Shibby-ness

Life. Don't talk to me about life.

Well, I'm going to talk to you about life. My life, that is. Because isn't that was Livejournal's all about?

My life has been kind of crazy lately. The end of summer (August mostly) was taken up by recovering from gastric surgery (if you don't know about it, you can ask me over IM or offline, I'm alright, it was voluntary and it's nothing to worry about). My friends were amazing and came to visit me and take care of me and keep me company. It was really quite nice. And now I'm at the stage where I'm not technically limited in what kind of food I'm allowed to eat. The rule now is "I can eat anything unless it starts to make me sick, in which case, I should stop." So yeah, recovery went well.

Then Life(tm) started. In the course of three days I moved into my new house and started a new job. I'm still not really recovered from this. I'm working for a VOIP company called Thinking Phone Networks. I'm doing support engineering, which mostly means tech support, but I'm also doing some scripting and working with other tools to make the system better/more stable/more efficient/etc. I wouldn't say it's my dream job, and I wouldn't say that they're paying me particularly well, but it's a job, I'm gaining experience and I'm getting money. I'm still in that point in my employment here where I'm making mistakes and fucking things up and feeling really bad about it. It's not exactly fun. That's not to say that I'm not getting anything right. I'm getting the simple things without a problem (for example, I just paused writing this to help someone log in to their account). It's just every once in a while, I do something dumb.

The house is really nice, but I'm still not quite used to it. That's not to say I'm not comfortable there. It doesn't take me long to get myself comfortable in a place that I know I'm going to be in for any length of time. What's different is mostly that I'm not living in Waltham and I'm not near Brandeis  at all. I lived in Waltham for five years and I have been going to school in Waltham for nine years (I went to high school there). It's... weird not being there anymore. I can still go back there and see people and go to BSCF, but I still half expect to be going back to classes and the guru's office and club meetings and all that. I don't want to be an adult.

Meanwhile, I'm working with my therapist on a lot of different things and I'm trying to resolve a lot of the issues in my head lately and... I'm making progress, but the last couple days it's hit me hard. There are a couple things that trigger my brain to go into unhappy-land, and I got hit by a bunch of those in quick succession. I still haven't really managed to pull myself out of this unhappy-place, but I've managed to distract myself for a little bit here and there.

Along the same vein, I think I've made a horrible mistake and agreed to do something I really shouldn't have because people wanted it. And in addition, I did it in such a way that would make the most people happy, but to make me the most stressed out. I don't know what to do. I know I should just stop doing it, but I don't know if I can do that to the people I'm doing it for. It's ironic and really flipping frustrating that I'm stressing out about the thing I need to do to relieve my stress.

Current Mood: aggravated

So I was reading through my blogs and I found the io9.com Top 100 Science Fiction/Fantasy Shows Of All Time. I thought it was neat and I wanted to see just how much of a geek I am so I rewrote the list in LJ-Friendly style and saw how many I've seen*. How many have you seen?


*juldea came up with a better rubric for "have seen" which is "I can name two or more characters."

( Thar be memes )

I've been watching way too much Dead Like Me lately and it's really awesome and it's getting in my head and I think it's giving me an idea for a LARP but I don't know. It's kinda in the pre-idea stages. We'll see.

Anyways. Let's see... I accepted a job offer recently. Starting September 7th, I will be working as a Support Engineer at Thinking Phones Networks. I'll be working with other companies, setting up their VOIP servers, configuring their networks, etc. Should be interesting. The pay's not great, and they're not giving me many sick/vacation days, which is annoying, but *shrugs* it's a job and hopefully they'll like me and give me a raise and such.

Meanwhile, I've been working for my dad's office, building capacitors (if you're Shannon, read: robot bananas), and more recently, doing inventory of parts probably about 50-60 years old in a stuffy back room with no chair. It's fun. \o/

I've been trying to hang out with people, and I feel like I'm doing a decent job of it, but I feel like I'm always seeing the same people. Not that that's a problem. I like these people. but... I don't know, I think living in Newton, not living with anyone (family doesn't count) and not being within walking distance of people I want to see sucks rocks. I feel out of the loop and disconnected. I don't really like it.

Even if I'm feeling like crap about where I'm living, I have stuff to look forward, I'll be living with friends in an awesome house, I'll have a job which will give me money, and... Well, that's making me feel better about stuff. Should be good.

Current Mood: hopeful

... it's just the thought of it that makes you happy, but only for a second and then you feel bad, but that second can be a lot of fun.


So things are... interesting. I'm still looking for a job, but I have three interviews next week all of a sudden. It's interesting. I really hope I get one of them. I'd really like a job that's not working for my father. Speaking of whom, my relationshop with my father seems to have gotten worse, if that was possible. It's a long and drawn out story that has been going on for the last 12 years and, well, it's gotten somewhat better, but I'm not exactly hopeful that it will ever be a healthy relationship.

Things on the social front are still kinda up in the air. Some things are getting better, some things are getting worse, and mostly it's just my brain that isn't dealing with a couple of things very well. But overall, I'm trying very hard to be positive about life... not staying in bed and moping and such. I've definitely been making progress, and unfortunately this has been adversely affecting my relationship with my brother and sister in law.

You see, I've been living in a room in their attic, which is kinda weird, but I have my own bathroom and... well... it's free. But there are a couple problems. Every time I come home after 10:30 or so, I wake up their dog because he's... you know... a dog, and that wakes my brother. Also, they get kinda touchy about really little things... oh and I never see them because they leave before I do and I get back after they go to sleep. This is because I've been spending most if not all of my evenings out and about with friends. So I don't know what to do. A friend has offered me a spare room to sleep in for the rest of the summer and that would be great and it's in a great place, but I wouldn't know how to bring it up with my brother. :-/ hrm. I could always just suck it up for the next couple months until I can move into the Curve.

Let's see... What else has been going on? The Buffy game is back into full swing, though I, being overly critical of my own work, am not sure how the first session of season three went. I'm also working on the logistics of another RPG that I might be starting up. Am I wicked crazy? I think so.

Current Mood: cynical

( For those who know what's going on with me. If you don't and feel like you should, feel free to poke me about it. )

Current Location: Out somewhere

So I've been living with my brother for a little under a week now. Things here are generally alright. The only problem is if their puppy is sleeping up in their room, he'll wake up when I come up the stairs and wake them up. But that shouldn't happen that often, so that's not a big deal.

I've gradumacated, I have my shiny masters degree in computer science now. It's nice to have. I'm worried that perhaps it's hurting my already bad chances of getting a job. I've had two interviews, once with a small start up in central square and a phone interview with Google. In both cases, they told me that they liked me a lot but I don't have the requisite experience for the position.

It's really frustrating that I need experience to get a job and I need a job to get experience. Anyone have any tips on getting a foot in the door? It seems like once I've gotten that, the rest will be easier.

Meanwhile, I've been working for my father to make some money until I get a real job. I've been doing some random computer work but mostly I've been building capacitors (unless the person reading this is Shannon, then I've been building robot bananas). It's incredibly boring work. It involves counting out little squares that I'm only allowed to touch on the sides, then laying those out interspersed with milimeter thin sheets of lead. It's frustrating and I'm sure I'm getting carpal tunnel.

I've been taking up all that time listening to Doctor Who Audio Dramas, which are freaking awesome. I have not heard one I have disliked and most of them I've absolutely loved. I have, in fact yelled at the car radio while listening to one of them and then immediately felt silly about it. But seriously, though. They're awesome.

Don't really have anything else to say here.

Current Mood: groggy

Putting this here as well.

As it is still break at Brandeis, there is no official BSCF, but there will be an unofficial BSCF meeting at my house (247 south street) at 7. Be there. Bring games. Be awesome.

On a side note... today is going to be a crazy tough day... to prove this, I'm going to be late to the BSCF meeting that I'm hosting. Don't worry, someone will be there, but yeah, I'm going to need to be around cool people when I get there.

Current Mood: crappy

Ah, the obligatory post Intercon wrap up post of doom.

Let's see...

Thursday night and Friday I ran the new, exciting, and surprisingly successful Thursday Thing. People had fun, played games, went to panels, ran panels, and... well it was awesome. I also moderated the final panel of the Thing, Time Travel, Telekenesis and other Taboos of LARP Writing with such awesome people as Derrek Herrera (the Manager of Future Imperfect), Jim MacDougal and Eddy Karat. It was awesome to have a discussion amongst such interesting people and talking about GMing and writing and all sorts of stuff.

After rushing to and from the commuter rail station and getting lost due to bad directions from the front desk, I was Londo Mollari in Story Wars. It was a fantastic game, and it was all the better due to my fabulous pants.

Saturday Morning, I was Sir Ruiz Ryu-Wo in To Kill a Vampire, which was fantastic and all the more fun since I had a stalker. I felt awesome.

Then I was "Guy sitting behind the desk" in Ops: The Con-runnening. I like doing ops, I like helping people, and I like playing with the cash register.

Then I got off the waitlist and got to play a Psycho in Future Imperfect:Gulag. That game had a fantastic ambiance, some wonderful people running it and some really interesting scenarios. I got to have the (apparently) only gun duel of the day and was the only one left behind. But that was okay, it made sense.

My experience in Martha Stewart's Guide to Interdimensional summoning (and Basting a Turkey) can be summed up in one line. "I had to convince my boyfriend that he's gay... and Dantalion beat me to it." It was a lot of fun, and, well, I got into the role a lot more than I thought I would.

There was apparently a bit of time on Saturday night where I was in a threesome, but I don't remember that at all, but there was partying and dancing and then a bit of sleep.

Finally, I was Bill Fitch in Standoff (High Noon Edition). It was a short, fun, silly game with foam guns and silly people. It was a perfect Sunday game, though it could have been a 2 hour game if need be.

Then, Con-Wrap: the conga-ing was lots of fun... and you can't pee enough.

The informal Dead Dog was the perfect way to end a fantastic Intercon weekend and I want to thank eveyrone who ran a game I was in or played in a game with me or just said hi for making this one of the best Intercons I have ever been to. You guys are fantastic

-Josh Sheena

(Crossposted to interconlarp )

Current Mood: energetic

So first of all, Strange Boston was interesting. I had about the same expectations going into it as I did for Between the Cracks. I didn't go in with a whole lot of plot and my character was only there for a vague, not-great reason, but he ended up getting thrown into plot (maybe not as much as in BtC, but it was more interesting plot). He spent a lot of time sitting around and talking to other people in character, which was a lot of fun. To sum up his plot, he's been looking for this artifact for his entire life and then he finally finds out that it once belonged to his father and it's a lot more powerful than he had thought. Then a piece of it shows up. It starts messing with the other characters and then, while trying to lessen it's effect on people, it dissapears. My character has some theories as to what happened, but can't really do anything about it. Mostly he's just freaking out that it's gone.

Right, so real life. Real life isn't so fun right now. I've been having horrible back pains again. They're usually only around for a week or so, but this time they've been bothering me for almost two and a half weeks. Sometimes it's not that bad, but sometimes it's so painful I can't move. It's not fun. I'm working on getting an appointment with my doctor to talk about that among other things.

In addition to that, my parents and I aren't talking right now. This is a kinda long story which involves my dad not understanding things and us not getting along and him taking out his frustration with me on my mother. This is a not fun situation and I'm really not happy with it. I'm going to try to make it better, but I'm still pissed off.

Finally, I'm falling behind on most of my work, which is freaking me out. My thesis is going a lot slower than it really should eb and I'm starting to freak out. Intercon is coming up in less than two weeks and I need to get my act together. That means that Festival is in less than a month and a half and *that's* freaking me out. Really, what I need to do is stop flipping out and get work done.

The problem with that is there are about three or four things going on in my emotional and social life that are giving me so much stress it's ridiculous. I'm freaking out about getting a job, finding a new place to live, graduating, and well, some emotional stuf which is giving me anxiety attacks on their very own. I could talk to any of you about this if you really want to know, but it's not something I feel comfortable talking about online. A good number of you already know about this drama, but *shrugs* I just wanted to talk about it even vaguely to all you guys.

Thanks for listening, even if you didn't.

Current Mood: frustrated

So this is going to to be a quick post because I have to run to dinner.

Tomorrow. 7PM. My place (247 South Street). Unofficial BSCF. Come for games, fun people and... er... that's it. But come and have fun.

Right, so first of all I'm posting this from my iPod and it's exciting. Also... I saw the first episode of Dollhouse and it's pretty awesome so far. Battlestar is kind of on crack but I'm so hooked it's not even funny. Lost is frustrating me and heroes has potential to be awesome again.

Finally, I've decided to stop posting my twitter posts on livejournal. I had a conversation with my brother Jonathan about it and he's right (as usual) that the people who read my LJ don't care about my twitter and those who do care about my twitter subscribe to my twitter feed. So I hope that my sister in law starts reading my LJ again

Current Location: Out somewhere

The following are my tweets for today, read or don't at your discretion, I won't be insulted if you don't, have fun if you do.

( Crouching Sheena, Hidden Twitter )

The following are my tweets for today, read or don't at your discretion, I won't be insulted if you don't, have fun if you do.

( Crouching Sheena, Hidden Twitter )

The following are my tweets for today, read or don't at your discretion, I won't be insulted if you don't, have fun if you do.

( Crouching Sheena, Hidden Twitter )

The following are my tweets for today, read or don't at your discretion, I won't be insulted if you don't, have fun if you do.

( Crouching Sheena, Hidden Twitter )

So today has been a weird day. First of all, I was running late this morning, had to take a really quick shower (which ended up being cold), ran to work, ended up being on time. Then after realizing that my boss wasn't going to be in today and therefore BigProject(tm) was going to be on hold all day, I started working on my programming assignment which is due tomorrow (and still not done by the way).

That's when Alex came to the office like he said he was going to so that I could see if i could backup his old IDE hard drive. Turns out I couldn't, but after sending him to the guy who could, I was putting the test machine I was using back together and unplugging his laptop and I managed to ground myself on the case of the computer and therefore give myself a nasty electric shock. For a little while after that I had an adrenaline rush which really helped with my work, but my arm kept tingling (which was most likely psycho-sematic, since I do that). After which I had to deal with my back killing me any time I decided to stand up for the rest of the day.

But I was productive, I emailed a whole ton of people about both the Thursday Thing and Festival. I feel good about that. I'm feeling better about both of them and that makes me feel better. Also, I got a lot of work done on my programming assignment (about which I'm still procrastinating). I'm almost done with it, so that's alright. I still need to work on my Buffy session for Wedesday and I'm going to have people over tomorrow night so that I can make Monkey Bread for lightgamer . I'm thinking of just inviting people over to watch stuff and have Monkey Bread/whatever else is about. Should be fun.

Also, I've been meaning to recount the saga of me and my hard drives. I seem to have an aura of breaking my own tech. I had this 1Tb external, which turned out to be two 500Gb drives in a striped RAID. So when one of those drives died I lost all my media. Then I put the other one in a JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks) enclosure with a 750Gb drive which means I wouldn't really lose all my stuff if one of the drives died. Then the other 500Gb drives died. I managed to get Alasdair (magic man who works in the LTS repair shop) to recover the data on that drive onto a new 1Tb drive. Then, when that was all done, I went to get the 750Gb drive only to find that that had died too. laurion is taking a look at that one right now, but I'm kinda thinking I managed to somehow piss off the tech gods because something's wrong with me. harumph.

That is all.

Current Mood: determined

The following are my tweets for today, read or don't at your discretion, I won't be insulted if you don't, have fun if you do.

( Crouching Sheena, Hidden Twitter )

The following are my tweets for today, read or don't at your discretion, I won't be insulted if you don't, have fun if you do.

( Crouching Sheena, Hidden Twitter )

The following are my tweets for today, read or don't at your discretion, I won't be insulted if you don't, have fun if you do.

( Crouching Sheena, Hidden Twitter )

The following are my tweets for today, read or don't at your discretion, I won't be insulted if you don't, have fun if you do.

( Crouching Sheena, Hidden Twitter )