Matt Hackmann

MattHackmann

The thoughts and goings-on of some programmer dude.

Good-bye vacation

A wise man once said all good things must come to an end. So it is true for me as my week long Thanksgiving vacation is over effective 8:00AM EST tomorrow morning. However, I will certainly say that it has been a rather interesting week for me.

There is, of course, my obvious return to fame thanks in no small part to idle curiosity and a couple minutes of nifty text editing. And to those who've been messing around with the drums program from the prior post, I have been paying attention to your comments. At this point I've abandoned that program in lieu of a GlovePIE script. More on that as things unfold.

An interesting development that spun off of all that hype was a small little comment left on a completely unrelated topic. It was from a producer at EA who basically said "Hey, want to do some game testing now and maybe come work for us after college?" When I first read that my small appartment was filled with whooping and jumping (this was before I got sick, more on that in a minute). It would be completely awesome if this were to pan out for me. Not only would I get some extra cash on the side while still in school, but I could go straight from graduation right into the industry that I've always dreamed of working in.

This whole thing is a perfect testimony to what I've been told by many people: throw yourself out there, you never know who's looking. I've been slowly working on my online presence since I joined YPN in January of '02. Since then I've dipped into almost every kind of online media there is. From running a message board, to podcasting, to online videos. Basically what I'm trying to say is, if you've got something that you think is good, put up online and do a little bit of shameless advertising. If I can come this far with one little video and a tip suggestion to Engadget and Joystiq there's no reason why anybody else can't. /end soapbox moment

As mentioned previously, I am "sick". I put it in quotes because it's not as bad as my usual form of sickness. Usually I get a sore throat, runny, feel weak, and just downright terrible over all. This, however, is confined mainly to the sore throat combined with a little bit of hoarse voice. Luckily, with the exception of the throat I feel physically fine. I was well enough to bike up to school today to pick up the books for my next wave of classes, namely Design and Art Theory (DAT) and College Mathematics (CMD).

DAT looks to be rather interesting as it is basically a traditional art class (no computers) with a design oriented twist. I've heard from two sources now that we're going to be getting a large amount of art supplies so that'll be cool. CMD is basic math up through intermediate Algebra. I jumped to the middle of my book and was able to figure out what was going on so I'm feeling pretty confident about that. Plus, I got a free Algebric calculator, though I doubt I'll ever use it. I usually do all my problem solving on paper.

Well, I feel I've rambled on enough. Before I go I just want to give a quick shout out to any new readers I may have picked up through the hulla-balloo. Peace out.