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Name: Kram
Country: United States
State: Kansas
Metro: Lawrence
Gender: Male
Interests: Aqua Teen Hunger Force, ping pong music videos in my basement, the Chiefs, computer graphics, and bowling class.
Expertise: See "Interests."
Occupation: Software Engineer
Industry: Computers (Software)
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  markyman0321
Member Since:
11/26/2004
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| So, it's been over a year since I've updated this... not anymore!
I live in Oregon now. I found a job, and it's with Garmin still... doing basically the same stuff I did in Kansas except I work on aviation products now. That situation kind of worked itself out after all. The only catch is that the job is in Salem, Oregon and I live in Forest Grove, making my daily commute visible from space. The upsides are that 1) I have a job, 2) I like my work, and 3) I now possess a decent knowledge of aviation terminology, which is a great ice-breaker at parties. My favorite acronym is VOR, which stands for VHF Omnidirectional Range... which means we are now nesting acronyms, which I think is outstanding.
Also, I'm taking night classes in Visual Effects and Motion Graphics at the Art Institute of Portland. This is combined with work and commuting is easily the busiest schedule I've ever had in my life. I'm getting some great experience though and I feel like it's definitely the right thing to do for me right now. I'm starting to lean towards a career that combines graphics and animation with my programming knowledge... not sure of what all is out there though.
ALSO, I'm married now. Cristin is awesome and I'm not just saying that because she'll probably read this eventually. I'm not gonna get all mushy on xang-a-rang here but I am really happy.
Also we have a dog now. His name is Remington, and he's really just a stuffed toy dog that we pretend is real. He never sheds, barks, or poops. He is also very good and sit, stay, and play dead... but his fetch skills leave something to be desired. Pretty good dog overall. Cristin wants a "real dog" someday but I think Rem would get jealous.
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| Friday night! Xang. Xanging on a Friday night might not be the coolest use of my time, but I'm not totally lame because I went out last night (work night, who's a badass? I am). It was stop day for Cristin and the rest of those still at KU so I went up to Lawrence to celebrate at one of those drinking bars. The real accomplishment of the night was driving Cristin's stick-shift home afterwards. I probably have 1 hours logged driving on a stick shift, and in that hour I have probably stalled the car about 50 times. So you get the picture of how competent I am at this. But last night I only stalled the car once during the 5-6 mile drive home, not counting the 5 times I stalled it in the Taco Bell parking lot. File that one under "badass accomplishments." To refer to the last post... my parents didn't figure out when my birthday was until one day late. And apparently the only way they figured it out was I had left my email up on their computer and they saw a bunch of facebook emails saying someone wrote "happy bday" on my wall. Haha Best part though: they ended up giving me some cash for my birthday because they hadn't gotten any presents, except that my dad had been telling me for weeks how cool my present was. So after I got the money I asked him about the present and he was like "Huh? Ohhhhh yeah! ... Give me that money back!" I kept the money and the present = jackpot. The present by the way is one of those replica lightsabers, which IS really cool other than I feel like I'm in 8th grade when other people see me bust it out. No progress of note on finding an Oregon job. That'll work itself out... right? Getting married in less than two months now. Don't worry, I won't get all "mature" and be an old guy. Eff that. Check back with me in 5 years. I made a rap last night and I want to remember it:
I'm angry... and I'm non-chalant,
typin' right-to-left in my Arabic font That's it. It sounds better with a beat behind it, and is even better when you think about how Arabic actually reads right to left and how that's different than normal. And then think about someone who is angry and non-chalant. I come up with stuff like that when some rap song is playing at a bar, and most of it sucks. But some of it sucks in a good way, like this one: Do you know... do you know what time it is?
I tried to tell you, but you did not know what it was.
Are you stupid? Do you need to go to school?
Maybe try that instead of always going to the pool! Haha there was more to that one but I forgot it. I hope the way this reads is the same way it sounds in my head, cuz it's hilarious. Ok I really need to stop, I'm embarassing myself unnecessarily at this point. Time to watch the episode of The Office that I missed last night. Later xangers. | | |
| I just made myself lunch for work tomorrow... er today. The main course is peanut butter & jelly which is probably says something about my level of maturity. But I don't care, it's delicious and easy to make and neither peanut butter nor jelly will go bad ever as far as I'm concerned... so the ingredients are there for me on the rare occasion that I actually make myself something. It's not that I'm lazy, but more that I'm just unorganized, forgetful, and free time is sparse. That's why I stay up until 5 in morning! 5 in the morning may lend itself to being random and incomprehensible, but I always feel better after staying up this late. I never know how frank to be in these things... looking for that middle ground between emo and superficial. Emo:
I can't be that emo since 1) I have a pretty good life and 2) most things I would want to be emo about I couldn't write on this anyway... actually eff it, I want to write this.
So I'm stressed out about the future of my career. My dream job for as long as I can remember has been to do computer graphics, specifically special effects for movies. However, in order to ensure that I could get a well-paying job if my creative skills fell through, I majored in computer science instead of a more artsy degree. No regrets there, but now the burden of proof is on me to show any potential employer that I have artistic skills. Meanwhile, my current job is a good job, but marginally artistic at best. I could probably do this for the rest of my life and be happy, but it feels like I am settling for something lesser. The thing is though, I can't do this job for the rest of my life anyway because I am moving away. No one at work knows this. I can't tell them yet because I need this job for the next few months and they might fire me right away if I tell them I'm leaving. At the same time I don't want to screw them over and I feel like a jerk for hiding this from them. This also makes for some awkward conversations on the topic of "where's cristin going for grad school?" Real answer: "OREGON! I'm going with her!" Answer I give: "She doesn't know, KU probably." Blah...
Anyway so our destination is Oregon, we passed on going to berkeley, CA even though cristin got into school there. This may have been an epic mistake. Just about every single one of my dream jobs can be found in the San Francisco-Berkeley area, versus Oregon which has no entry-level graphics postions from what I can tell so far. Now sure, I can get some kind of job out there but every year that I am out of college and not getting any graphics experience is a year that my value to graphics companies drops. Spuh. It might all turn out ok, in fact I may eventually find that I hate special effects stuff and I find something I like better in Oregon. Or maybe I can take classes out in Oregon to build up needed experience. I don't know, I'm out of gas on this topic. This concludes the emo section. Superficial:
So after a recent stop at the parents' house I noticed that on their calendar they had written "Mark's Bday" on march 24, 3 days after Mark's actual Bday. This has the potential to be awesomely funny, I'm just hoping they have really forgotten my birthday and not just mistakenly written it on the wrong day. Grammar be damned it's 6am. I'll keep you posted on this one.
I'm trying a new approach for my March Madness brackets this year. I loaded every song on my computer into one Winamp playlist and I'm playing them all on random. Then, for each match-up, I press next song and choose the team whose name is closest alphabetically to the title of the random song that just came up. I feel like I'm awesome for thinking of this. That's all I've got, time to decide whether I should sleep for one hour or just start getting ready for work now. I choose sleep. | | |
| This post rated X for Xanga. The purpose of this post is basically to make sure I don't forget about this guy: Jonathan Coulton. He's an ex-Software Engineer who quit his job to write music and does not take himself too seriously. I've actually only heard one of his songs: "Code Monkey," but even if the rest of his songs suck I gotta admire this guy for his gumption. I don't think I'll ever follow in his footsteps, but I hope I have that gumption to leave a sucky job if I ever get stuck in one. I get the impression that there are a lot of sucky software engineering jobs out there, but I have one of the good ones right now so I consider myself lucky. This post is also proof that I can still stay up past midnight during the week. Let's pretend that that is admirable. Xanga ya later! | | |
| This post has been rated  - Adults only. No one under 18 allowed. | | |
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