I'm not dead yet...

... though there are a handful of artists who are lucky they're not. The last 3-4 weeks have been a total whirlwind. Physics and CprE exams went all right. I made it through the GREs without dying. I actually did better on the real thing than I did on any of the practice exams I took. I should get my official scores back sometime this week, and then along with writing my personal statement and getting my recommendation forms to people I can finish up my grad applications. The more I think about it the more staying here doesn't seem all that bad. Steve, my game dev prof, is trying really hard to get me to stay. Yesterday he proposed 2 different TA jobs I could potentially have if I were to stay and do HCI here. One of the big reasons I don't want to stay here, other than the obvious of that I've lived in Iowa all my life, is HCI grad students have to have funding or they're not accepted, and I don't want to fight for funding. So Steve has taken it upon himself to fight for funding for me, even though I may not stay. I must admit, it is nice having someone want you stay enough that they put forth extra effort to make it possible and easy.

Which brings us to Grimm... wonderful Grimm that has been owning my life. Long story short, we failed, the artists screwed us. The programmers spent 6ish days straight, at about 12-14 hours per day in the Bunker working to get done on time, not to mention all the time spent individually working and the weekly meetings. Grimm was supposed to be complete Wednesday, November 16th at 2am for IGF. It wasn't even close because we had no art. The artists assumed that since their models were complete and textured that they were done... that they didn't have to worry about exporting, and they didn't have to worry about making sure everything looked right and was to scale, not to mention they didn't get "finished" until sometime late Tuesday. But we had a "magic installer" that went out and checked a server for updates before installing. So a new hard deadline was set for the artists to have everything exported and usable and then the programmers were going to finish the last little bits Friday before Thanksgiving break and everything was going to be happy... yeah, totally didn't happen. Important stuff that we (the programmers) needed more than anything else wasn't exported, and to make matters even worse, the server that all the art was on was down when we came in Friday. Luckily we got in contact with the guy who maintains it right before he left town and got what we needed off of it. Unfortunately it was to no avail, Steve and I spent about 2 hours putzing around trying to get the physics terrain to export, but had to give up because the only lab we could use was closing. So we gave it up. Yesterday we were informed that we have to finish by next Wednesday because we're presenting to people who might want to give us money. So the artists have been given a new deadline of 2pm tomorrow to have everything exported and in working order, and then Friday afternoon/evening the programmers are going to finish the beast up. I have little faith in the artists at this point, but I want to get Grimm "done"... I don't want to spend another fruitless day in the Bunker and have nothing to show for myself or my team... artists included. I could go on and on about the stupid shit the artists did, but if I did that I wouldn't get any sleep, and I need sleep.

So with that I'm going to put a close on this rant with the promise of better posts in the upcoming weeks. I'm hoping to get my graduate applications completed by this weekend to mid next week, and I'm done with finals 2 weeks from today. (Hooray!) Then it'll be over and I'll be able to breathe again... Pooh sticks.

(12/01/05) Edit: In response to an anonymous comment I received from what I can only assume is one of the Grimm artists: I am well aware of the break down of communication amongst the Grimm team. I am also aware of the total disregard for styles, requests, directions and deadlines of certain parties. I realize that allot of the people working on Grimm put in countless hours, but on the same token there are those who assumed their work was done when it wasn't, didn't stick around to make sure it was all ok, and made little effort to remedy it. On that same train of thought, this should be a learning experience for all of us, unfortunately I don't feel that some people have gotten anything out of this experience nor care to. When working on a team project everyone needs to not only get their part done, but stick around to the very end and be willing to fix any errors or mistakes. And maybe, just maybe, you might have to put in a little more work and go out of your way to learn something new on your own. In the real world you can't expect to have someone spell out for you step by step how to do something or how something works. In the real world we all would have been fired. Luckily for all of us we're doing this in a safe, learning environment where we're allowed to screw up, fall on our faces and fail miserably. To put it bluntly, my issue with the art team as a whole is not the lack of understanding of the exporting and integration process, but the lack of wanting to understand and the attitude of "What do you mean my stuff doesn't work? You must have broke it, it's your fault, you fix it." This by no means applies to all the Grimm artists, but it does apply to some. Sometimes in life the good get lumped in with the bad.

That's what I mean by groping. You try something and hope for the best.

It's really no wonder I'm screwed up. Sunday night I took a little break from studying and sent out an email to the family giving them a quick update about what's been going on and what I'm up to because I haven't done so in a while. Usually everybody is happy to hear from me and to know that things are going well, and I get nice little emails back. Not this time. My wonderful, sarcastic, cheeky father wrote me back with this:

Deinse,

Thank you for the submittal of your form letter. As you can imagine, we recieve a high volume of form letters, and are unable to personally respond to each of them. Never the less, we do appreciate your effort at communicating, and encourage you to continue. You might also try other methods such as Instant Messenger (we can provide links to appropriate clients for this if you need them) or even the old fashioned but always loved telephone.

Again, thank you for your coorsponednce.

Parental Units, Inc.

(this response was auto generated. responding to it may or may not reach anyone human).

He didn't even spell my name right! It's D-e-N-I-s-e, not D-e-I-N-s-e! Though it would be kind of funny if my name were Denise van Deinse. But seriously, that is the funniest thing I've received via email, and I would expect, nor would I want, any less from my dad. It just further proves I was raised in a weird and completely twisted environment, and there was never any chance of me being "normal." I've come to accept it, even love it... I just hope other people do too :P

The title today is something my physics professor said in class the other day. We were talking about Atomic H and Thompson's Model, and I don't totally remember what exactly he was talking about, but he said that and it was just too funny not to write down. He does that a lot, he gets all excited about physics and says funny stuff, that's even funnier taken out of context. Speaking of which, I have an exam in that class tomorrow as well as my computer engineering class. I'm probably going to die. Then next Thursday I get to go take the GRE's, at which point I will probably die again. And then two weeks from yesterday Grimm is due and I'll probably die at least one more time. Death is seeming fairly inevitable right now.

Grimm makes me grim. Friday (10/28) we (the programming team) spent 12 hours in the Bunker... yes 12 hours! From 2pm Friday afternoon until 2am Saturday morning. We got a lot done, and had fun doing it. We finally got the animations for our PC, and so we loaded some of them into the game, they were really funny. There's this one, where he's supposed to be climbing a rope, but taken out of context (which is how we like things) he looks like he's humping the air. We had a really good laugh playing with the animations. Chad (project manager) almost cried, which made me and Emily (fellow programmer) laugh even harder. Overall it was a fun and very productive night in my opinion, unfortunately there's still a lot to be done, and a very short amount of time to do it in. Makes me nervous. I'm going to be so happy when we're finally done with it... then I can spend a little time and make up a t-shirt design that says "Grimm makes me grim", it'll be fun :) Mostly right now I just want my life/soul back.