Game Trooper

What I'm blogging again??

2010-07-16T09:18:00.000-07:00

Figure I should after all that complaining I've done on this thing I should give it some good news:

1. Started working at Rockyou in feb and still here, what up!
2. Moved in with Lyn late last yr and still doing well
3. Got engaged on our 7yr anniv, another what up
4. Still being awesome

Gotta get my thoughts out

2010-01-21T23:02:00.000-08:00

Just got back about an hour ago from a social gaming panel Peanut Labs (my co) hosted.
It was amazing! Here's who the panel consisted of if you wanted to know:
- Daniel James, Co-founder and CEO, Three Rings
- Wilson Kriegel, VP of Business Development and Ad Sales, Outspark
- Lisa Marino, Chief Revenue Officer, RockYou
- Mark Rose, Director of Product, Payments and Platform, Playspan
- Eric Eldon, Editor, Inside Social Games
- Jonathan Flesher, VP of Business Development, Zynga

These people are all the big guys and girl in the social gaming enviornment right now.
I especially loved what Wilson Kriegel and Daniel James talked about - how their predictions for 2010 consisted of the next step and evolution of games on facebook and how businesses must adapt and increase their revenue immensely (100-200%) to stay alive and keep the train going. James had some wild predictions like facebook and facebook gaming will peak this year (http://thefloggingwillcontinue.com/) which I have to agree with. All these games popping up virally are crap and developers know it. Whats the next type of game we'll see and let's see how fast the user will chew it up and want the next thing. Craziness i tell you!

Anyways, what was first a panel discussion turned into a networking game where the CEO of my co told me to go and meet some people and watched me the whole time lol. Hesitant at first(gimme a break its been years?) but once it got going, it became natural and tbh pretty exciting. I'm looking forward to working more and networking more at GDC this year. Turns out that we're doing a huge party too. 2010, great year so far

I'm an intern....again

2010-01-13T10:15:00.000-08:00

Things have been crazy since 09.
Got a job at sony, lost the job at sony (they moved dept to sd).
Moved in with Lyn and skippy to Foster City.
And now i'm interning at this place in SF, yes its ironic that now i'm further south, I find a job up here.

Its great so far, learning a ton and showing my team that I'm very capable of what they're throwing at me. I'm hoping to prove to them in the shortest amount of time that I deserve this job and can do more. The 2 week trial is almost up and after that I'll be a permanent intern for the time being. Afterwards, If I last 1 month, they'll give me a little something something to pay the bills/bart. Then, hopefully a full time job! so far I'm trying to stand out from among the interns they have here by just being more awesome. and of course i come in earlier stay later sort of thing.

Lyn commented that I'm doing so much work for them and i'm not even being paid, which she's right as Ive heard just recently one of the interns here just left for a paid gig somewhere else. Im secretly hoping they'll come to their senses and just start paying us sooner, ha, wishful thinking.

In the meantime, ill hold my ground here, take what I can and create the opportunity myself, whether its w/ them or someone else we'll see. I do like this co tho and the people are all pretty cool, minus the smelly dudes outside our office. wtf take a shower then come in to work

QA is definitely the right track

2009-07-15T00:16:00.001-07:00

I just peeped this craigs post for an Associate Producer, which I hope to be one day.
A lot of it consists of QA experience, bug tracking, know the software and managing it. So, looks like I'm on the right track. Ad post next page

Responsibilities

Assist in PC/Mac downloadable and online web-playable game production by way of, but not limited to:

* scheduling
* resource management
* obtaining internal approvals
* asset delivery
* other production tasks assigned as necessary
* Own the QA process by managing internal and external QA resources. Create test plans and review bug reports.
* Work closely with creative services, engineering, marketing and other departments to produce casual single player and multiplayer games.
* Work with external game development agencies to ensure on-time and on-budget delivery of projects.
* Work with marketing team to create marketing materials related to properties.
* Facilitate communication of key production aspects as determined by the Producer.
* Maintain and help manage multiple products through the entire production process including pre-production and post-production.

Qualifications

* Minimum 2 years of industry experience in production of games.
* Strong QA background highly desirable.
* Experience working on multiple projects across multiple teams, both internal and external.
* Ability to manage work plans, track status and manage team for complex product development.
* Excellent written, communication and interpersonal skills.
* Passionate gamer who understands web, casual and hardcore audiences and behavior. Strong casual games knowledge a huge plus as well as knowledge of social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace.
* Must be a highly motivated team player with a good sense of leadership and strong collaboration skills.
* Strategic critical thinker with a high attention to detail.
* Proficient in MS Office (especially Word, Excel, Project, Visio) and Adobe Photoshop.
* Experience with bug tracking systems such as Jira or Bugzilla.
* Experience managing QA, both internal and external.
* Creative, with an interest in game design.
* Strong PC and MAC technical knowledge.

QA at Sony!

2009-07-13T13:34:00.000-07:00

I finally have a job, it's not great, doesn't pay well, and I work with a lot of idiots haha. But! It's really fun, I'm learning a ton about the game industy and how the development process works and it's a great foot in the door for my dream job.

It's basically game testing at Sony, working on uncharted 2, which kicks ass for me coz I loved the first one plus there's multiplayer which makes testing more refreshing.

Sucks I couldn't find something a bit better so I could buy a house but it's cool, might move into a new apartment soon and get away from this college town. Another plus for having a job, parents can stop bothering me about it. They'll prolly go back to me with marriage so they can get their grandkids asap.

Thinking of blogging about my successes and failures with my job search and help some peeps out

Im tired

2009-06-23T01:25:00.000-07:00

4 Weddings (1 down), 3 trips (1 down)and my journey to the perfect job still continues.

Games:
Took a break from wow, been playing my xbox more: street fighter, ghost busters and will start playing COD4 again for practice when Modern Warfare2 hits. With all that playing tho, my xbox red ringed and eventually died on me. What sucks more is that its past the 3 year extended warranty and would cost 100 to fix so what did I do? bought a new one =( haha. Figure i could do it with the money i got from texas.

Dancing:
Flo-master kicked my ass but it was awesome. The dance is making more sense to me each day and hearing what he had to say made it that much easier. I got his number too so whenever I go home, I will definitely call him up.

Everything else:
Lyn and I survived 5 years together. wee.

ugh im too tired to write anything else, will continue another time

New dish

2009-05-19T13:39:00.000-07:00

I call it Mike's Tuna surprise. The surprise part is you cant tell that there's tuna.

Ingredients:
1 small can of tuna, squeeze out the water.
1 egg.
1 slice reduced fat swiss cheese.
onion (red is preferred)
pepper
olive oil.

I used to just heat up the tuna w/ pepper in some olive oil and eat that with rice. If I wanted to go fancy I'd add some mayo. This version is healthy and you get way more vitamins. Tuna itself is already 20g protein, add the egg and cheese and you're good to go.

Simple dish, cook some onion with the oil, then add tuna w/ pepper. After it gets a little brown, add the egg, scrambled first. Once the egg's cooked and mixed in, add some cheese. Cook till desired and there you go. Serve with rice, brown rice obviously.

Back to being fit

2009-05-14T11:25:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I weighed myself in and was pretty sad to find that I've gained roughly 15 1bs from the past year after I had first lost all that weight. Of course, it didn't really look it since Ive still been hitting the gym 3x a week and dancing on the weekend, but still, not a good sight to see.

Sooo, being summer coming up I decided to go back to my original diet - eat 5x a day, no junk except for 1 day and eat tons of veggies, whole grains, almonds and fruit. Started running again on my off days and yes, I started to see results again. But just not as fast as before.

So this week I had extreme goals that worked w/ each other.
1- I need to get extremely good at dancing, to the point where its undeniable that I should be advancing forward in battles.
2 - Lose weight faster than 1 1b a week.

So what did I do? Danced more. I dance every single day now but not just drilling some moves, I'm working on everything to the point of exhaustion and I see sweat dripping down my face. Otherwise there's no point, I'm not working hard enough and the results show: This week alone I've lost about 4 lbs already and its only thursday. Conclusion, no more stupid running, just dance hard.

Having fun on interviews

2009-04-16T00:48:00.000-07:00

Had another interview today and was asked "whats you're favorite movie?"
No i didn't apply to blockbuster, the hiring manager and i just got along pretty well so questions were pretty casual and he just wanted to know me.
Anyways, I wasn't thrown off on the question, I immediately said "Star Wars," he responded "a new hope?" I nodded yes, and then he asked Why? I said "because its awesome." Then he was kinda suprised and said 'wow, you said that with no hesitation' hahahahaha! needless to say, he was impressed and I wouldn't change what I said.

So say we all

2009-03-25T12:23:00.000-07:00

Finally finished watching BSG and I'm sad, sad because I finally found a good sci fi show to watch (i loved DS9, voyager and all those older trek shows, babylon5, firefly, etc) and now i have nothing. I have high hopes for the live action star wars show, really high hopes tbh. I'm also looking forward to the next trek movie, which looks insanely awesome btw.

Anyways, recap on the week: finished my interview w/ the CEO on monday and it went really well. I was able to express my ideas that would work very well w/ their company, maybe too well because he actually wrote them down so if I don't get hired, they may use them, oh the irony. The weirdest thing was him asking if i was smart: umm sure i said, why would i say no haha. He then asked me a trivia question about 3 switches and 3 lightbulbs (u have to figure out which switch belongs to which bulb without going into the light room more than once.) I actually knew the answer as soon as he asked it but i had to play dumb. Well he was impressed and then proceeded to ask me a math question. It was easy, come on, I went up to calculus lol. I should be getting a call back soon so hopefully it looks good for me, otherwise I might have to move back home for a while.

WOW update, 2 pieces away from all purples. Probably my one most desirable goal is to be fully epicced out in all tier gier. Should be soon the way I'm raiding haha. I spend way too much time on the game but I know I wont ever have this opportunity again once I start working so might as well take advantage right?

Ideas

2009-03-20T11:21:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to come up with Ideas to share with the CEO of Gala on Monday. I must of done well on my interview to have this follow up so quickly when they never mentioned a 2nd interview before. So far my ideas to help them market their MMO are:

advertise on Crunchyroll and other anime type sites: makes sense because their mmos target the same audience. People on crunchy talk about free 2 play mmos and I don't see Gala mentioned at all, for shame.

Create a blog: another obvious one that Aeria games already has on their site. We're trying to bridge the gap between social marketing and gaming and blogs are definitely a tool that can do that by bringing a social aspect onto the gaming portal i.e Gpotato. Plus its fun for users making things more personal and having ownership because the forum is more about sharing and less focused on the user.

Youtube: another idea i had that aeria already does. Film some trailers, commercials, they need way more video content showing off the game, maybe its producers and post that everywhere - their site, forum, anime sites, gaming portals, blogs, etc. youtube is free and allowing to embedd vids is really a no brainer marketing tool.

Other than that, I'm kinda out in terms of new ideas, I'll have to explore the Iphone/3g stuff, but I need something completely new if I want to stand out on monday. I could always dance too, hopefully he likes locking haha.

My first 1 on the dps meter

2009-03-17T12:26:00.000-07:00

Did a 25 VOA on my shammy the other night and I freakin topped the charts on DPS. Finally got some gear enchanted, 3 pieces of my T7 on and my mace from Maly so yea, I think I deserve it =) Too bad nothing good dropped although I did get an enhacement piece for pvp. w00t?

Why I need a job

2009-03-11T11:49:00.000-07:00

So I can move out, simple as that.

I still feel like I'm back in college, it doesn't help when all of my roomates are still in school and that school is walking distance away =P

I've grown accustomed to people taking over the living room, router being restarted frequently, all the mess and having to clean up for other people but when someone takes my food without asking, I'm pissed. You can drink my drinks, eat some food that I cooked but never ever take all of my bananas away. I bought a bunch of em last week, froze 1 for my shakes and let the others ripen before freezing them too and I take a look the next day and they're all freakin gone. I posted a msg to the other roomates about that and the next hour someone takes an old banana from the fridge and puts it next to the microwave (where my bananas used to be). Wow.
Gets worse, someone's already ripened bunch of bananas is also put there. They're not mine, they're from trader's so obviously someone mistook their bananas to be mine. My problem is no one is admitting it and now they probably think Im dumb for caring about my own food when everyone shares. I only care coz they took everything and replaced it with their own and won't admit it. Stupids.

Pet Peeves

2009-02-12T09:27:00.001-08:00

So Lyn and I talked about this the other day and since she doesn't have a blog, I'm claiming it =P

Something that really bugs me (when i say "me" i mean "us" but for the purposes of this blog being mine, its gonna be "me") is when you're with a group of people and you laugh at something you think is funny, and someone makes fun of your laugh. I can think of 2 specific times this has happened, One being this girl I barely met at a friend's birthday dinner and my roomate. What bugs me the most about this is something so small can really take me from a high to low in second and it's so immature on their end to do that in the first place.

Why do they do it? Attention is probably the biggest candidate and after thinking about those 2 times, it makes sense: the girl was trying to get attention the whole night since there were "prettier" girls at the table and she probably felt threatened and of course my roomate always craves attention (esp during those days).

How to deal with it? I honestly hate when someone does this and I always just stay quiet because I'd be afraid of what my come out of my mouth. We came down to a few solutions that would probably be better than yelling: open up a question (What? I thought it was funny, didn't you?), or look confused, or both. I prefer inappropriately laughing louder like what Peter would do in Family Guy. In fact, if it does happen again I think I will do that (see, told you I hated it)

Been a while

2009-02-11T22:11:00.000-08:00

So here's an update on what Ive been doing: Playing wow, hanging out with Lyn, interviewing, and now I get to dance.

We had DSP auditions this past weekend and I'll be honest, I didn't care too much this time. We had an orientation the night before and realized that we weren't getting a ton of new faces like last time. And the people I knew who were trying out and could potentially make it, well, I know them already. I think the best part though was having new judges come in this time instead of the usual, plus they're mostly mindtricks so thats awesome right there. Hmm, but what I am looking forward to is our next performance at One 4 Gee in April. I missed the last show but now I get to be part of it so yea, that feels awesome.

As for the job hunting, its ok and that's better than most people. I get calls, I get in-person interviews, I get a lot of responses from my resume and all of the experience Ive gained from these past months doing all of that is def going to pay off. Will it be my dream job? Who knows but I'm sure i'll find something soon.

Jedi moves to a new land

2009-01-09T17:40:00.001-08:00

Antonidas finally opened up so I say farewell to Kalecgos from my Death Knight, he will now get to experience awesome content with friends he's known since high school, how precious. But really, kinda sad that my new main has to leave the original server i've been on so long but with practically everyone i knew that played is no longer playing anymore, might as well play with friends I know and will keep playing right?

Oh, that reminds me i should post a pic of my DK with his starting gear somewhere

Torture Quest in WOW

2008-12-01T18:17:00.000-08:00

So I read this about a week ago on several sites about a torture quest in Northrend. I thought it was surprising but it seems someone was 'not impressed' with it because there was no option to have an alternative means of extracting the information from the guy (you use a non-lethal weapon to hurt someone to get some info). Well I finally did the quest myself and I thought it was cool.

Blizzard revamped their quests this time in the new expansion. Sure you still have those kill 10 X and return to me, but stuff that surprises you in game is what I look for nowadays. When I want to read the quest text, or explore around the area instead of just finding the quest on wowhead...that is..awesome. So what if I'm torturing the guy? The game is about war, (World of WARcraft)and most of the game is about killing anyways. Hey, at least you weren't allowed the option to kill him afterwards right? Or how about torturing him by cutting off limbs? Yea, I think I've seen too many movies =P

Heroes so far

2008-11-25T10:36:00.000-08:00

Im a fan of heroes, I loved the first season, 2nd was pretty good and now we're at the 3rd: VILLIANS! Very interesting start- we see glimpses of the future where there are 2 sides, obviously evil and good and where the characters in the middle fit in, switching sides, lying, finding their identity, all good stuff. But here's where I get annoyed, Claire is really stupid. I think if they took her out of the show, a lot more people would watch because they wouldnt get so turned off. I'm not judging her acting, we dont watch the show because the wonderful acting right? We watch it because of the cool powers and the plot. Whats annoying is she keeps trying to fit in and fight but what makes a girl who cant die interesting? It could be done better like that one dude who was in Alias too but well, he's gone now also.

What else am I pissed about? Peter loses his powers. He's one of my favorite characters and yea, I guess it was getting annoying seeing him w/ the hunger for power (since he took Sylar's ability) but man, people are so whiny when they dont have their power. At lease Hiro is still happy-go-lucky, he keeps me entertained. And Arthur Petrelli is pretty cool too. He makes an awesome bad guy although I fail to see the point of what he's doing, he wants to create the formula and give everyone powers? I don't get it and the writers need to drive the point home with him or else he'll fade into the background at the end of the season. If he goes, at lease give Peter his powers back please

Happy Birthday to WOW!

2008-11-24T11:01:00.000-08:00

Thanks to them, I have my newest and cutest looking pet =) Seems that if you logged in yesterday on WOW's 4th bday, they give you an achievement and a baby blizzard bear to say thank you. I thought it was pretty cool and ended up getting the bear on my rogue, shaman, and Death Knight of course. Little surprises like this always make me happy to play these games. It sets apart the experience from any other game I'm currently playing and I'm sure a ton of others would feel the same.

What I thought of 007

2008-11-23T20:59:00.001-08:00

Umm, so I dunno if I'm the only one here but this wasn't a great bond movie at all. Ok, it was ok for me, but it wasn't anywhere near the last one. I guess I should announce a spoiler warning, there.

So first scene w/ the car chase, awesome! I expected to see a lot of cool action scenes and this one was pretty impressive, but what happened to showcasing the car like the rest of the bond movies? I get to see the car get beat up and thats it? My problem with this movie is that they took away a lot of elements that make these movies a "Bond" movie. I get that they may have wanted to go a different direction and not be so typical (Bond girl, show gadgets, be smoothe). I mean I get it, but if you're going to take away these things, then you should add something to make compensate correct? Well, they didn't. Bond girl had her own story going on and the closest he got was a kiss w/ her. I was waiting for that scene where they give bond some really cool gadgets, but no, he just had a tracking device on that stupid business card. What if they threw that away? He'd be screwed, the whole movie wouldve been screwed because he wouldn't know where to go.

I think what they tried to do is show a more human side to bond so they wanted him to kill people, be rough, have his clothes torn, get some some blood on him - ok, I dig that but I think the execution was a little poor. Maybe he needed to kill some more people?

I'm sure the next bond movie will have elements from the first one (Casino Royal) where he can be very smoothe, show some cool gadgets, meet a new girl who will play a more major role. I would give Casino Royal a 5/5, Quantum gets a 3/5. I'd say its pretty generous but I'm a fan of this new installment of Bond.

Awesome Commercial for Wrath

2008-11-21T12:43:00.000-08:00

World of Warcraft 'Ozzy Osbourne' TV ad

Found this on Kotaku and thought of course, that it was awesome. Blizzard has some pretty interesting ads going on TV, but I dig em, especially weird ones like this where they use in game characters plus real life actors to sell it to their fans. Like what Kotaku mentioned, I wonder what they were thinking the whole time during the marketing pitch. Actually, I want to know what the directors were thinking when they saw this, but eh, I like it.

Obama staff is a wow player

2008-11-20T11:35:00.001-08:00

I knew I voted for the right person, just found out on wowinsider that Obama's FCC transition co-chair is a WoW player and is currently a level 70 Tauren Shaman. For the Horde! I'm sure he'd love to be playing in Northrend right now but I'm also glad he isn't because that means he's doing his job =P

Its pretty cool to hear about people playing wow and actually admitting it. We know there are several famous people (Mila Kunis) that talked about the game and wow being an mmo, its almost taboo to talk about a geeky hobby. Now that games like halo or madden is seen as cool, maybe mmos will be up there soon?

Death Knight at 64 and going up

2008-11-19T12:50:00.000-08:00

I caved in and purchased the expansion for two reasons: 1 my friends wanted to play and 2, the Death Knight. I've been looking foward to this class ever since I heard about it because the combat mechanic that this class uses totally fits my play style.

First of all, you get to use plate armor and huge swords. Sure warriors and paladins get to do the same but here's what separates them: DKs get offensive magic capabilities, which in this game is specifically Disease related. They also get several pets (which I love) but they're not an essential part to the character like a Hunter or Warlock which I disliked because I wanted to feel powerful enough w/out them.

So a plate wearer that does some magic and has a few pets, what else can he do? Death Knights get this very cool ability called Death Grip that almost acts like Scorpion's Spear Move - GET OVER HERE! haha. Its great for questing because you can AOE, thats right, just like the pally aoe the DK can do it too and very well. So you can Death Grip wandering mobs or players and bring them to your little circle of death (& decay). I can see the devs nerfing this ability somewhat in PVP because unlike the warrior or druid bash where you run up to the oppenent, you're bringing them to you (also disrupting any casting) and if you already have any aoe going, they basically are somewhat helpless. But right now, its way too fun. In an instance you can actually PULL the mob to you instead of just shooting it and of course if you're the tank you dont have to run around as much to get the mobs to fight you if you just Death Grip them.

The Rune-based system and runic power is also one of my favorite parts of the Death Knight. These little runes (2 blood, 2 frost, 2 unholy) act as mini energy bars that get refiled after a certain small cooldown (10 sec per rune). Energy is one bar that gets refilled every tick, mana the same but at a much slower pace (although you get more out of it when its full), and rage is built up out of getting hit and hitting mobs or players, which then gets used up as you use special skills. I find the rune system to be actually superior to all if you know how to play the class well. For instance, several skills use just 1 or 2 at the most runes to cast, afterwards you build up runic power like rage but this time its after each rune gets used up. After only a few spells have been used, you already have enough rune power to cast your bigger spells like Unholy Blight, or Summon Gargoyle (I'm unholy spec btw). To me they act almost as free spells to cast. However, what can work against a death knight is that they used up all of their runes and no longer have any rune power, they'd basically be stuck in the water until their rune cooldown finishes, which could be disasterous in a battleground or in an arena. So unlike a rogue or cat druid, you cant exactly spam your skills on opponents, you have to play the character with the runes available in mind and build up rune power for the right spell at the right time. Definitely an interesting class to play that's going to require much more time playing to get used to.

I was questing in Zangarmarsh last night when an Ally Death Knight tried to gank me. Well i hate getting ganked because Im so busy questing so of course I was pissed, so I remembered several pvp skills the DK has and used them at once ( Ice Bound Fortitude, which basically prevents stuns and reduces damage up to 50% for the next 10 seconds, and Chains of Ice, which freezes them in place for 3 sec and allows them to move 10% each second afterward). I swear this DK was wondering how the hell did I beat him since he started his rotation first. I bet he forgot about Ice Bound Fortitude, I should really keep remembering that one because people are going to say its OP later on.

So after about 9 levels, I'm still going to play this guy and probably reach 80 first with him before any of my other toons. I can't help it when I find the class so fun yet useful to others for once.

Finished Gears of War 2!

2008-11-18T19:11:00.000-08:00

I make sure to complete a game before moving on to the next, but I really couldn't hold back when GOW2 came out, I've been waiting since the first release to play the campaign. Unlike most shooters, I really enjoy the camapaign (I played it on coop btw). Everything about the game makes it fun for me: the story is much better than the first, this time dealing with Dom's lost wife, an old research facility, a Queen, and a much more thought out development on how to kill of the Locusts. The first game was, ok, lets go here, plant a bomb and we're good. Eh, kinda lame but the thrill of chainsawing your enemies pretty much held all the way through (plus the graphics were amazing).

The graphics in the sequel was a nice upgrade from the first. You can see buildings from a farther distance now, there's a lot of "dust" from fires floating around similar to that of the half life 2 engine I experienced in Counterstrike source, and a lot of the glitches I saw from the first game were toned down, not much but still an improvement.

I tried the multiplayer a few times too. Horde mode is actually pretty fun, but you need to play with 5 people, hopefully all friends to get the maximum enjoyment. I'm more of a fan of large groups fighting online such as big team deathmatches or large scale capture the flag but Gears has such a unique system (cover, run, active reload) that these large scale matches would be pretty weird to fight in so I understand. i hope to be playing Gears more, but I've got my plate full with so many other games at the moment. Not a complaint, just an annoyance haha

Mighty4 and then some

2008-10-19T16:33:00.001-07:00

Im finally done with this exhausting weekend. Mighty4 was awesome, thanks to Lil B, locking has been way more fun to do and I'm glad it shows judging from all the comments. I want to thank everyone who's supported me, us along the way coz I'm really understanding how I dance now. Whats stupid is I lost that along the way and now I need to backtrack in a sense to where I used to dance and use my face and my own style. I blame youtube haha, no, I think people like Gogos are awesome, its just I gotta stop learning from that and do my own thing more, have fun! its a dance dummy! Click for more of me haha

Went to Caboose's class today and it felt awesome being picked to go up and be the example for the class on a move he says thats rarely done, yes, the whole time I kept thinking this is sweet! Even his g/f went up to me at the end of practice and thought I was "amazing" and my facial expressions were great. Really good to hear from people like that despite hearing such negative comments behind my back, I know Im not supposed to let those words/people bring me down but I can't help it in this case.

Anyways, after this John Muir performance, I'm taking it easy. I'll just stick to practicing at home on a regular basis and when there's a performance coming up, I'll be at mission, but yea, i need to save on $$ and plus I think I have more fun when I don't dance every day. Too much of something isn't a good thing and that can apply to dance too. I can practice by just listening to music. Plus I want more fun in my life. Yes, I'm going to play wow and video games, I'm going to watch TV and anime, read books, hang out with Lyn more, but of course I'm still going to work out and dance, its just I need more balance and I don't want to overwork myself to the point where I need to call a sick day from work =P