A Second Rate Gamer and Change is here... Maybe.

So the last couple of weeks have been kinda zany/hectic/jumbled for me. Work up until last Friday was crazy. Everyone was calling in sick and taking vacation and I was working by myself doing the job of 3 people, and WHOA! It was craziness. Even still, I had the Youtube bug, and despite how crazy things were at work, it's always been easy for me to go home and play video games and just relax. Well, now I've transformed that routine into a job... and in a way, I'm really happy about it, and in another way I just hate myself for destroying my favorite carefree activity.

So here is the deal. I created a channel on Youtube and titled myself the Second Rate Gamer. /secondrategamer if that wasn't made clear :-P And so in a little over a week, I've uploaded 8 videos and gotten 20 subscribers. I don't know if thats considered fast or slow, and honestly I don't really care either way. It's pretty exciting to have anyone watching at all. Am I good at this? Not really, but the process of commentating over gameplay is actually pretty fun. The downside to this new hobby is that it's easily the most time consuming thing I've EVER DONE! Seriously. You have to play the game to get the gameplay. Insert a few hours. You have to convert the video once you capture it. 15-30 minutes. You have to do the commentary over the video. usually 30-60 minutes. You have to render the video. 30-60 minutes. You have to upload the video to youtube. 160-190 minutes. Not counting the time playing the game, you're looking at 4-5 hours for a 10 minute video. That's sick. As a result, I haven't been reading at all, though I think part of that was from me burning through 6 books in a week and reading myself to death.

Plus, I'm fighting the urge to re-read Deathly Hallows before the movie comes out next week.

Either way, I am enjoying myself and making the best out of the fact that I've been trapped in quicksand for two months. Which is a nice little segue to some upcoming news. I was informed yesterday that, one way or the other, I will find out if my shift is going to change this weekend. One of two things will happen. One, the crappy new guy is deemed acceptable and the graveyard guy now takes the weekend off. He then starts Monday in my current shift, and I start work on Tuesday in my new shift. Two, crappy new guy is deemed crappy, is released, and I stay in the quicksand. So please, please keep your fingers crossed for me. Sadly, I was informed that we could all be moved back to the shifts we're in now if the new guy screws up too much in the following weeks, assuming he's kept. So that would suck, but only time will tell if that is going to happen so I'm not going to let myself worry about it.

If I move into my new shift next week, I'll probably spend the week catching up on sleep. Then the next week is Comic-Con. So I expect by the last week of the month, I'll be digging back in and starting up on Dream Quest again. Hopefully Comic-Con will help to rev my engines in those regards too, but we'll have to wait and see. I'm really stoked about the prospect, though, and with any luck these updates will revert back to their initial purpose of talking about my book! Until then...


Dream Big,

Ian

Updates and Schtuff

This Blog was supposed to be about my adventures in writing my book, and to an extent it still is... I haven't given up on it... but it seems like life has taken me on a completely different path, and so that's what I've got to update you about! I know, right? You're like OH so excited.

Let's start with the Bad. The new guy. The new guy... sucks. It has been 7 weeks, he's missed 5 shifts, and he still doesn't know anything. The guy is a waste of matter, and frankly, he's killing me. HE'S KILLING ME. I've been looking forward to this move for almost 2 months now. Well, here's the most recent update. Two weeks. We have to give the guy two more weeks and then he's either good enough or he's gone. Judging by previous experience with him, it's looking like he's gone. THEN, the hiring process starts anew. This is bad news bears, people. As we inch closer and closer to Comic-Con, I'm getting more and more worried. If they don't have someone trained and ready to go, I'm afraid they are going to try and revoke my vacation time. I wouldn't completely blame them, because this place would fall apart down two dispatchers, but that doesn't mean I won't be completely and utterly pissed. Borderline quitting pissed. I'm just going to hope that it doesn't even come up. Because I don't want to miss Comic-Con. For anyone who may be reading this who may be worried if I miss Comic-Con too, don't worry... I'll still hold up my end of the hotel, etc. Just because I might get effed in the A, doesn't mean everyone should.

Now for a merrier subject... youtube. Remember that one time I mentioned it? Well, I finally got my channel up and running and posted my first Call of Duty: Black Ops Commentary. I honestly don't know how you advertise yourself on youtube to get views and subscriptions, but I feel like my showing for my first video has been decent. I'm already up to 10 subscribers! The feedback has all been positive, so I'm pretty pumped about it. I'm going to most likely be posting my second video tonight. Youtube is one of those things where you have to stay active, or you'll fall to the wayside. It's actually far easier than I thought it would be, once you've got the basics figured out. The real issue is how much time it takes to Render and Upload a video. The good news is, that time will be well spent in writing, when my shift has finally changed.

Once my shift has changed, everything will fall into place, I promise. Meanwhile, I'll keep the updates coming, and feel free to check me out on Youtube.com/SecondRateGamer. Until next time...


Dream Big,

Ian