ART PIMPING TIME!!!

This commercial brought to you by myself and kilinka.

As my friend kilinka is facing a reduction in her work hours, she has taken to accepting commissions for drawings and other art so she can have some money. She is also taking to sculpting chibi figures, and I have suggested that she do chibi sculptures of Final Fantasy characters, which came across as a great idea. Who doesn't want a cute sculpture of Sephiroth, or a black mage, a red mage, or a chocobo? If you are interested in seeing her work, in addition to contacting her should you be interested in a FF chibi or any other of her art, I refer you to her DeviantArt.

In addition, all of my images on my DeviantArt can be made into prints and sold. Should you be interested in purchasing, check out my site, and contact me for pricing and other info. I just started college again, so any extra help to offset film purchases and stuff would be very, very appreciated.

Support poor college students starving artists! You wouldn't want the Mad Squirrel to go apeshit on you now, would you? Look at how cute he is...

Acceptance, Part 2.

And it's official. I'm a Sage student.

The orientation was the usual stuff--deans, presidents, bigwigs spouting their usual messages of welcome, welcome, congrats, welcome, welcome, you've picked the right place to go to school, blah, blah, blah. This is my 3rd college orientation, they all sound the same. They fed us, so I can't complain too much. They also gave us freebies courtesy of Follett (the bookstore). I got a free Sage shirt. Yep. It's official. Bring on the college regalia. I can complain, however, about the $150 orientation fee they tacked onto my bill. Anyway. Got my student ID...this will come in very handy every time I need to make a purchase at the local photo and camera shop, for they have a 20% student discount. And I have a feeling I will be seeing them a lot more now.

But the review, the review...I think I'm falling in love with the professors of the art department. They're all nuts. Crazy. Fun. Normal. The head of the department is quite nice, and a cool person. She made me feel better about the fact that it's going to take me quite a few years to get my degree...for it took her 20 years to get her Bachelor's. As for the review...my pictures were liked. Quite a bit, actually. They told me that I have a lot of potential as a photographer, which gave me a nice boost to the ego. However, I will not be in the degree program right away due to my sheer lack of art courses. By lack, I mean...none. I was not at any college long enough to take any art courses. And they want to see a completed portfolio (or if you're the pessimist, they want me to shell out more money for said courses). I can understand that--after all, the degree is a Bachelor of Fine Arts...not Bachelor of Photography. There was more good news, though: ALL my credits from New Paltz, MCLA, and the SUNY Albany-level Pre-Calc course I took in high school transferred, meaning that I have knocked out ALL of my general education requirements and can go right into art courses, something I still have not forgiven New York State for, making me waste $10,000 to take high school all over again. And as I'm not in the degree program yet, it also means I don't have to buy a MacBook right away, and can start saving for one. The only required equipment is a 35mm film SLR camera, which I already have. So, I have registered for my two classes, which are on Tuesdays and Thursdays:

Photography I: 8:20 AM to 10:50 AM
History of Photography: 11 AM to 12:20 PM

Naturally, this meant I'd have to change my work schedule (if possible) or take a pay cut. By pay cut, I mean that I'd lose between 1-2 days of pay during the 2-week pay period. However, there is no pay cut, and I managed to create a work schedule that will still give me my full time status, with all the benefits and privileges that entails. Because I'd be losing 4 hours on Tuesday and Thursday, we needed to find out where I could make that up. And so, here's my work schedule for this semester:

Monday, Wednesday, Friday: 7:30 AM to 5:30 PM
Tuesday, Thursday: 1 PM to 5:30 PM

Yes, I will be working 10-hour days on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but...I can keep busy. And if I can avoid a pay cut, I will. This also means that I can keep accruing vacation and sick time as normal. Had I taken a pay cut, then the rate at which I accrued those would be greatly reduced. Whatever the case, I'm glad that I made arrangements with my supervisors. What I didn't know was that to change my schedule was SUCH A PROCESS. I should've known, though. It's the State. They want a paper trail for EVERYTHING. To get my request to change my work schedule approved, it required the OK and signatures of my supervisor, the unit supervisor, Personnel, the Lottery executives, and finally, the Director himself. It has to get signed by everyone up the chain. Also, Personnel gave me some lip about the fact that this had to be expedited and that I need to provide more notice next time. OH NO I FORCED PERSONNEL TO WORK! OH NO I MADE PERSONNEL EXPEDITE SOMETHING...I MADE THEM MOVE ONE PIECE OF PAPER! How dare I!!! I must be spanked! That's a capital offense, asking Personnel to perform an action! It's one of my gripes with the State...how SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW everything runs. Filling out a form is a process that must be signed in triplicate. The way that the State works almost reminds of Vogon bureaucracy as written by Douglas Adams: "They wouldn't even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without an order, signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public enquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters."

But that's done, and so when I have to do this again for the fall semester, I can give them plenty of notice--I can register for fall in March. How's that? Notice enough?

But it's all said and done...now I wait for the final breakdown of the bill, and how much in asinine fees I'm gonna have to pay (since the tuition vouchers will NOT cover fees, only tuition), and throw myself onto a payment plan.

It's done. I'm a college student again. 90 credits remain until graduation.

Silent Evil, Day 11.

So, back on track now. We resume after me deciding not to post the next battles, as I'd come home late and didn't really want to do any contest stuff at 10 PM. But we're good now. I did do the scoring after seeing Tyrant lose to Alfred, and yes...y'all got screwed over, except for the 4 people who voted for Alfred to win over Tyrant. And also, only 1 person got the last 4 battles right. So only person now has a shot at going for the All-16 Club, if he or she manages to nail the rest of the division. I wish this person luck. While the rest of you are licking your wounds, here's tonight's sampler: Nemesis from RE3 takes on Sherry Birkin from RE2, while the Hunter goes against HUNK. Oh, and by the way: here's the current leaderboard.

Resident Evil, Round 1, Battle 5 (5) Nemesis (28) Sherry Birkin    Free polls from Pollhost.com

Resident Evil, Round 1, Battle 6 (21) Hunter (12) HUNK    Free polls from Pollhost.com

Remember, once you're done voting here, go to Fantasy World, find these battles (usually the latest post) and vote there too.

Tomorrow's battles: (13) Carlos Oliveira vs. (20) Osmund Saddler; (29) Brad Vickers vs. (4) Chris Redfield.