No, I'm not dead yet (though I sometimes wish I was because of this goddamn psoriasis which just keeps getting worse), it's just that nothing interesting's happened till today. See, today was the information meeting for my course so I left home around 10:30am to go to Montreal with my uncle. He so loves driving at crazy speeds on the highway (read 140 km/h, which probably isn't that crazy in the US). Usually it takes two hours to get to Montreal but at speeds like that, we arrived around 12:00pm and had plenty of time to eat some Subway before the meeting at 1:15pm. I thought it'd last an hour but they've really improved since the last two times and it lasted a bit over two hours. Now the class is still public, but you still need to have been out of school for a year to be eligible, meaning it is NOT public (yay contradictions). Still, even if they changed it from one year to two years and back to one year, I'll have been on social welfare for two years in January so I would have been eligible in any case. The class starts in February 17th 2014 and ends on May 8th 2015 with only a few days off here and there and the one week off at the END of July, meaning I won't be able to make it to Anthrocon next year and year after :c (the first year 'cause I'll have school and the 2nd year 'cause I prolly won't have week-long vacations so soon after starting a job). It's probably a good thing though, since I need to pay plenty of things and I'll need the cash. See, while I have no doubt someone will pay for my class, there's these optional C++ and Java classes available before the course that I really could use since I'm very, very rusty and I want every asset on my side. The downside is that the two of 'em together last 105 hours and since they're individual classes and not part of a program, they run on separate funding and thus cost 2$/hour, meaning it'd cost 210$ to attend to them. And since they aren't part of a program, I have no idea if either Programme Reussir or grants will pay for it, so tomorrow I'll phone 'em to talk about it and options and stuff. If they don't pay, I'll be a bit tight since I'll have to pay from my pockets but I'll probably survive. What worries me though is that the classes are only 4 hours or so per day, meaning it isn't considered full-time, meaning I'll probably get much, much less money from whoever pays for it. And I already have a shitload of paperwork to fill like, everywhere so I don't really wanna have to fill MORE to get some kind of additional funding from who-knows-where; maybe another program for poor autistic guys or some government-funded way to suck up the hard-working taxpayers' money because hey, I'm a freakin' leech who contributes nothing to society.

I got sidetracked, ANYWAY. If you've done the math, you'll see that the class lasts 15 months. Well, the last three months is a training at the company of your choice *coughBiowarecough* (the coughing thing is still "in", right?) and at the end, you keep the job because well, that's the whole goal of the course really. I mean the course was made when the government got sick of big companies harassing them to make them a course because there's such an extreme shortage of specialized programmers and they have to individually train every single general programmer they hire, which costs 'em both money and time; and a lot of both. Heck, the courses are taught during the evenings because all the teachers are actually programmers themselves. One of 'em used to work at EA but quit because yanno, EA, and made his own company which made some kind of popular game about werewolves that's available on Steam, apparently. I forgot the name of both the game and the company. And the students who graduate the course are really respected by the companies. One of the graduates from last year got hired by Sony right off the bat and is already working on top-secret PS4 games even though he's inexperienced, and another graduate got hired by the company he wanted before the course even finished and the training started.

Oh, and you wanna know what the final project for the final semester is? That's right, make your own game. If you someday see a game on Steam Greenlight that says "Made by Ibuuyk" and looks terribly unoriginal, you'll know it was legit made by... Santa Christ! But anyway, I got so much paperwork to fill and a few visits to Montreal to make, but thankfully they put all the tests and interviews on the same day this time. Yep, all on... January 23rd from 8:00am to 1:00pm. 8:00am means I'll have to LEAVE house around 6:00am, meaning I'll have to GET UP around 4:00am, meaning FUCK THIS I'M STAYING AT A HOTEL! Oh wait, I'll be living close to the college by then, derp. Y'see, the optional courses I mentioned start on January 6th and end on February 17th, so unless I wanna ask my dear uncle to get me there every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and wait from 6:00pm to 10:00pm, I'll have to be staying there already. I looked on the college's site to see which rooms and apartments are available in the surroundings and I saw this nice lil' room (not an apartment) for 400$/month. Furniture, heat, light, free washing/drying machines, phone, Internet and TV and within five minutes of the college and grocery store. I mean sure it's just a room but hey, less to cleanup! And for 400$/month, even if I decide to upgrade the Internet to something more my taste it'd come out around the same price as what I pay right now, which is 355$/month without the washing/drying machines which is around 15-18$/month and without the Internet/TV/phone which is, right now, 70$/month for the Internet alone since I ditched the TV and use a card phone which costs around 100-150$/year for a very, very limited service. Downside is that since it's a room, Wesley might not be able to tag along so he'd have to stay with my mom till I get a real apartment of my own with the yummy 42000$/year I'll get as the very minimum wage for a video game programmer, excluding bonuses and higher wages that more famous companies *coughBiowarecough* (no seriously, that STILL works right?!) offer. I mean damn, 42000$/month would be like 3500$/month, which is three and a half times MORE than what I get on maximum social welfare, which is 200$/month more than what I got on maximum grants. 3500$/month is like, a fursuit each month or seven conventions each month or every single new-gen console with a dozen games for each every month, or basically whatever the fuck I feel like buying. I'd be freaking rich and that's just the first year. Then it goes UP, WAAAAAAY UP because then you've proven your worth to the company and they consider you a regular, and then after four more years or so it goes UP AGAIN because boom, you're a veteran. With all this money, holy shit I'll be able to help so many of my friends who have trouble financially and still be able to spoil myself silly. Maybe I'll get Wesley a leather collar or something. Or at least I would if he wasn't dead of old age by then, huh.

Just another year and a half of being tight on money till my life begins for real, I'm pretty hyped. Now since I've ultra-mega-jinxed it, watch a clusterfuck of shit happen to me soon and ruin it all. Maybe my psoriasis and lizard nose and almost-regular headaches (though I haven't had these since my grandma visited, huh) will end up being skin cancer or some shit and I'll either die or be hospitalized and miss the course and be delayed or something, but for now I'll go to bed "early" (I was expecting to type a quick resume and go to bed an hour early but holy shit I've been writing for 40 mins somebody stop me) since I had to wake up an hour earlier today.

Also holy shit, 1413 words. Maybe someday my days will be regularly as eventful as today! Back when I was in college, 1000+ words journals were pretty much regular and my longest one is 2372 words long so yeah, wall texts :P. I really miss those days. Those days when I'd spend over 10 hours at the college and my evenings chatting with friends while doing homework and barely having any free time to play games, which just made me appreciate them even more. Now, I have nothing to do so I spend my days jumping from game to game because I've been playing them forever and I'm bored of 'em but I have nothing better to do so I just repeat my mind-numbing routine every single day... for two years. I mean sure the first year it was pretty awesome to have time for myself but one can only be in vacation so long before wanting summer break to end and school to resume, yanno? I want to stop being a money-leeching potato and I want my life to have meaning and actually contribute something to society to make up for years of basically stealing their money because of my "severe constraints". Though for now... sleep. And tomorrow, phone calls and Path of Exile (the open beta ended today so the game is out for real so I'll give it another try; the last time I played it was during closed beta way before Diablo III got released over a year ago).

Hehe, 1693 words.