Negrek

hhh I'm caught up with your story. What a blast! :O :D it's very exciting! Great job ^^
did the child kill the E4? D: I hope not

Heyy Negrek! Saw your Pokémon story on ff.net. It's really good!

The latest trend in my AC town is calling me "shmoopy," and I'm not here for it. >:(

hello!! i was wondering if you're still running the same ref test? and also whether you're still interested in this doubles battle?

Oh hey! I found the forums again. How's life been?!

Oh wow!! That sounds amazing! :O Why were they your top and bottom 3?

This summer I'll be going abroad to Berlin, so I'll be sure to ask you about stuff to do around Europe (we don't have classes on Fridays, so we basically have long weekends every weekend)

Hey! Eifie asked me to close her and Keldeo's quest battle from last year; what prizes should Superbird (the ref) and RedneckPhoenix (playing the NPC Pokémon) get, though?

Where'd you go? :o

Ah, gotcha. That's unfortunate.

Hey Negrek! Hope your trip around the world went (or continues to go) well!

I was wondering about your NaNoWriMon stuff. Do you only do it for NaNo, or do you also set it up for Camp NaNo?

OMG OH NO, how has it been like 5 months?!? Ahhh I'm so sorry this took me so long. I must penpal better.

Resume shlepping is the absolute worst and I hope you have a semi-decent experience of it!! Haha. I might have to do it again soon, not greatly looking forward to it! That's cool that you participated still, I feel like that's always a great way to be prepared in the future! Like, if you're still interested in doing it someday, now you're so much more prepared than if you chose not to participate at all :D

Oh hey, a money aron! Ha! Oh goodness, I have... forgotten a lot about ASB. I'd like to finish reffing a few of my battles someday - or even sink some time into making an automated tool thing. Work has given me a lot of practice with Excel and ooooo I feel like it's super achievable if I put some time into it. Hmmm. I know Kratos has got something like that on her site?

So the job! Thanks! It has overall been a much better experience than my last job. It started off really great - I liked the work I was doing and got along really well with my coworkers. It's changed a little bit (hopefully not permanently) - I'm currently in a bit of a slump, feeling like I'm not doing as well/as much/as important of stuff as some of my colleagues, but I'm working on shaking that psuedo-jealousy feeling. I'm getting nervous too because my contract ends in February, and if it doesn't get extended again/turn into full time, then I might have to look for another job again :( So I'm really trying to prove myself in order to stay - I really don't want to start over again just now haha!

It's been a lot of fun in the new place though!! I'm so much closer to a lot of restaurant options, and family, and stores, and just cool nature scenic things in general. Now, I don't necessarily take advantage of all those things, but at least I'm consciously choosing not to instead of just not having the option hahahaha. I've been taking some steps towards more art stuff which is super exciting!!! Have I sent you a link to my instagram? I should send you a link - that's where I've been posting most of my stuff! It's a slow progress but I'm trying to stick with it :)

How have you been?! What have you been up to since finishing your travels - have you found a new job or new adventure of some kind?

Yo, kinda weird thing to mention out of the blue, but in case you hadn't heard (wouldn't be surprised, apparently communication has been terrible), some kind of buyout clusterfuck is happening over at ZetaBoards/Invisionfree, and if nothing else it looks like IF boards are going to disappear forever if they're not converted to some janky new forum software. IDK if there are any posts from Kutho that you remember fondly and want to save, but apparently the changes are happening this month and you may want to save those posts/threads now, if you want to hang onto anything for nostalgia or whatever.

I think... I hope? that we're done with the Car Time, at least. The offending vehicles have been replaced. If you ever decide you do want to be on the road, buy your car used from a car rental company, I guess? Apparently they're all really late-model cars for not a lot of money, which was nice.

I don't really do a lot of coding of my own, no, aside from untangling people's themes to figure out what to display: none. I don't remember enough PHP to be doing any WordPress plugin development, heh. It's mostly a mix of question-answering and plugin-unfucking. Not bad overall, though!

Oh, wow, that sounds so cool! I'd really love to go visit someplace during a huge celebration, like China during New Year's or Rio during Carnivale or something. Being surrounded by all those cool traditions and events and festivities would make having to deal with the crowds worth it, I think, haha. Glad to hear you had such a good time! (Did the durian snacks actually taste good? More importantly, how did they smell? :P)

Yeah, I did finally manage to land an actual job—just part-time for right now, but on the plus side it's remote so I can work from home. All the jobs I had to ignore because I don't have a car, smh. (Not that I could've really done much even if I wasn't terrified of driving, haha... too many other people who need them at conflicting times of day, and also we have had... A Time... with cars lately.) But yeah, it's technical support for this premium WordPress plugin for selling online courses, which is not a product I knew anything about or expected to be working with but hey, I'm getting paid and the bosses/coworkers have been super nice so far, so I'm content.

Hey so guess who totally knows what day your birthday is but somehow managed to not realize that yesterday was actually that day? Happy slightly belated birthday, anyway! Where did you spend it (are you in Japan yet?), and did you treat yourself to anything cool?

Happy birthday! :)

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday Negrek!! :D I hope it's an awesome day!

Hey so the other part of the package came yesterday, and thanks! The mini box was especially cool—the big one was a big fancy otyugh I might actually have a use for, and I got a dude with nice shiny armor, a winged sorcerer and a genuinely slightly upsetting lemure. The paint job on these is really quite nice! Certainly better than the last pre-painted single I bought, haha. Thank you so much!

OKAY! Finally responding omg haha. Sorry for the late reply to all of this!

That's awesome about the Wizards designer search! That would be really cool to at least try - making card games/board games/etc has always seemed so interesting, but challenging. Did you find out anything more about it and if you made it on?

Thanks for adding me to the ref list! Now I am OFFICIAL, huzzah! Also also I wanted you to know I picked the name Rica because it's as in "AfRICA" or "Costa RICA" so your new Aron friend is a traveler too! I'm not sure if you went to/have ever been to either of those places, but the name worked. :P And okay, I'll start a meta thread for the Safari Zone idea!... eventually...

So, job update. I got a job!!! The last two weeks have been a bit of a blur of sudden interviews and calls with recruiters and stuff, and I think I really lucked out - I got hired for a contract-to-hire design engineer position, and overall it seems like a great culture there (they actually went out of their way to mention their positive views on things like diversity and sustainability - I love both of those things but haven't asked about them in so long because it feels so farfetched sometimes - either the company does and talks about it regularly, or doesn't and it'd be awkward bringing it up? At least that's what I've told myself! I'm going to be rethinking that logic now).

You know, I feel like the whole "getting a job without any experience in it" is totally about confidence, too. (And... maybe the hiring/selection process's internal biases...) Like, if you honestly believe you can do it! I know sometimes I'm my own worst enemy by selectively remembering the times that, say, I tried to learn something new and gave up or couldn't do it or something haha. But, I think now that I will have a little stability again, I'll feel more comfortable planning to achieve other things (like freelance, art projects, etc.) because I won't feel so guilty for not applying to jobs. Hopefully I'll still have energy, but I think this location is going to make me feel way different - there's going to be so much more energizing opportunities! Like groups to join and places to go and things to do! (Of course, I say I'm excited about all that, but the possibilities of me just spending all my time inside alone are... strong :P)

Hey, that's good not to have a lot of horror stories, haha! And not actually planning/researching/organizing could also be a selling point - like, you are naturally capable of handling yourself in unfamiliar situations, perhaps? Also while it's certainly stressful in the moment, I somewhat enjoy those "I have a half hour to make the next connection" flights - it's kind of exciting in a way! You're like an explorer, or a spy, or something!

Good god, snakes in toilets?! That sounds absolutely terrifying!! That's actually a really cool story with the water monitor though! I enjoyed the storytelling. Are those guys poisonous? And is that your picture? You got super close to him! He looks cute and friendly (maybe it's an illusion).

I totally understand the instinct of "get closer to take a look at the dangerous thing." When I made a trip out west to the Black Hills, a sign at a rest stop said something like, "Beware - Venomous Snakes In Grass," and my first instinct was, "woah, I want to walk into the grass and see if I can see a snake!" It was winter, so it was unlikely, but yes, I understand hehe.

I hope the rest of your travel and job things go well! :D Now that I can foresee some income, I'm tempted to make a last-ditch effort to go somewhere - maybe to Indiana to see a friend I haven't seen in a while? Or I might just enjoy the last days of hanging around all day, lollygagging around the internet :D

Ah, no, don't worry about it! Gimme aaaaaall the DM goodies. Really, thanks!