Last Week of May
Finally an Engineer (Sort Of)
First of all, the new job is awesome. I don’t think I could be happier; everyone is incredibly friendly. The people who interviewed me even appeared to remember me, and have… well, been friendly.
Second of all, the monitor they hooked me to… is awesome. I want 3 of these. Or maybe 6. Then Marty can have some, too. They’re 24” HP “business” monitors with 2 USB ports on the side and have a resolution of 1920 x 1200 – awesome in a market that leans toward giving the consumer 1080p. Honestly, if HP marketed these at gamers, they’d probably make a lot of money, especially with the low profile.
So on Tuesday I began my journey. Well, I actually started that August of 2009. Or even June of 2008 when I started my first web job. Not a big deal – because I feel like this is a bit more of the real deal.
I’m able to talk to people. That’s awesome. I’d gotten pretty used to being the “weird kid” who’s either “too smart” or “too dumb” to start conversations with people.
I haven’t gotten to code anything yet – I’m still doing set up procedures. Some permissions stuff going on. Yesterday I kind of got to glance at what I’ll be working on. I also gained more appreciating for Eclipse; it’s come a very long way after its early releases. Plus I’ll admit that it works better on here than it did on my PowerPC iBook. No comparison I suppose.
School
I passed physics! Barely. Waiting on other grades. But I passed physics, and I think I did OK in my other two classes. I won’t be in Honors next year, so no more priority registration, but I think I’ll be OK in the long term. I think next semester I’ll pick up just by having the 3 programming classes – in other words, classes that are more FUN. (Not that math and physics weren’t fun, but they really aren’t my niche J )
Expenses
Started an expense report. More on that later. Basically, I’ve so far laid out all of my debts, other than the debt at Fry’s. It’s quite a lot. Most of my accounts are above 50% right now – in the 70% range. I’m looking at picking up a few extra projects to try to pay those off. Lending money was not a good idea. I really put myself back into the hole, but at least my debt to Hugo is nearly gone.
I included my student loans in the report. It looks like I should be able to pay off 2-3 of my unsubsidized loans if I continue paying my car at the current rate, and can get my credit cards back down to the 20% or less mark.
Games
Tanked last night for the first time for the RUM raid. Sadly, I was in a pure DPS spec and got flattened in about 4 seconds. I think I might respect a few points back into armor in case that happens again.
My DPS was otherwise lacking last night. Perhaps I was simply tired, because I know I made some major mistakes in my “rotation.” In addition, I know that on a few fights I found myself turned around/not even hitting the boss. I’m going to need to correct that, or at least run more Looking For Raids to “get back in shape.” I think tonight will be better, simply because I crashed about an hour or two after raid.
Right now I’m running with a fairly balanced build. I’m going to need to do some reforging for the new shoulders; my crit and haste are both a little low (I have 1500 mastery, 1400 haste, and just over 1300 crit right now). Due to using a trinket that will proc the “highest stat”, I’ve been trying to keep mastery high, but I think I’ve done that a little bit too much. I could definitely use more crit.
I’ll be transferring my shaman next. I got… pretty pissed off at the last Sounds Complicated raid. I honestly cannot stand being treated like a moron, and certain people insist on doing that. That’s not cool when I’ve withdrawn from that guild, and agreed to play a toon I don’t even enjoy until they could recruit more people. From what I gather, Marty’s had to tank as well – yah. I really don’t appreciate having my tanking bashed and being told I never tried to be great at it. I take tanking pretty seriously – as far as the game goes, that’s my passion. I feel more involved with fights when I’m tanking, and having all of my hard work ignored like that was not acceptable. I refuse to raid with someone who does that. Eventually I will also need to move over my death knight so that I can level inscription on my rogue.
Oh, yah! The rogue got its PvP daggers. The honor ones. It took about a week of grinding, but it added at least 1K DPS. That means I can actually kill healers in PvP with a little more ease. Still very much enjoying subtlety, but the shaman and I really need an affliction warlock for a proper 3s.
I’m still interested in gearing the death knight to tank for Marty’s run, but I’m still not interested in raiding with someone who treats me like I’m inferior. I worked very hard to get my toons pretty decent gear, and going out of my way to try to help get them isn’t something I normally do. Maybe instead I’ll try to help Marty get some bear gear in exchange for some help on death knight gear.
House
We got it. We will be homeowners by the end of June – start of July.
Weight
Down 3 pounds so far, maybe a little bit more. It’s really hard to tell. That’s within 1 week J Yesterday I didn’t eat enough; I barely had 800 calories total because my stomach felt a little bit messed up. Unfortunately, that will probably set me back a little bit. I’m trying to make up for it today, but I suppose that balances out Monday’s binge at Rubio’s. (But gosh darn, beer batter burrito! Pure genius!)
