I'm pretty excited for D&D on Friday night. I haven't played it in a long time, and we've got a party of 5 people playing this time, and an actual DM, so it should be fun.
I'm playing a Warforged Artificer. Basically that means I'm a robot who makes machines and enchants things. I thought it would be a nice change of pace from my usual Elf/Human - whatever-the-fuck-has-big-swords. And now that I'm reading up on it more thoroughly I am finding that it's going to be a little complicated.
Basically I am playing a character who uses simple/melee weapons and attacks, but I have the ability to craft magical weapons that can deal crazy damage. I also have the ability to turn weapons that my allies and I wield into magical weapons by enchanting them. There's a whole system of rituals and shit that I need to figure out and it's pretty complicated. But I like it.
Also! Being a Warforged means I get all these neat little things. like the fact that I don't need to eat or sleep or breathe. Also, I have the ability, later on, to build myself a Homunculus, a little guy who I carry around (or who follows me around) who I can teach to carry out enchantments or to build weapons and items while I am doing other things. And the concept of a little robot dude following me around is ... hilarious. All in all I think it's gonna be fun to play.
Okay, that's enough of that.
I am nearing the end of the year almost, and it is becoming increasingly apparent that York isn't going to be helping me out with my money situation in any way. I just don't understand why, after jumping through ever hoop, and knowing full well the amount of money they have put away for these situations, I can't get any help. I have run into 3 barriers that were only there because I'm a design student. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense seeing as we pay much much more tuition than the majority of undergraduates here. Hell, we pay a little more than some grad students. So the fact that we pay more tuition means that we have ...less access to funding? What? I swear to god I am this close to switching to OCAD.
But ah well, the money things will be worked out somehow. I don't know how yet, but it's not going to keep me from going to school, I know that much.
Oooh, I have bananas!
Showing posts with label Money. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Money. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Up here in heaven
Quick update because that's the sort of thing I do.
I have a meeting tomorrow afternoon with a sort of a "holy shit I'm literally going to starve to death if you don't give me funding" sort of person at the university. I have printed out a bank statement, a diagram of my budget, a screenshot of the tuition I owe and a calculation of how I'm going to run out of money to feed myself. This is necessary because the requirements I need to meet in order to qualify for any funding are literally summed up (in his email) as "an inability to buy food or pay rent". I think I qualify as that, the problem is that I only qualify as such assuming that I pay my tuition, which he will want because he works for the school, but if the school is giving me money that negates the paying tuition doesn't it? Anyway, I've got my fingers crossed, if this fails I have to start mailing letters to government organizations, and trying to find personal loans.
It's been 2 weeks since I started to eat healthy again, my only lapse being a slice of pizza last Friday because someone in the office bought pizza for us (and I'm not enough of a dick to tell them I won't eat it). I feel alright, although I am a lot more tired and hungry than usual (probably more the fault of stress about money than anything). I am pretty much subsisting on Oatmeal, Bananas, Apples, Tuna, Yogurt, Vegetables, Pita, Bread, Fish and Chicken at this point. Actually, not pretty much, that's precisely all I've eaten. Appearance-wise though, I am back down to the weight/size I was in at the point when I had to give up last time (fucking November), so that's good.
Anyway, I'm off to finish work, go to TaekwonDo, worry about money and then do entirely too much more homework. Ja
I have a meeting tomorrow afternoon with a sort of a "holy shit I'm literally going to starve to death if you don't give me funding" sort of person at the university. I have printed out a bank statement, a diagram of my budget, a screenshot of the tuition I owe and a calculation of how I'm going to run out of money to feed myself. This is necessary because the requirements I need to meet in order to qualify for any funding are literally summed up (in his email) as "an inability to buy food or pay rent". I think I qualify as that, the problem is that I only qualify as such assuming that I pay my tuition, which he will want because he works for the school, but if the school is giving me money that negates the paying tuition doesn't it? Anyway, I've got my fingers crossed, if this fails I have to start mailing letters to government organizations, and trying to find personal loans.
It's been 2 weeks since I started to eat healthy again, my only lapse being a slice of pizza last Friday because someone in the office bought pizza for us (and I'm not enough of a dick to tell them I won't eat it). I feel alright, although I am a lot more tired and hungry than usual (probably more the fault of stress about money than anything). I am pretty much subsisting on Oatmeal, Bananas, Apples, Tuna, Yogurt, Vegetables, Pita, Bread, Fish and Chicken at this point. Actually, not pretty much, that's precisely all I've eaten. Appearance-wise though, I am back down to the weight/size I was in at the point when I had to give up last time (fucking November), so that's good.
Anyway, I'm off to finish work, go to TaekwonDo, worry about money and then do entirely too much more homework. Ja
Friday, January 08, 2010
S2E02
Welp, semester two second year, my schedule
Monday - Work 9 - 12, Evolution of Information Design 12:30-4:30, Information Design 4:30 - 8:30
Tuesday - Class at Sheridan: Reasearch in Design 1-4, Typography 3 5-9
Wednesday - Work 9-5, Humanities 7 - 10
Thursday - Work 9-5, Taekwondo 7 - 9:30
Friday - Interactivity 2 8:30 - 12:30, Work 1 - 4
Not looking forward to Interactivity (in it right now) but otherwise I like the looks of things.
Extremely depressed. Am trying to find scholarships to stay in school for next year, turns out being poor is a disadvantage to going to school. Who knew eh?
Monday - Work 9 - 12, Evolution of Information Design 12:30-4:30, Information Design 4:30 - 8:30
Tuesday - Class at Sheridan: Reasearch in Design 1-4, Typography 3 5-9
Wednesday - Work 9-5, Humanities 7 - 10
Thursday - Work 9-5, Taekwondo 7 - 9:30
Friday - Interactivity 2 8:30 - 12:30, Work 1 - 4
Not looking forward to Interactivity (in it right now) but otherwise I like the looks of things.
Extremely depressed. Am trying to find scholarships to stay in school for next year, turns out being poor is a disadvantage to going to school. Who knew eh?
Monday, October 26, 2009
Paint By Number
Saturday was pretty awesome, I went to my friend Emma's Zombie Party and drank many a cider, then I rode a scooter down a hallway, and I think later I broke my diet pretty hardcore and ate a lot of pizza. Sorry metabolism. I went with Alicia (read:awesome girl of awesomeness) and the next day we got up and went to the Apple store so that I could max out my credit card on this beautiful motherfucker:
Sweet fucking god
This is the biggest thing in the world. It is like having four monitors and it will greatly improve the way I do my design work, no more layering twenty different application windows over top of each other, or working on large documents zoomed out to 10%! No, no.
I am also hoping to install XP on it soon to get some games being played (Bioshock, anyone?) and that is going to likely require the use of a USB mouse and keyboard to go the installation seeing as the magic mouse, while a thing of pure wonder, doesn't work so well in Windows.
Anyway, back to work, and to the homework machine later.
This is the biggest thing in the world. It is like having four monitors and it will greatly improve the way I do my design work, no more layering twenty different application windows over top of each other, or working on large documents zoomed out to 10%! No, no.
I am also hoping to install XP on it soon to get some games being played (Bioshock, anyone?) and that is going to likely require the use of a USB mouse and keyboard to go the installation seeing as the magic mouse, while a thing of pure wonder, doesn't work so well in Windows.
Anyway, back to work, and to the homework machine later.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Your perfect circle
What do you know? For the first time ever I am actually caught up on assignments before the last possible second! I mean, I'm a little behind on studying for my History midterm, but still, not bad. And it only took me a year.
I've actually been pretty happy with the work I've been doing too. I still have to work on being able to properly demonstrate my cognitive process because that seems to be at a little bit of a loss right now, and my design process as well, but it's coming along.
I think I might be the proud owner of a crappy old electric guitar today. A while back Jay told me he'd trade me his for a 60 of his favourite brand of gin, and I plan on picking that up today, so we'll see how that goes. I'll probably swipe and use Andrew's amp because that son of a bitch never uses it and it's pretty much rad.
I've been watching that show Mad Men, it's brilliant, probably one of the best new shows I've seen in a while. It took a little while for me to get into it, but once I did it was amazing. I'm just working my way through the second season now, so I'm not as far as most of my friends are in the series but I can already say that I think it's that sweet. Man, I wish I were living in the 60s and working at an Ad agency. I think the show is actually giving me a little bit of an insight into what it would be like to work in the industry of print media (i.e - the industry I'm entering) and it's been actually kind of helpful in regards to my presentations and justifications for projects at school. Neat.
I finally sucked it up and went out and bought new jeans, which is an effort for me to do. They're nice though, and they fit, so I feel like I accomplished something here, it's odd. Also, on the topic of spending money I don't have - I need apple to get off it's ass and announce the new iMacs. As I mentioned before, my program is giving me the entirety of the Adobe Master Collection for free this year, and I need a computer that can run it. I also need a computer that allows me to do freelance work from home, given the current political climate of the office I work in (more on that later)
In closing - everyone listen to Mer de Noms and Thirteenth Step, two albums by A Perfect Circle. They so good.
I've actually been pretty happy with the work I've been doing too. I still have to work on being able to properly demonstrate my cognitive process because that seems to be at a little bit of a loss right now, and my design process as well, but it's coming along.
I think I might be the proud owner of a crappy old electric guitar today. A while back Jay told me he'd trade me his for a 60 of his favourite brand of gin, and I plan on picking that up today, so we'll see how that goes. I'll probably swipe and use Andrew's amp because that son of a bitch never uses it and it's pretty much rad.
I've been watching that show Mad Men, it's brilliant, probably one of the best new shows I've seen in a while. It took a little while for me to get into it, but once I did it was amazing. I'm just working my way through the second season now, so I'm not as far as most of my friends are in the series but I can already say that I think it's that sweet. Man, I wish I were living in the 60s and working at an Ad agency. I think the show is actually giving me a little bit of an insight into what it would be like to work in the industry of print media (i.e - the industry I'm entering) and it's been actually kind of helpful in regards to my presentations and justifications for projects at school. Neat.
I finally sucked it up and went out and bought new jeans, which is an effort for me to do. They're nice though, and they fit, so I feel like I accomplished something here, it's odd. Also, on the topic of spending money I don't have - I need apple to get off it's ass and announce the new iMacs. As I mentioned before, my program is giving me the entirety of the Adobe Master Collection for free this year, and I need a computer that can run it. I also need a computer that allows me to do freelance work from home, given the current political climate of the office I work in (more on that later)
In closing - everyone listen to Mer de Noms and Thirteenth Step, two albums by A Perfect Circle. They so good.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Every old salt knows a song to sing, when things go wrong, and things go wrong.
So here's yet another update born of my unwillingness to do work despite approaching deadlines.
I am at work right now, and there's a lot to be done, when I am finished the work I have to go to class where I will try to convince a professor of an idea I have despite having no graphic representation yet, and then I will spend the rest of the night (and likely well into the morning) working on my Typography work which is due for critique tomorrow. Splendid.
On the bright side, after Thursday and Friday (insane school-work days) there is both a party at Sam's new place, and I will be going to some fair out in Markham for the night on Saturday apparently. I hear there will be animals. I will pet them with my hands and say "you are a cute animal".
I am thinking of starting a little strip called "David, the comic" or something that features a little cartoon guy facsimile of me who rambles on about random musings, I drew one on a bus a few days ago, which is probably what has sparked the idea in my head, so I dunno if I'll do that or not, but I'm thinking about it because it seems like the small scale sort of comic project I could do right now.
Oh, also. My program bought all of the students in it the Adobe CS4 Master Collection, legit-like, which is awesome. However, I don't have a computer capable of running it, so I have a problem. I was intending to wait until next year to buy a new mac, but it seems like this is a sign that I should make it this year. Otherwise I'll have about 2000.00 worth of software collecting dust on my desk for a year. That coupled with the fact that there are rumours that the iMac will be seeing an update in the space of weeks makes me think I may own one by November.
If I do get an iMac, it'll be the lowest 24inch model (so the second lowest end, just above the 20inch model), and although it's specs aren't amazing, OSX has this fancy way of dealing with system resources that I just find downright neat, and having used one of said model I can say it performs amazingly (I'll probably stick with the 4GB RAM option instead of 8 because holy fuck that's money. Unless of course the updates to the line severely alter the specs and prices, but we'll have to see. Either way I am looking at spending almost 1900.00 on this thing, so that's my new computer for University, having made it 1 year without one.
Ja
I am at work right now, and there's a lot to be done, when I am finished the work I have to go to class where I will try to convince a professor of an idea I have despite having no graphic representation yet, and then I will spend the rest of the night (and likely well into the morning) working on my Typography work which is due for critique tomorrow. Splendid.
On the bright side, after Thursday and Friday (insane school-work days) there is both a party at Sam's new place, and I will be going to some fair out in Markham for the night on Saturday apparently. I hear there will be animals. I will pet them with my hands and say "you are a cute animal".
I am thinking of starting a little strip called "David, the comic" or something that features a little cartoon guy facsimile of me who rambles on about random musings, I drew one on a bus a few days ago, which is probably what has sparked the idea in my head, so I dunno if I'll do that or not, but I'm thinking about it because it seems like the small scale sort of comic project I could do right now.
Oh, also. My program bought all of the students in it the Adobe CS4 Master Collection, legit-like, which is awesome. However, I don't have a computer capable of running it, so I have a problem. I was intending to wait until next year to buy a new mac, but it seems like this is a sign that I should make it this year. Otherwise I'll have about 2000.00 worth of software collecting dust on my desk for a year. That coupled with the fact that there are rumours that the iMac will be seeing an update in the space of weeks makes me think I may own one by November.
If I do get an iMac, it'll be the lowest 24inch model (so the second lowest end, just above the 20inch model), and although it's specs aren't amazing, OSX has this fancy way of dealing with system resources that I just find downright neat, and having used one of said model I can say it performs amazingly (I'll probably stick with the 4GB RAM option instead of 8 because holy fuck that's money. Unless of course the updates to the line severely alter the specs and prices, but we'll have to see. Either way I am looking at spending almost 1900.00 on this thing, so that's my new computer for University, having made it 1 year without one.
Ja
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
I didn't even notice
Holy crap, it's September.
Where's my OSAP? God I hate OSAP. I mean, I LOVE OSAP, but I hate the way people deal with it. For those of you (the one, that I know of) who aren't from Canada, let alone Ontario, let me explain OSAP to you.
OSAP stands for Ontario Student Assistance Program. In Ontario there's something called Ontario's Student Access Guarantee, which states "Students in need will have access to the resources they need for their tuition, books, and mandatory fees." Essentially, OSAP is something put into place so that poor people, or people who otherwise would have no means of going to school (people like myself) can still get an education. It's a fantastic service in theory, and it is in fact the only reason I can go to school. It works by loaning you a certain amount of money each year based on your financial need, and then at the end of your time in school (4 years usually) you start to pay them back through monthly payments. It's a great service, actually.
The problem, as is the problem with most things, is people. Let me give you an example. Right now, I am sitting waiting for my OSAP semester 1 installment so that I can pay for my rent and such for the month. I submitted my application in late July, so I am willing to accept the fact that it might take a little bit to go through. It's been 6 weeks now, and I still haven't heard a word, not one single change in my application status, and that makes me worry. Obviously, chances are that it's going to work out fine, but I figure it won't hurt to talk to the place, just to make sure everything is going fine with my application, so I call the OSAP office. Here's the conversation that takes place.
Me: Hi, I'm calling just to make sure that my application is going through alright
OSAP: Okay, what's your reference number?
Me: (reference number)
OSAP: Alright, it says here your application is on hold.
Me: Alright ... so what does that mean
OSAP: I don't know.
Me: What do you mean you don't know? Like, should I be worried?
OSAP: Maybe.
Me: Well ... what can I do?
OSAP: Check back in 2 weeks.
Me: But ... it's been on hold for 5 already.
OSAP: Yeah ... check back in 2 weeks.
Me: Alright, I guess? And what do I do if it's still on hold?
OSAP: I don't know, wait again?
Me: There's only so long I can wait though... I mean, is there something wrong with my application? I could probably give you any information you need that might be holding it up.
And then they hung up on me.
They hung up!
I haven't called back yet, but I intend to. I just don't know what exactly I am going to say. The problem with OSAP is that the people who are dealing with it tend to be very VERY unhelpful. And there is plenty of reason to be concerned when an application stays on hold this long.
Overall, it's just a very unsettling system. Oh, also, every once in a while they send you a letter that tells you how much money you will owe OSAP after you graduate. Why? Do they think we're going to forget the tens of thousands of dollars in debt we are? Jeeeeeez
Anyway, I am hoping I get that money sometime soon, as it would put a number of concerns that I have to rest, and I am sort of in dire need of something to take some worries off of me right now. I've been ... let's say, on edge lately.
Bah. School in one week.
Where's my OSAP? God I hate OSAP. I mean, I LOVE OSAP, but I hate the way people deal with it. For those of you (the one, that I know of) who aren't from Canada, let alone Ontario, let me explain OSAP to you.
OSAP stands for Ontario Student Assistance Program. In Ontario there's something called Ontario's Student Access Guarantee, which states "Students in need will have access to the resources they need for their tuition, books, and mandatory fees." Essentially, OSAP is something put into place so that poor people, or people who otherwise would have no means of going to school (people like myself) can still get an education. It's a fantastic service in theory, and it is in fact the only reason I can go to school. It works by loaning you a certain amount of money each year based on your financial need, and then at the end of your time in school (4 years usually) you start to pay them back through monthly payments. It's a great service, actually.
The problem, as is the problem with most things, is people. Let me give you an example. Right now, I am sitting waiting for my OSAP semester 1 installment so that I can pay for my rent and such for the month. I submitted my application in late July, so I am willing to accept the fact that it might take a little bit to go through. It's been 6 weeks now, and I still haven't heard a word, not one single change in my application status, and that makes me worry. Obviously, chances are that it's going to work out fine, but I figure it won't hurt to talk to the place, just to make sure everything is going fine with my application, so I call the OSAP office. Here's the conversation that takes place.
Me: Hi, I'm calling just to make sure that my application is going through alright
OSAP: Okay, what's your reference number?
Me: (reference number)
OSAP: Alright, it says here your application is on hold.
Me: Alright ... so what does that mean
OSAP: I don't know.
Me: What do you mean you don't know? Like, should I be worried?
OSAP: Maybe.
Me: Well ... what can I do?
OSAP: Check back in 2 weeks.
Me: But ... it's been on hold for 5 already.
OSAP: Yeah ... check back in 2 weeks.
Me: Alright, I guess? And what do I do if it's still on hold?
OSAP: I don't know, wait again?
Me: There's only so long I can wait though... I mean, is there something wrong with my application? I could probably give you any information you need that might be holding it up.
And then they hung up on me.
They hung up!
I haven't called back yet, but I intend to. I just don't know what exactly I am going to say. The problem with OSAP is that the people who are dealing with it tend to be very VERY unhelpful. And there is plenty of reason to be concerned when an application stays on hold this long.
Overall, it's just a very unsettling system. Oh, also, every once in a while they send you a letter that tells you how much money you will owe OSAP after you graduate. Why? Do they think we're going to forget the tens of thousands of dollars in debt we are? Jeeeeeez
Anyway, I am hoping I get that money sometime soon, as it would put a number of concerns that I have to rest, and I am sort of in dire need of something to take some worries off of me right now. I've been ... let's say, on edge lately.
Bah. School in one week.
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