Work, School, Life

Hi all,

Wow, how time flies huh? Well, first of all things have been crazy since my last update a little over a month ago. I now have an amazing job, which I enjoy more than I could have ever predicted. I've started my new Master's degree program, and life just seems to be going much better than before.

My new job as a car salesman has been going rather well, though, I have my gripes at times like everyone does at any job, but oh well, that's life. Weirdly enough, it's something which I could see myself doing for more than a few years at this point.

School wise, things have been going pretty well, just slowly due to the fact I'm working so much and what not. But it's doable at this rate.

Life has been interesting to say the least with a large amount of my time being spent at work, working on rather random ideas of mine, and school. Add in to all of this keeping my dad in my thoughts constantly with his health scare recently, but he's doing much better and might finally be able to come home next week, though that's an entirely different post on here for another time.

Anyway, I have to be at work later on today around noon, and I'm on my new laptop at the moment, so I should probably get some sleep. The only thing I'm debating at the moment is whether or not I like this laptop since it's so different from my old Acer, it's rather weird. It's a Samsung if anyone has experience with those please let me know.

Alright everyone, bed time for me,

Joshua

Fall leaves are blowing...

Well, I guess the title of this post makes things seem rather interesting for some. With Fall, the leaves on the trees here in Southwest, VA change like crazy. The colors are some of the best that can be seen anywhere. I've seen the colors on the trees changing in other states and countries, I'll stand by my statement that the ones here are the best I've ever seen.

Anyway, the reason for this blurb on the changing of leaves deals with the changing of plans and the way I've been going about things lately. First of all, I've gotten the good news of finding a new Grad. School (Liberty University) and great program which will give me the experience in a business setting which I was missing in trying to move up in different careers which I've considered, so hopefully when I start here in October things will work out correctly. The interesting news with this, deals with the fact that my better half, Courtney, will be joining me in the program at the same time.

Next deals with the whole job situation, where I've hopefully finally found something which could turn into a great career in a sense with being a Car Salesman. Yes, not the most reputable profession, but seems like something I'll try for at least the next few months at the very least in the hopes of at least giving it the try.

Lastly, the writing part of things I've taken a bit of a break on. Well, I had at least, due to a loss of my muse. I've had a few little short stories that I've written lately, but I can't seem to find any of them or an idea which has that 'it' factor which I believe could justify something longer than a few thousand words. I'm thinking of looking around for some writing prompts and seeing what happens, but the last time I found one that I ran with for any length of time, it turned into a Harry Potter fan fic. Any advice from the readers on this one?

Anyway, back to watching this Ravens vs. Browns game in which the Refs. are finally back for. Needless to say, it's for the best. Alright have a good one everyone!

Josh

Hi again everyone!

Hey Everyone,

I'm back, well, sorta. Courtney and I are still waiting to move in to our new apartment tomorrow, so it's still a bit of a struggle with very limited internet and all that fun stuff. Thankfully though, other things, for the most part seem to have gotten either better (school, work situation, writing, reading) or tolerable lately or less so (health).

To start with, well, my school situation has been fixed/solved for the moment, but it's likely to be a long term solution thankfully. I finally decided to cave in a bit and do what everyone had been suggesting and attempting to see if some of my personal IT work that I've done over the last few years would be enough to help get me into a Masters program. Well, thanks to the work on my firewall, which I use on my home network and on some of the small jobs I've done here and there, the school (Walden University) considered that enough alone to allow me entrance into the Master of Information Technology program with a concentration in Information Security, plus I'm being allowed to test out of some of the more advance courses though, the tests also proved I needed to get a more solid base of instruction on the low level stuff. So I start that on the 4th of September, and I'm excited for that.

Health wise things have taken a weird turn, my stomach condition has either gotten a lot worse or something since I've been constantly sick again for the last few weeks, but I'm finally caving and seeing what exactly can be done to help with it at this point. So I'll keep everyone up to date. (I threw this update in at a random point so I didn't end on a negative note!)

The work situation is still being figured out to some large degree, but I've more job applications out than I realized and now I've had to actually start turning down interview requests thanks to the time conflicts between them. Hopefully, I'll know something soon though.

So reading and writing kind of go together in a sense. See, I finally have managed to well, get back my reading mojo, to put it kind of weirdly. I've been on a run where I've read usually an entire book a day for the last month or so. I started with the books by Dan Brown, which were something I whole hearty recommend. From there I read the Hunger Game series, and a few books in the Star Wars novel series, starting with the one dealing with Revan from the old Knights of the Old Republic games. For it being a novel and taking me a while to place what was happening again, it having been years since I've played the games, this was definitely one of the best books I've read in a long time. Now I'm on to the Percy Jackson series and I'm trying to take my time with this one along with the whole moving thing and all.

Now the thing is with this return to me reading as much as I did at one point in time is that my writing has taken off. Currently I've been working on more than a few short stories which I'm thinking of trying to put together in some sort of collection and seeing what happens at this point. I'll keep everyone up to date on how it goes and maybe even put up a selection from one of the stories once I have internet at the new apartment and time to settle in.

Alright everyone hope everyone is doing well and everything, time for me to get off of here and get ready for my doctor's appointment, so fun stuff!

Josh

Checking In.

Hey everyone!

Sorry for the lack of updates in the last few weeks. Moving and having no internet or anything makes things a little crazy. Anyway, just wanted to let everyone know that I'm doing okay, supposed to be starting a job at Target as part of the 'Flow Team' some time soon but not exactly sure when yet. 'Sides that I've figured out (slightly/kinda) my school plans for this fall, but I'll wait until it's more sure of things before I reveal those.

Anyway, one of the story ideas I've been working on lately has taken on a mind of its own and has now surpassed almost anything I've ever written in one sitting before, going back to my time writing Fan-Fiction. The other part of this is that I've also in a sense got my desire to start doing some computer related design work again. Seriously, in the last few days I've managed to almost completely map out two of the sense from my head on my computer of how I picture it. So we'll see how that goes. I'm also going to try my hand at 3D graphic design again, in my spare time if I get the chance with everything going on.

Anyways, 'sides all of this Courtney and I bought a car for her to drive and also managed to get her Driver's License. Woot! Sorry, it's a pretty big deal for both of us to have been able to have bought that car and getting her License as well all in about three days time. So besides this all we're still preping for our move into our new huge apartment come August. We're moving into a 3Bedroom & 2 Bathroom with Washer, Dryer and Dishwasher apartment from a 1 Bedroom (Myself) & Studio Apartment (Courtney) to this new place so we're excited.

I'll try to keep everyone up to date on some of the stuff I'm up to here soon.

Josh

Sick again...

Hey everyone,

Hope everyone has been doing well for those who read this. Well, things on my end have taken a bit of a interesting turn yet again, well, health wise for me. The stomach condition that I've now lived with for the last two years (or longer considering how long they believe it went unresolved or noticed.) Well, it's decided that making itself known on a very high level at the moment is a good idea. With it I have flare-ups, which basically take me out doing anything and limit me to bed rest and sleep along with what I can eat. At this point, I've figured the current flare-up has been happening for the last two weeks or so, this being the first one I've had in about three months, so things have been interesting. Adding to what's the key trigger for the flare-ups (stress), I'm currently in the middle of a move to my fiance's apartment for the next month or so. After that we have a month of not really exactly knowing where we're going to be living, until our apartment is ready in late August. Hence, future updates from here on out in the next few weeks may be even more random than they currently are.

Anyway, it's almost 4 am here in Radford, and I actually have a job interview later today (wish me luck!) at a Temp. Agency while also waiting to hear back from two jobs I interviewed for last week, so we'll see. Keeping my fingers crossed is all I can really do at this point.

Alright well, off to try and get a little bit of sleep I guess, hopefully my stomach can settle down for at least an hour or so.

Night all!

Josh

So far with the Gaming Bracket

Greetings everyone this fine very late evening/early morning!

First of all, hope everyone is doing rather well. I'm okay all things considered. I've had two job interviews this week and now it's just a waiting game hoping to hear back from them or the other jobs I've applied for. Along with all of that, just packing and prepping to move next week. (On a side note to that, I'll let everyone know how trying to fit a 50inch flat screen tv into a 1992 Nissan Sentra works out.)

Moving on, it seems that the Gaming Bracket may have hit a bit of a snag, due to the fact that when I grouped the different games together I used a program I quickly threw together to seed them against each other for both the Modern and Classic divisions. This has caused a bit of confusion where certain games such as Starcraft and Madden are so vastly different that it's hard to choose for those of us who play both. I'm still trying to work out how I might want to change things up to make this a bit easier on everyone, but feel free to still send in votes. I hope to have the first round completed by next Friday the 29th of June. So please share your thoughts in the comments below on what you think should happen. Remaking the bracket isn't overly hard to do, but isn't something I truly wish to do at this point.

Thanks everyone,

Josh

Video Game Bracket!

Hi Everyone!

First of all, sorry for the time it's taken to finish this, but it's finally done!

Within the Modern side, the four top seeds are: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim,  Minecraft, Xenoblade Chronicles & Assassin's Creed: Revelations!
The bottom four seeds are: Zelda: Skyward Sword, Kingdom Hearts 2, Dark Souls, & Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Within the Classic side, the four top seeds are: Star Wars: KOTOR, Super Smash Bros, Super Mario 64 & Super Mario Bros. 3.
The bottom four seeds are: Paperboy, Star Wars Battlefront 2, Paper Mario & E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial.

The link so that you can view the entire bracket can be found here at the bottom of the post. I'll give it two weeks before I end the first round of voting and you can vote either on here in the comments or shoot me an e-mail, Twitter or Facebook.

Thanks everyone and hope you enjoy the choices!

Josh

Video Game Bracket!

Yet Another Quick Update

Greetings everyone,

Okay, so long story short, the whole Army Reserves thing both Courtney and I had been planning for me to do has officially hit what could be a fatal road block. Apparently when I was discharged from Ft. Sill, OK, my paper work was given the wrong discharge code and that has caused for the current problem. So all things considered at this point, my only options are to either consider the Army National Guard or possibly the Marines. The last option as well was mentioned that if I could get a Senator to have the discharge code changed, which might be possible.

Anyway, besides all of that now being taken care of and decided, for the moment, at least. I'm starting back on the whole job hunt I had suspended before the Army Reserves Recruiter decided to wait long before hand to apply for a waiver for all this and waste my time and energy doing all of this. Oh well. On the job front, my main thing at the moment is getting healthy so that hopefully I can find a job that's more along the lines of possible law enforcement or what not, but no matter what getting back in shape is a huge goal to accomplish.

Last little update here is something I've been thinking about. Superheros. I've been thinking a lot lately as I continue my work on the Gaming Bracket that some form of Superhero one needs to happen again. The problem is, I don't want to limit the Superheros to those only found in comics, but I think expanding it to those found in novels, movies and tv shows would be interesting as well. Just imagine the battle which could be found between Jean-Luc Picard and Yoda vs Batman and Superman in a team up sort of fight. Thoughts?

'Til next time everyone,

Joshua

Updates...

Greetings everyone,

First of all, I want to apologise for the lack of updates lately. Things have been more than a little bit hectic around here lately, with a lot of changes happening very quickly and plans which we supposed to have been completed and done with long ago flying back and smacking me up side the back of the head for lack of better terms.

To start with my whole school situation has now been resolved in a manner I never had wanted it to be resolved in. Mainly, since I kept having so many different technical issues and being lied to by the Classroom Support (IT Department) about what was causing the issues after doing my own research and talking with others who work in the same field, I was never able to submit any of my class work without something (or one) going back within and deleting the work after I had posted it. Needless to say, I've now filed multiple complaints with pretty much anyone and everyone I can think of to get this issue resolved.

Next, the whole military situation has come up on me a lot sooner than I realized it was going to do so. Currently, I'm just waiting on a waiver to go through for my prior military service and after that, I head up to MEPS (Military Entry Processing Station) where I'll go back through the medical checks and what not before I pick my job, sign my contract and do the first initial swearing in. From there, it's a matter of just getting a few things ready before I leave for Basic and Advanced Individual Training (AIT) for the Army Reserves. This of course, comes to my next issue I realized the other day. What job do I go for with the Reserves this time? The last time, I was an 89B or Ammunition Specialist, which while a pretty cool job for the military, isn't something I can easily transfer the skills from to the civilian world. Hopefully, I'll figure it out, but currently I'm leaning more and more towards trying to get a job either as a Paralegal, Carpenter or Medic, all of which would require me to be gone at AIT for a bit longer, though if I were to try the 89B again, the AIT isn't that long and is actually based here in VA now, unlike when I was last in.

Along with all of this, since I now have so much free time on my hands, I've been slowly starting to ween my body off some of the things I won't get at Basic or while I'm doing the whole Army thing, including trying to workout a bit more often. Whew let me tell you, I considered myself in sill kind of decent shape, now? I realize that was a huge mistake after trying to jump back into one of my very old workout routines from when I played soccer in high school. Another part of this, was trying to cut back on soda and drink more water, and wow did that have an effect. Never realized just how addicted to caffeine I was until recently. Seriously, migraines from lack of caffeine suck.

Anyway, that's my partial update for now, I have more news, with having some more progress on that gaming bracket idea I had a while back after having to start over when my laptop crashed and it had the only copy. Plus, since I have so much free time, I've been writing some more again after spending so much of my time reading (though it has mainly been fan-fiction). Alright, well, since its 2 something in the morning on a Sunday, I'm going to get some sleep and will hopefully have another update here soon.

Night all,

Josh

Gaming Bracket

Hi all,

Ok, so quick news on the Gaming Bracket. First, sorry it's been so delayed, between Graduate School and being so behind with that along with my birthday this past week and Courtney's Graduation from RU, I've been swamped. Second, I should however, have the bracket done and finished some time early this coming week. I'm just exploring at the moment the different options I have for collecting votes. If anyone has ideas, please let me know. Anyway, back to the massive amount of Grad. school work.

Thanks all,

Josh

Random thoughts

Hi All,

So, just a quick update here. First, I haven't given up on the Gaming Tournament, at the moment though, I'm still working on putting it together. There are way to many amazing games out there.

Anyway, two key reasons for the delay deal with Graduate School, where I lost all contact with last Thursday night and only just regained today thanks to my Internet Provider (ISP) thinking it was a hacking group of some sort since I'm always there logged in (almost 24/7). 'Sides that the job hunt I've been on outside of the military options took an very dramatic turn for the worst today with an unexpected no offer for a job I was under the impression I was the top candidate for. Long story short, it seems that I'm going to have to re-think my association with certain groups of people. 

Moving on from all of that, I have actually some rather exciting news. A random short story idea I had years ago which I stumbled across a few weeks ago, has now be re-edited and change to my current writing style to a massive degree, along with expanding from a short five page story into what has now become a monster (for me lately) seventy five plus page story. Now while I won't get too much into it at the moment, this has actually been one of the leading causes to my lack of getting school work done. At this point, it seems as though all I want to do is keep writing and expanding on the idea, while this may be OK in one sense, its very weird for me to be so focused on writing something like this. Hopefully, it might turn into something more, but it will probably just go back into hibernation on a random old hard drive of mine sooner or later. I'll try to update people though on it if I can. 

Anyway, my break from working on the massive amount of homework I've accumulated has lasted long enough for now. 'Til next time everyone,

Josh

Delay in Gaming Bracket

Hi everyone,

So do to some technological and Graduate School issues, I'm going to have to post-pone the game bracket for a few more days. Losing over a month of school work in Grad school after having it backed up in multiple places is not very good.

Hopefully, I'll be caught back up and all here in the next few days.

Josh

Gaming Bracket

Greetings everyone!

So I've decided that I'm going to start looking into my gaming bracket idea that I mentioned. Now I've been trying to figure out how to set this up while finishing up some last minute Grad School work.

So far, I've gotten the titles to the two different sides of the bracket setup, the left side or west, will be the modern games, containing games from the Playstation 3, Wii, Xbox 360, and PC. The right side or east, will be the class games, containing games from any other system you can think of. 

Some of the games I've already decided to put forth on this will however, be cross-platform having been released on more than just one of the systems. One of these will be Mass Effect 3, which I do consider to be one of the better more recently release games. Now worries though Star Wars fans, Knights of the Old Republic will be around here some where, I promise.

Now, if anyone has any suggestions for games feel free to comment below or message me on Twitter or Facebook! I'm more than open to suggestions since I've decided to expand the bracket from 32 to 64.

Thanks all!

Josh

Ideas

Hi all,

So I just realized how long it had been since my first initial blog post and figured I needed a new one. Along with hopefully a new and working schedule for blog posts, but I'll get to that soon.

Anyway, things have been better lately, minus the whole job search thing. That's something that still just spinning its wheels and I've almost decided to just wait until after I find something out military wise next month to do anything there. We'll see though, I'm more than open to anything that comes my way at this point, hence why I might end up doing some substitute teaching here in the next few weeks if some of my high school teachers have their way.

Anyway, on to the actual reason why this post is titled, "Ideas". I have been hit recently with inspiration madly with more random ideas than I can keep track of. Seriously, I have almost filled an entire megabyte of data with notes on my iPhone. It's even gotten to the point where I keep getting more and more distracted from my Grad school homework, like at the moment, oops!

Some of these ideas are standard little short story ideas, which I may explore to a greater degree sooner rather than later at this point, with so much free time on my hands. Others, relate to a few projects I've now pretty much taken control of, mainly helping to build a Dog Park here in Radford. With the level of community service I always tried and strove for during my time as an Undergrad at RU, this is something that I could actually see myself doing for a living in one sense. Other ideas with this for improving Radford I keep coming up with, but their still jumbled thoughts at this point, so we'll see what comes about.

Along with all of this, I have finally decided I might move back into doing some web-development to a small degree, but I doubt I'll do much of anything with it. 'Sides all of that, we'll see where I go from there, but now to mention a bit of what I talked about regarding a schedule for this, hopefully I'll post every few days, because I've been thinking about doing a bit of a video-game 32 seeded tournament after a friend of mine, S. T. Lakata, did a 64 seeded music/song tournament. (Speaking of which check out his amazing book in the Amazon store if you're a fan of Dystopian fiction novels.)

Well, that's the update for tonight, time to get a move on this Grad school homework. Got to love learning about International efforts in Peace Keeping.

Josh

Post One

Hi all,

Well, I decided that since I'm not really doing anything overly important at the moment, due to a break from school and all, I thought I'd start blogging again. It's been quite a while since I last had one that actually had more than one post a year (we're talking like since Freshmen year at RU). The side benefit of this being able to update everyone who I don't get to talk to as much anymore on what's going on in my life.

Well, first of all as most of my Facebook friends will know, I've been having a bit of a school dilemma for a while now. I started the Graduate program at American Public University back in June for a Master's Degree in Political Science concentrating in Comparative Government and Development. While I enjoyed my first two classes massively along the way, I had many technology issues and communication issues with the Professors since APU is an online school.

The next two classes I had with that major were part of the main cause in me changing to the new degree path I'm hoping to continue here in March, possibly. The new program is still a Master of Arts, but in International Relations and Conflict Resolution with a concentration in Comparative and Security Issues. While I know this is a program I'm going to enjoy massively after having talked and expressed my concerns to a few of the professors in this program, I still find myself a little worried.

I've been exploring my other options school wise as well. I found out recently (early January) that Radford University (RU) has the program I was truly interested in at the Undergrad level was approved as a major, that being the Geospatial Science major. I only just found out though here in the last day/two that I can't easily do a 2nd Bachelor's degree even if I wanted to, without some other means (minus Student Loans) to help pay for it.

Anyway, I've been searching almost non-stop, for a real full-time job as well, that will work with either my Undergrad degree in Political Science or my new field in IR at the Masters level, but so far I've only had a few nibbles, but nothing worth really writing about or at least, nothing in the general locations Courtney and I would prefer/want to live. So far, the best one I've had nibble-wise, has been a job based in Baltimore, MD which would also require me to live in Texas for 5 months while I do training and what not, but it'd be paid at least.

'Sides that the other key option which Courtney and I have discussed in depth is my going back into the military. Mainly the Army Reserves since that seems to be the best option at the moment with everything else since I'd still be able to have a civilian career of some sort while having the support of having a mild military income and background which would be a lot better than the one I currently have.

This is actually the option I'm currently leaning towards more than anything. While I would be gone for a few months (actually at least as long as I would for the job nibble in Baltimore). There's a much better option of being able to pick where we want to live, since it'd be easier to just travel to drill once a month, from wherever we live.

Other factors with the military are the fact that with my degree from RU now, I go in at the minimum as a E-4 or Specialist, which is pretty decent pay and all. Plus, there's a chance that I could actually go to OCS by chance, though it might not be the case in another sense. No matter what though, I've found that this is the best option for me right now. When I last went through basic for the Reserves and what not, I let myself be talked into getting kicked out, by the Ex, Ellie.

As Adam, may he rest in peace, one of my best friends, knew I always blamed myself for letting myself be talked into that. While I'll be the first to admit that I'm massively out of shape at the moment, I know that with the support structure and the confidence I have in myself compared to what I did, well I'm pretty confident as to the fact I can accomplish what I didn't then.

Anyway, that's enough at this point, I'll post another one of these here in the next few days hopefully, given I remember, so keep on the look out.

Josh