Dreams of the Quill

Fear my crappy title.

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It has been one hell of a year for me. A lot has happened… here’s a timeline.

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This is the first in a new series of posts on DotQ.

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I began working at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory last Wednesday. I’m in the same place as last year, down to the same cubicle. It still had my name on it. The computer, an extremely dusty G5, still had my application preferences saved in my account. Orientation was still devastatingly snore-inducing.

My work this summer so far has revolved around WordPress… which is awesome. It seems like this time around I’m actually going to make something usable for the Communications Department in the way of a Content Management System, and two serious possibilities being explored right now are Drupal and WordPress. Erik, the main web guy here, is figuring out what he can and can’t do with Drupal; I’m figuring out what I can and can’t do with WordPress. It’s very fun because I love working with WordPress and I don’t feel like a complete idiot because I know a lot about the software. And I’m still learning stuff as I go! Woot.

Ultimately, my task will be to turn this mess into a CMS that will allow non-tech savvy Communications folks to push content themselves.

So yeah. That’ll keep me busy for a while, at least.

In the meantime, I’m looking for time to devote to writing, drawing, and my own web business. I’m pretty pooped at the end of a day so it’s a bit tricky. I’m going to try to get back to a 2xweek Night Switch schedule, starting this Friday. I also want to get the ball rolling on HC again… hopefully I can finish up book one before the year’s over.

I’ll try to keep the site updated somehow!

Oh, and in the meantime, you guys can check out the changes on michaelpruess.com. It’s been improved a bit, I think.

Hey guys. That’s right—not only did I not have a content update yesterday, but I didn’t make any kind of news post at all. Total fail on my part, I admit. Ah well. Life is life.

Speaking of life, as I explained to KCG in a comment a few days ago, I was busy filling out scholarship applications. Flak wants to go to college, see, and partaking in such activities as filling out scholarship applications, while life-destroying, are conducive to making college less of a blow to one’s finances. So there I was this past weekend, writing essays and filling out forms and not playing with J the way I should have been. Oh well. He was working too.

School’s been kind of busy for me; especially Genre and AP Government. Genre’s got me writing some paper type thing. Government’s got me worried about the fact that I’m doing none of the reading (and will thusly get a lousy score on the notes section of my grade while acing the tests).

I started a new job, too. Some time yesterday, or maybe today. Or maybe it won’t actually “start” until I’ve signed a contract. But I’ve had contact with my new employer, and he’s given me my first bit of work, and I just completed it five minutes ago. It’s fairly run-of-the-mill site maintenance, updating a newsletter for a chess club’s website. Not my brother’s chess club this time, though I do kind of owe the job to him. Thanks D. I hope to be able to do more interesting things, like redesigning said site, in the not-to-distant future.

I’m not putting links here in case I’m not actually hired or whatever. Never know what I can get in trouble for! Anyway, will make another post with more info once I have it.

Last order of business: It’s October 1st!
This means the fall anime season, which last year brought us such atrocities as Kanon 2006 and Death Note (and by saying atrocities, I’m being violently self-deprecating when it comes to my taste in anime). Fall is never a very exciting season, but it shows some promise this year…

For one thing, there’s more Genshiken, and more Genshiken means more funny. I actually have a list of what I’m watching out for:
- – Blue Drop: Tenchi-tachi no Gikyoku :: yuri sci-fi. Next Simoun? Doubtful. But interesting.
- – Night Wizard the Animation :: anything with “the animation” in its title is great (see: ARIA the Animation)
- – Bamboo Blade :: I heard something good about this. I forget what, now, but I know it was good.
- – ef – A Tale of Memories :: apparently Makoto Shinkai did the OP for the game this is based off of, and is an art director for the show. Translation: do want.
- – Shakugan no Shana II :: watching this with J because we’re a pair of idiots. It’s gonna suck.
- – Sketchbook ~Full Color’s~ :: from the director of ARIA, slice-of-life with art students. Should be epicly unepic.
- – Clannad :: one year after Kanon 2006, Kyoto Animation gives us its next ridiculously beautifully animated tear-jerking game conversion. Apparently Clannad’s not an hgame, so maybe this will suck less? Or maybe it’ll actually be good? Still lacks male characters; they replaced the face-palming Kyon/Yuuichi character with a girl thereby fulfilling one KyoAni requirement while pleasing the Keyfans (read: Fred Gallagher) who don’t want to see anime dudes.
- – Kodomo no Jikan :: I’m watching this for Alar. Depending on its content, I may come back and delete this line from this post to erase all records.
- – Da Capo II :: I think the sequel to “shit” is “needs moar plungers. you can help by phoning Mario” but I don’t know for sure, so I need to find out. Yeah.

Fun stuff. I’ll be sure to blog my first impressions on any of those worth thinking about beyond the first episode.