Back in Town
Well, I’m back now (about 10 p.m., got back a little over an hour ago) from Austin. The drive back was gloriously tedious and boring for the second half of it (which tends to be the longer part of any of these drives, at least for me). Driving TO Austin isn’t nearly as bad, because the closer to Austin you get, the more fun the roads get, and the better the view. It’s so nice and green and hilly there, with all the glorious trees, and the Bluebonnets in full bloom . . . Contrast that with the drive back to Midland, where after about San Angelo, it gets more and more flat and desolate. Blech. Just another reason to hate Midland.

The interview Friday was a bit of a mixed bag I think. I didn’t do as well on it as I have on other interviews I’ve had in the past. Part of it I think stemmed from the fact that I had some trouble understanding some of what one of the men who interviewed me was saying because of his accent, and that kind of threw me off with my responses. I’m still positive about the situation though, and I’ll be making a phone call tomorrow to hopefully find out the results of all my efforts and expense. These drives to Austin for interviews are pretty costly for me, and having to do so much of this job search from hundreds of miles away impairs my effectiveness and response time a good deal.

Dakota, the 3DGN writer I stayed with in Austin (and my probably future roommate) is a great guy, and his apartment has just the most incredible walk-in closet. His cats are OK, and he has something altogether wonderful: a cable modem. Gahh . . . I’ve gotten a taste of a high bandwidth connection, and I don’t ever want to go back. My modem connection right now just almost makes me want to cry (ok, so that’s a bit much on the hyperbole . . . it was DAMN nice connectivity, though). Friday night we rented Beetle Adventure Racing for the N64 and played that a lot this weekend. That’s a pretty fun little console game, and it even has lava. It locked up when we tried to use the Duel mode though (we think that requires a memory pack) so we lost all the progress we’d made, all the way up to the professional level.

I’m also truly in awe of Dakota’s Quake 2 skills after watching him play in the 3DGN vs. Stomped.com match on Friday night. 3DGN slaughtered Stomped, and it was mainly Dakota and Rob who ruled the maps (though our editor, Rick, was quite the rail-gun whore). I’ve got like 60 e-mails sitting in Outlook now – I’ve read most of them, but haven’t responded to any except the employment related ones yet. If you e-mailed me, be patient, I’ll get to it eventually.