Boredom Advanced

It's been a few weeks, so I guess I have stuff to type on here now.

AWA has come and gone. It was fun, if not quite as good as the last time I went. The screen on my cell phone died literally minutes after I walked in to the galleria though. That was fairly annoying since it seemed that everyone on earth suddenly wanted to text me or wanted me to call or text them at various points of the weekend.
Aside from that frustration, it was good to see everyone again though.

My best friend, Andrew, has moved in with me now. It's been cool having him around, although it mostly just means that I'm not sitting here alone when I watch South Park or whatever. I've been talking to a friend of his girlfriend and I think that might be going somewhere too. I'll have to wait and see though.

Finally, I can now say that jury duty is officially the most boring thing ever. I got a summons only a day or two after moving home from school and was lucky enough to be appointed to the jury for a case that's lasted over a week now. The other jurors are trying as hard as I am to not fall asleep since we're just sitting in those chairs and listening to them talk from 9 to 5 every day right now. We've all taken to just noticing things around the room that amuse us to kill the time, like how the lawyer for the plaintiff's side looks like Dick Dasterdly from Wacky Races if he didn't have a mustache and he sounds like Bill Lumburg from Office Space.
I also noticed that, on the desktop for his laptop, he has a shortcut to the "show the desktop" icon that is normally in the quicklaunch bar. I've spent a lot of time thinking about what the purpose of having an icon that minimizes all windows and shows the desktop being located on the desktop could actually be.
On the other hand, I've had plenty of time to think about it and I've been able to point out all of the flaws in their argument and come up with logical responses to all of their unanswered questions. Too bad I can't actually say anything to them until we've reached a verdict.

The most annoying thing about the jury duty is that it started right when I was supposed to be starting my new job as a designer for Mountville Mills. They mostly make carpet and textiles, but I'm going to be working on their advertising and promotions.

So I found out a yesterday that my friends in The Promise Drive got a shirt designed for them by the same guy that designs for Hellogoodbye. That's pretty cool. What's even more cool is that since they started selling those shirts, they realized that the one that I designed for them a few months ago is outselling the Hellogoodbye dude's design by a pretty large margin.

Yay.

In other news, my computer decided to give me the middle finger last week and eat itself. That wasn't fun, especially losing 30GB of files, including all of my internship stuff that I was in the process of backing up. I hadn't even had the chance to send off the final versions of the posters yet. On the plus side, I was able to remake all of them in two days flat. The only annoying part is that my boss wants me to email her the full resolution files... Those things around around 250MB each, which makes me wonder if she realized just what she asked. Regardless, uploading them to a file storage service online keeps tripping my router and stopping me in my tracks. It's a little frustrating since I'm ready to be done with these things.

I think I might have found a workaround though. I just have to rework a couple of things and optimize the compression a bit more and I might be able to upload them to my server, if I can keep the total size below 1GB.
We'll see what happens, I suppose. If not then I'll just overnight her CDs with them.

Hooray for being locked out of my apartment again... I'm currently sitting in the computer lab at Burger King until they kick me out. Not having a key to my room is definitely not making life easy right now.

Well, I've got three more days in Statesboro and I'm gone forever. It's odd to say it, but I'm really going to miss this place... Well, maybe not the place, but at least the people.

I've definitely met some cool ones, like Amanda, Eric, and Faith. Of course, I've also met some who I could have cared less for, like this one dude a few hours ago that seemed pretty determined to get me to leave even though I had told Amanda I would take her home since she was a bit on the drunk side. And then when I text him and say "hey, still locked out here" all I get is just a "that sucks for you." I don't get people like that, but whatever. That's not what this post is about.

This post is about those few people that I actually do like who I'm going to miss when we go our own ways. It's pretty sad that I won't be spending all of my time with these people again like I've gotten so used to doing, but I guess that means that they're actually important enough to mean something to me.

Hmm... You know, maybe I should stop before I depress myself and start having an emo moment here...

Right. I'm updating this because my awesometastic friend, Amanda, added me on here and I haven't done anything with this since the whole spray paint fiasco. So here you go, Amanda, now you've got something to read. :P

I'm finished with college in ten days and I'm actually kind of torn about it. There's people here that I may never see again and I hate that for more reasons than I could ever begin to explain on here, but at the same time I'm ready to get out of this place for good.

The whole "Surprise! You're homeless!" moment on Saturday didn't really make me want to stay here very much either. If it wasn't for some really good friends with a spare room, I'd probably be sleeping in my car right now or at least crashing on a couch somewhere.

I've been applying to a few studios and businesses with design departments that are around home when I've had the time. I would really like to get out of Georgia, but given the circumstances of the last few months (it's a long story for another post, if I ever get to it) that's just not possible right now. For that matter, I've actually found a few things that are actually enough to make me want to stay for now so I probably wouldn't just run off right away as it is. Besides, I've got enough freelance work as it is to hold me for quite a while.

Either way, the future is now and all of that crap, so I guess I'll just keep looking ahead and see where things take me.

Well, this is infuriating...

For a few weeks, there's been this large brown blotch of spray paint on the floor next to my apartment.
Apparently, somebody told the school that it was an art student with long hair and glasses that lives in my room.

You can probably see where this is going...

What's even worse, is that there's two art students with long hair and glasses that lives in this room.

While I was in class today, they decided to do a room check in my building. Turns out that the sole purpose of this check was so that they could question us about it and try to force somebody to admit that one of us did it.
I didn't find out about this until afterwards of course, and being the only one in the room that's actually used spray paint in his homework, I got a little nervous.

I didn't do what they're trying to say that David or I did. In fact, neither did David. We don't know who did for sure, but David doesn't even have spray paint and I got rid of the last of mine a while back as well.

Since I wasn't there, the person that was doing the questioning left a phone number for us to call if we wanted to try and confess something. I took this opportunity to get in touch with him and try to set the record straight. My roommates told me that, when he was questioning them, he was basically just throwing accusations at them and not listening to what they had to say. He also left us with an ultimatum. Either one of us steps forward and confesses or they're going to have to call in the Police and then we'll be in hot water for vandalism.
This is one of the few times that I'm actually somewhat glad that I've been extremely exhausted from long work hours lately. When I'm like this, I tend to not put up with things like that and I have no qualms about telling it like it is.

So I call the guy when I get the chance and he starts trying to feed me this line of crap about how they're certain that this is either mine or David's fault and how they're leaning towards David. So they're basically looking for me to point a finger at him and give them the confirmation they need to slap a fine on him. Never mind the fact that none of us did it and they are strikingly absent of proof of anything aside from the word of somebody who probably just saw me carrying a can outside to the grass, where I normally do my painting (because it'll either wash off or get cut down eventually).

At this point, I was pretty angry with him, so I cut him off in mid sentence and flat out told him that David didn't have any spray paint, their accusations were baseless, and that if they really want to know who has spray paint in the room, it was me. Even then, I'm trying to graduate either next spring or next summer. I'm not dumb enough to deface the school's property when I'm this close to finally getting out of here.
I made sure to let him know that I'm only telling him the truth about the whole thing and that I'm not looking for any kind of trouble of any sort. I want to try to resolve this peacefully if at all possible.
This seems to have calmed him down a little. Before I said that, he sounded like he was about to start another inquisition on me. He also seemed to be in a bit of a hurry to get off of the phone with me after that.

Part of me wonders if having the tables somewhat turned on him rattled him a little.

Before I let him go, I did drop one last tip for him that I noticed the other day.
About a week and a half ago I saw three girls making a banner for homecoming and they were using spray paint.
Then I gave him my cell phone number and told him that if he had any more questions to give me a call and I'd see what I can do for him.

Maybe the fact that someone actually gave him an assertive and non-intimidated response will get him off of our backs and it'll be the last we hear of it.
If it's not then I'm prepared to fight this as far as I have to, but I'd really like for it to not come to that if at all possible.

I just want them to leave us alone.

We didn't do anything.

I was out in the hall, spray painting part of my homework for Peter's class (I'll post pictures when it's finished) and some girl walked past and stopped me to tell me that I looked just like Any Warhol.
.....Ok.
It beats being told that I look like Ozzy Osbourne again, I suppose.

I've been crazy busy lately. Up to my neck in a never ending pile of homework that doesn't let up. I just now realized that AWA is only four days away. I hope I'll be able to go to it. I've been looking forward to it all year. I hope I'll be able to afford to go to it, for that matter.

Money has been tight this semester. My step dad lost his job right before the semester started and then the company he worked for denied him unemployment. We've been living off of nothing but my Mom's paycheck for the last few weeks. I've been trying to do freelance jobs between homework assignments to help make ends meet. Shelley's apartment being broken into and robbed didn't help much either. They never found out who did it, and I doubt they will. We're lucky that she is still covered under Mom's insurance, so at least we're getting some kind of compensation for it.

Bryan and I started working on the new version of The DG's website. We're keeping the same layout and style from Cat's design, but switching everything over from tables to a CSS based layout and tweaking a few elements (the navigation, in particular) to be a little more flexible for what we need. We created a forum too. Not much activity on it at the moment, but that'll probably pick up when people realize that it can actually be useful. Bryan, Lucy, Rachel, and I have been using it to critique each other before we get into the classroom. It's nifty. Here's a link to it, if anyone is interested in checking it out.

Speaking of which, Bryan and I have become pretty good friends, I guess. He's a cool guy. One of the few frat guys that I've met here that isn't your stereotypical party guy.
As always, I hang out with Rachel all the time. I guess we've kind of become best friends. It's nice, especially since I seem to be becoming more and more detached from my older friends here (not that I'm trying to though). Here's hoping I don't fall for her and screw things up horribly.
And then there's the one person that actually kind of bugs me now. Austin. I don't know what happened to the guy. He'll act somewhat normal for a little while, and then the next thing you know he's Craaaaaaaaawling in his skin! I don't get it. Lately, he's just been ignoring Rachel and I altogether. I don't know if we did something to make him mad or what, but it would be nice if he would just say something instead of acting like a little emo kid. I really hate to lose a friend, but I guess it's out of my hands on this one.

The roommates this year are awesome. I really couldn't ask for better ones. We have a great time just sitting around and picking on each other. Too bad Chris and I didn't get placed with them sooner.

No class tomorrow. Peter is in Seattle. I plan to hibernate and do homework.

To the person who broke into my sister's apartment and stole everything she owns:

Fuck you.

Wow... It's been a while since I've actually posted anything in my poor neglected livejournal.

Let's see...Where to start?
This summer has had it's ups and downs.

I seem to be cursed when it comes to printers. Right now, my Photosmart Pro B8350 won't let me print on anything other than 8.5x11 with the default settings. The moment I change the print quality, paper type, paper size, or try make a borderless print it deletes all of my print jobs as soon as they finish spooling. Highly annoying. Worse is that I know that it's a problem with the driver. The printer works wonderfully under UbuntuStudio with HP's driver and it worked just fine when hooked it up to a friend's Macbook. It's only with Windows. And it's not just on my comptuer either. I fixed one of my friend's computers for him (clean install of Windows and installed all of the Windows Updates) and it wouldn't work on it either. So I've been going back and forth with HP's tech support all summer, trying to figure out how to get this fixed. They just now started forwarding my emails to their level 3 tech support, so maybe I'll have some luck with them. I just hope I can get it working before I have to go back to school.

I've been making an attempt to hang out with Rachel when I can. So far we've made a road trip across the state to submit a poster of hers to the gallery in The Averett in Statesboro. Now her poster is hanging with mine in there. It was nice to actually get to see my college friends while I was down there. It was the best birthday I've had in years.
We went to go see Hellogoodbye a couple of weeks after that, and a couple of weeks after that concert we went to the 99X Big Day Out. That was a great show too, even with the brief torrent of rain.
Tomorrow, I'm going to go hang out with her again. I haven't really had much of a chance to do anything with her in a while because I've been a little busy with things. So I'm sure that'll be fun.
I think we're going to go see Die Hard. I'm not expecting any kind of breakthrough in modern cinema with it, but if it's proves to be as over the top as it looks I'll be amused. I'm sure it'll be fun either way. I usually have a good time when it's with her.

I couldn't find a job anywhere in this godforsaken town this summer, so I finally bit the bullet and went freelance. I can say, it's probably one of the best ideas I've had in a while. I've been doing t-shirt designs, flyers, and album art for one of the local bands, a logo and t-shirt design for a youth ministry that a friend of mine started, and probably the biggest one being that I landed a contract with Diverse Power. They needed a new promotional poster designed and printed by the end of this month to represent them at Georgia Power's training center in Macon. Apperaently, they got entries from some of the other design firms around town too but they picked mine. It's nice to know that my design was better recieved than the design firms that, at the beginning of the summer, told me that they wouldn't hire me because student work is never up to professional standards (one of the studios seemed to have something against GSU students too...not sure why).
It was a really fun job. The first time in a while that I've had to do my own photography. Aside from telling me the locations they wanted represented on the poster, requiring their logo and mission statement, and the compass that they use in all of their recent media, I had free reign to do whatever I wanted with it. I'm pretty pleased with the way it came out, aside from one paragraph looking a little too crowded inside of it's container. If I had been given a little more time I could have fixed it though, but deadlines are deadlines and they were thrilled with it as it was. It was also pretty cool that I earned $500 in just 17 hours. They told me that if I'm still doing jobs like this for them after I graduate it'll be more than $1,000 per job and that they'll be referring people to me before any of the other design studios in town from now own. Hooray!

Probably the best thing that I've done all summer though was that I reconnected with my old friends from highschool again. Those guys are great and I have no idea why I let myself get out of touch with them so badly.
My friends in The Promise Drive finally put out their first full length album this summer and it's actually pretty good if you're into the whole pop punk/emo thing.

And with that, I go.

Hopefully I'll remember to update again at some point.

...I just got a random phone call from a friend...It went like this:

Me: "Hello?"
Them: "Neil, you're a genius!"
Me: "...Alright?"
Them: *click*

I hate my IT class...Or, rather, I'm indifferent about the class, I'm frustrated by my classmates.
We have to do this group project where we all research secondary disciplines and talk about them in front of the class. Well, I'm the tech guy of the group (of course) so on top of my research, I get to make the power point for the presentation as well. Normally that's no problem, but one of the girls in our group can't seem to get it through her head that she was supposed to email me the information that needed to go on her part of the slides. For some reason, she was convinced, last night, that she had to call me and either meet up with me to give me the slides or tell me everything over the phone.
I probably wouldn't have minded as much had I not been in Savannah when she decided to start ringing my phone off the hook for the next hour, completely killing my battery. By the time I made it back to my dorm I had around 20 missed calls from her, but only one voice mail that was her saying she was going to bed and that she'd try calling again in the morning. Arrrgh!
I guess it didn't occur to her that she could have still just emailed me, like everyone else did, or even told me the info in her voice mail.

Oh well, I have the rest of the slides ready and I made some quick and dirty ones for what little I was able to find about her part in the course of the night (what can I say, I don't want the group's grade to suffer just because we got stuck with an idiot). That way, if anything, we can at least BS our way through her part. Hopefully the movie I have will fill up the rest of the time that we're allotted.