what I needed to feel close to graduation. The mountain of work (no pun intended) I feel in front of me feels much smaller now -- even doable! And work on Arookoo continues to be exciting and interesting.

Job things have also been exciting lately on many fronts, and I can't wait to see how these opportunities pan out. I'm so excited for the future. Life is great.

GDC Reflection

The Game Developer's Conference this year was a blast. I always enjoy having the chance to network and learn new things, and when both of those things happen successfully I feel great. I took a lot of notes at the sessions I was able to make it to, and I think that they will help me prepare for the job hunt.

GDC this year was doubly exciting because I got the chance to spend some time with my boss, Mark Baxter, from Fit Brains. It was great to finally meet him in person and pick his brain about social games, the game industry, and life. We had a great time romping around the city, staying out late with some of my other colleagues, and getting a nice taste of San Francisco.

This trip was quite different from last year. I am graduating in just 7 weeks, and I could actually approach this conference as a way to seek employment. I have a portfolio website now, things that are completed that I feel proud of, and a few more years of experience under my belt. I actually feel ready to enter into the full-time industry world. And that alone made the experience quite different.

I hope that I can continue to go to GDC every year. I feel that staying connected with the development community is important, and it's a great way to do so.

February? Gone.

I'm sitting on an airplane on my way to GDC right this very second.

Somehow February seemed to go by in a blink of an eye -- maybe that's because those few days missing can make that much of a difference.

A lot of great things happened this month. Mountain made it through Alpha and has a fully playable game from start to finish completed. A lot of work has to be done still, but it's in a good state and is on its way to something greater. Many of the other senior projects are also looking great, and I'm excited to see them move towards completion. The reality of the closing chapter in my life is really setting in, and it's daunting/exciting/crazyridiculousscary.

I've put together most of my portfolio website. 4 projects are currently live, although 2 of them still need lots of work and could use some additional images. It's difficult to balance the want to explain my experience and the game in detail with the need to be concise and marketable. I've got some more I could put up there, and as the project with Vivity Labs continues I'll be looking to put that up as well. This is a fairly slow process, I'm finding, especially on top of all of my other school work, but it's coming along. I'm still working on it now, and I can only hope that it reaches a respectable state before the end of Spring Break.

Ryan and I have tickets to PAX East for Friday, and I'll be apartment hunting during the week of Spring Break. I've been job searching in the area and all across the US with the hopes that I'll have a job upon graduation. I can hope, can't I?

Anyway, my excitement is running high now. I'm happy to get some time away from Burlington, and I am looking forward to the weeks ahead.