What's goin on in the life of old Rend, some may wonder. Nothing that thrilling, I can assure you. The past month has been insanely lazy and boring, but I have no one to blame but myself for that. That's a good lead in to my first section:

Jobs

I had applied way back on July 4th for an archival position with the City of Edmonton. According to their Job Status page, they are still screening. This has been somewhat frustraiting as I put a lot of time into getting a good resume with a lot of solid, acacdemic references on it together. I also think it would be an incredibly fun job as I love this City and its history, and it pays well, to boot. However, nothing so far. As I wanted to keep things clear just in case, it meant that I didn't go job hunting elsewhere.

Not looking for work, in turn, led to the spiral of laziness. I did end up putting in my application for a TTI TA again for this year (interview on Friday) although I'm not overly thrilled about this. The job pays decently and if the professor and class are good, it can be a rewarding experience. However, 2nd term last year was a lot of bureaucratic blah blah which I felt got in the way of getting actual work done. Mind you, if I get my rear in gear I may still get two articles out of the deal published.

I also applied at BioWare for a game tester so here's hoping. Maybe all my graduate level studies into game theory, narrative vs ludology, and what not count for something.

In the meantime, I got involved with a Women of Valour project here in Edmonton. My former boss, Maggie, calls me from WEM one day and it seems that the staff there that had been working on this lost the person that had been doing graphical work and page layout. She just up and left, poof. Maggie phones me as she knows I love doing page layout and am very familiar with InDesign. I say sure, on Thrusday, and the 'pop in to get a sense of the work' turned into working until 7pm. Friday was 9 to 5:30. Today (Sunday) 10 - 5.

It was extremely frustraiting at the beginning as the lady who had been doing this work seemed to not be very organized. There also was this assumption that I would magically know everything as soon as I sat down at the computer. Well, I've spent probably 6 hours just looking through file folders sorting out crap. Today I had three committee members for meetings going over various programs, banners, advertisments, etc, etc, etc.

Lord Almighty, rescue me from this plight. This women don't get that the printer needs all this stuff BY THE END OF THE WEEK. They're changing stuff left right and centre and all I can do is try and yell WOAH.

Political Machinations

Yes, I didn't run, but I'm trying to work on a campaign. I had a long talk with one person who was supposed to phone and setup lunch but I haven't heard back yet. Perhaps a little prodding. I need to stop being a pathetically polite British Canadian and actually charge after what I want instead of sitting back and being content with whatever. People forget things, it's not that she forgot all about me or anything. And that's about that for this.

Game Mod

I still entertain the idea of building a game some day and was starting on researching doing a mod with Source, but then this job hit. BLARG. I also need a compiler. BLARG.

Canadian PAX

A good friend of mine has agreed to plot with me to see if Penny Arcade would be interested in having a licensed conference up in Canada during the spring as a northern alternative to their main event in Seattle. We'll both be at PAX this year so we hope to corner Gabe and/or Tycho and pitch the idea or at least get the contact info for their business lackies.

I think it could be great to have this in Edmonton. We're inbetween Vancouver and Montreal *and* we have BioWare

World of Warcraft

Of course there's a WoW update. My new guild is awesome and I'm really gearing up. Check out my armory profile by clicking here

Speaking of which, raid time. I'll finish this entry later on!