Such is the life of a student.

First off, I’ve become a Peer Tutor at my school. Not only does it land me some extra cash (always a bonus, given the current financial psudo-crisis I am finding myself in), but it’s additional work experience, and I get to help people. It could come to a shock to some, but I actually do enjoy helping others when they are willing to take it. I happen to be the web design specialist, and I think I’m the busiest tutor of the bunch. Not that the others don’t work, but I’ve helped a good amount of people by now.

Not that I’m complaining about that.

Oh yeah, I landed myself a trip to Japan that happened half way through March. I don’t have my pictures up or even accessible at this point, but when I get them I’ll be sure to dump them on the website and make everyone jealous. Let me just say that Japan is a brilliant place that I would visit again at the drop of a hat; it’s clean, it’s pretty, it’s polite, it’s so short. There are Shinto shrines in their outdoor shopping areas; just in case you need a blessing or two before you drop some Yen. My friend has a series of blog posts about the trip. If you’re curious, have a look.

Ironically it was this trip that got me back into learning Japanese (one of my silly life goals.) I’ve wanted to ever since I was a young kid into anime, and though I don’t watch anime very much anymore, the desire to learn the language remains.

Of course, by leaving for a week, I had a weeks worth of assignments to catch up on, as well as a loss in time for any assignments that had due dates in the future. It’s not a joke when I say that within a day of my return, I was doing assignments like it was going out of style. By the time Wednesday (landed 11:45 on Friday) had rolled around, I had finished 5. by Friday, I had 9 done. I was very burnt out by the time I was caught up, let me tell you.

During my flight, I finished Apollo Justice (review coming this Thursday) and picked up Front Mission for the DS again. I have successfully finished the first half of the game, and I’ve givin at least 30 hours of my life to it. The second half is even harder, apparently. I await the many Game Over screens with glee. It’s not as robust as the Play Station variations, but it’s still as mind-bendingly difficult. It’s not uncommon for battles to last over an hour. Never mind the down time when you are buying equipment and running through the arena to make enough money to upgrade everyone.

Ugh. I’m never going to play it again once I’ve defeated it. It’s a game I can live with never picking up again.

I can’t remember if I mentioned it or not, But I’ve actually also picked up the new Star Ocean. It’s got a pretty quick learning curve, and it’s just as difficult as the previous versions were. Seriously, two hours between save points? This was a good design process? Well at least they droped the ‘MP Death’ from this version. What a terrible idea that was.The graphics are solid, the game-play is too. My only major issues with it are the fact that it wants to be widescreen, and so the menus are slightly cut off on my TV, and the voice acting.

Oh God, the voice acting. It’s terrible. seriously, it’s like they went to an acting school, found the people who were the bottom of the class, and threw them all into a recording studio with 15 minutes to read the script. It’s utterly terrible. Really makes the (many) cut scenes that much more painful.

I’ve also picked up Alien Hominid, Carcassonne, and Aegis Wing for the 360. Here are my brief rundowns of them:

• Carcassonne: I recently fell in love with Carcassonne at a friends house, so that was a required purchase. I’m sure I will come to hate it like Settlers of Catan.
• Aegis Wing: it’s a free download, and was made by the Microsoft Intern Team (3 guys). I’ll let that stand on it’s own. It’s free, at least.
• Alien Hominids: I’m a big fan of Castle Crashers, so I opted to pick up Beheamoths first game while it’s on the cheap – 50% off – and try it out. The first 4 minutes of the game proved to me just how much more pollished Castle Crashers is. I’m already not a fan of Alien Hominids, but I’ll at least give it the ol’ college try.

If anyone wants to friend me on the 360, my tag is “Jack Dutson” and feel free to do so.

Oh yeah, I work at Shoppers Drugmart, quit working at the Revolution Night Club in Kitchener – didn’t agree with the direction management was going – and I’m working on a sweet redesign of my resublogfolio.When I can find time to finish and slice it, It’ll be pretty sweet.

So that’s the last month summed up, here’s hoping I can post with a little more regularity for the coming months!

Corey signing off.

Cause the static singes the speakers like
A thousand Hymns of inspiration.
And the road just winds through the canyon like,
A big black snake heading for salvation and I’m getting closer to the truth
And further from the sky.

Butch Walker – Closer to the Truth and Further From the Sky

I can honestly attest to what he’s saying, seeing as how I have worked insane amount of overtime at my current place of work. The worst part about it that I have noticed is that I bust my ass off by working overtime just so we can hit the all-important, all-omnipresent deadline and then turn around to find another one looming overhead. It’s painful, and to be honest it’s aggravating, infuriating, and depressing all at once. Point 2 – “If the deadline set for your project [...] next deadline will be as tight as this one. If not tighter.” – is so true it hurts. I have stated many times at my current reside that the time lines are made without actually talking to us (in some cases) and this in turn screws us, the development team. I don’t know if my statements fall of deaf ears, but I have noticed that recently I have not had to work the overtime I used to… with the exception of last week. That was rough.

Anyways!

I cannot say whether this tight-lining the deadlines is purposely done, but I can tell you that it leads almost instantly into point 4 and 5. Working overtime burns you out. I worked 7 weeks straight at my job at one point. It was our whole development team’s trial by fire. We pulled it off, but there is nothing to brag about pulling a 45 hour work day. No matter how hardcore you feel, you look like shit and your appearance will scare small children.

The second half of the post is the really important part though. It’s the part that attention needs attention paid. It’s easy(ish) to state what evil will be wrought from working overtime, if given enough time to think about it. It’s another thing entirely to actually come up with ways to stop doing it. I have trouble with this part, as I’m sure many other people do. It’s hard to say no to the people who sign your paychecks and keep you from living out of your car. Trust me on this one, it’s hard to do and I’m still trying to figure out how to get the idea across.

Jarkko makes good points on how to get rid of overtime; points 4 through 7 on the second list are easy to do and I feel are just good practices to… well… practice! Number 8 is the truly difficult one. If you do this wrong, people will feel you’re not a team player, only looking out for yourself, etc. When talk like this hits managements ears, you’re in for a world of hurt and/or welfare checks. I’m not saying you should live in perpetual fear of your higher-ups (though a little fear is healthy, or so I’m told) but shooting yourself in the foot by arrogantly declaring that you are a slave to overtime no more will not win you any points.

I’ll clearly state that I’ve got a screwed up work-ethic, and so overtime though a horrible concept, I perceive as an occasional requirement. I think I may have gotten it from my father, but I’m not entirely sure. I’m slowly working on being able to work without having to complete projects via overtime but it’s an ongoing process.