It’s been a busy past two months.

Firstly, I applied for Officer Training School (OTS)… finally. It’s something I’ve been telling myself I’d get around to, but as I am a “mandatory mover” I figured now would be a good time to apply before I actually move and have to wait again. Well, I had a little more trouble with my application than I expected, seeing as how I decided to apply only 3 weeks before my submission deadline. To put this in perspective, when I first heard about OTS, I was told to take 6 months to build my application package, as that’s how long it would take to draft all the paperwork, get the necessary interviews, go over all my written statements, etc etc. Somehow I managed to pull this off in 3 weeks, in no small part thanks to the numerous people who helped me (My dad, Capt Parker, Pablo, Cathy, leadership at 21 SCS and 21 MXG at Peterson AFB). I got my package shipped off the day before it was due, using FedEx’s “no shit, has to be there tomorrow, no exceptions” shipping. Now I won’t think about it until the results get released and I find out if I have a career in the military to look forward to, or if I will be taking my 1337 skillz elsewhere.

Right after I shipped off my paperwork, I went home and visited the fam for a few days. This time I only stayed until the 26th, because in the past I stayed for 2 weeks and found myself doing nothing, mostly just burning leave and wishing I were back in Colorado Springs so I’d be less bored. I got to see Alvin, Scott, and Kyuu Hee… that’s always nice. Then I came back.

The rest of the holiday season was a blur… I spent a day or three looking for my “next addiction”, i.e. MMO game to play. I got into Vanguard for a little bit, and I like what I saw–the game has potential, but the state it’s in right now I don’t want to sink my time into it. I already cancelled my shit, mostly because the server just seems so empty, and no one talks to each other in online games anymore. I also started up World of Warcraft again, to try to play with Alvin, but then things happened at work and now I’m awake from 12PM to 7AM on a daily basis, and I tend to use the “business hours” portion of my day running errands and doing stuff in town I can’t do in the dead of night, so by the time I get around to playing games it’s about 10PM at the earliest, which means no playing with Alvin in WoW, and by extension no point in me playing. I’ve been playing mostly Vanguard since the beginning of the month, and I’ve kinda stopped playing as of last week… I just got too frustrated with the lack of content interesting to me and the instability of the client, what with the crashing and disconnecting from servers just a little too often for my taste.

So lately, I’ve gotten back into playing with Blender again, which I’m sure Law would be happy to hear. I’m writing down the “If I made my MMO game, I’d like to see…” list, and I think it’s becoming pretty interesting what I’d like to see in my game. I think I have the base skills to build upon and develop what I want to see, but I know these projects tend to be hard, so I’m not going to burn myself out on it but just do a little at a time. It will be a hobby… some people build model trains, I want to build virtual worlds, with economies and interesting NPC cultures. I am not an artist, so my Blender skill growth is detrimented by the fact that my “third eye” sees data, algorithms, and formulae instead of varying hues, shades of blue, and an attractive ratio of waist/hip/bust on a “female” model of a human being. I have a feeling I can train my artistic eye over time, but right now all I have is vaporware, playing itself out perfectly in my head but nowhere to be found on any computer system on Earth.

And that’s it for now. Today I’m going to tool around with Blender some more, maybe watch a movie. Peace.

-TJ