Success!(?)

Posted on April 29th, 2010

Filed under: General — Karl Olson @ 12:01 pm

So, I squeaked through my first quarter at SFU with good enough grades (Discrete Math, B-, Comp Sci C+, English B+, Philosophy A-) to continue on my degree track. I’ve moved into my own place in Burnaby off-campus. I am underway properly now as a student. The biggest debate for me should be whether I want to spend the 45-100 something bucks a month to have a parking pass, or whether I should lose a 20+ minutes a day to the bus.

Yet, meanwhile, I have friends without degrees working for Microsoft and Google. To be fair, they are contract or orange badge or some other code word for temporary and hourly, but they are working, now. Doing jobs I could also do, now. Putting the best companies in the world on their resumes now.

I hope the $60K+ of my parents dough I’m about to plow into getting a degree is the right long term play. I really, really do. I really hope it means a salary, a house and all that other American Dream stuff. The grass better end up greener on my side, otherwise why am I gardening, and stressing ’til my arteries are hardening?

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Success is my only option; Failure’s not.

Posted on April 23rd, 2010

Filed under: General — Karl Olson @ 3:21 pm

So, I’m over in Victoria, visiting Danielle, and clearly things must be chill as we’ve had time to go out for a couple meals, went swimming and we even yet again fed the seals (video eventually uploaded and linked to this parentheses’d text,) but pretty every other waking moment has been spent cramming on Discrete Math, which quite plainly I need to do well on, at least if I intend to continue my pursuit of Comp Sci. I haven’t even browsed my philosophy notes yet, both because I only need a D, and because I doubt I’d get anything less than a B- even going into the exam cold.

Ah, the liberal arts, I’m so good at you, but it’s ever so difficult to eat off you, and you’re boring compared to programming.

Beyond that, I’m taking Danielle back to her mom’s in Castlegar before looping through SpoKant to get back to Seattle. It seems there are tons of shows I’d love to see in my short break between semesters (well, w00tstock and MC Frontalot.) Perhaps it’s a reward for trying so darned hard to get through all this stuff, but in truth, it’s sort of a reminder that I have to get through this. I’m not touring with Damien Hess nor Adam Savage, so I better make sure I am educated such that I have good work, and thus can afford to see them when they are in my locality.

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“I’m about my bus[y]ness” – Drake

Posted on April 7th, 2010

Filed under: General — Karl Olson @ 2:08 pm

So, in the past week(ish) I:

Yet, on the plate for the month is:

I would say I’m super busy, but rationally I know I’ve had plenty of leisure time too. I’ve been able to watch what I want on TV (well, I’ve not been keeping up with Top Gear how I’d like, but it’s rerun constantly on BCC America, so I’ll catch it eventually,) incessantly call Danielle, incessantly call home and even do much more visiting than I expected to have time for. For what seemed to me to be a questionable and uneven start, I’ve managed to do okay here. Perhaps until I see the benefits of getting a Comp-Sci degree over the more remedial, but less expensive and closer to home Computer And Software System degree, I may always be a little tense as education is the most expensive endeavor I’ve taken on to date. One year of university costs me more than all the anime and comic book conventions I’ve attended since I first went to Sakuracon in 2003, and I’ve gone to a lot of conventions since then.

Back on leisure, I suppose there is even busyness there. Last Easter weekend was Sakuracon2010, and Danielle and I were not there. For me, that was the first time I’d missed the con since I first started attending it in 2003. In that sense, even time off now comes with some checks and balances I didn’t have before, but truthfully, I had a lot more fun in Victoria. We went shopping, we had an advance birthday dinner and we went swimming. At the pool, I went down a water slide for the first time. It was surprisingly fun, especially in comparison to going into a steam room for the first time, which I also did.

Beyond that, it was nice to not have to inflate a lack of news into a 500-word news post on top of writing a big paper. I suppose I’d have had to review the new Trigun movie, which would’ve been another 800 or more words. I also can’t be disappointed in a dealer’s room I didn’t see (as I have been in the past few years with most convention dealer’s rooms.) Yeah, there are some old industry friends I could’ve said hello too, and with the new CD out I could have hustled at least a half-dozen albums. I mean, there almost isn’t a convention I’ve attended in the past 4-or-5 years somebody hasn’t been “hey, you’re that guy!” Well, except for Google I/O in 2009.

However, I think I’ve realized that while “making my way in the world today takes everything I’ve got,” I guess I’ve grown up enough to know that it’s not about going “where everybody knows your name” but rather where the right person or people knows your name. For a long time I guess that was the cons, but not as much now.

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