i wonder when my pulse turned into "snippets of lyrics from the song i'm listening to."

i should probably rename it to that.

laptop time hooray.

so i called the career center just now, turns out the delay in processing is due to the huge volume of applications they have received this week.  but the person i spoke to specifically said they have received my renewal application, and that i should have my account restored by monday.  so yay.

looks like my post volume is increasing.  kind of makes sense, when all you're doing is sitting on your ass and watching anime, it's hard to come up with things to say.  when you're doing something that will impact and change the very fabric of your life, it becomes a bit easier to write things.

Once again, posting from my blackberry. It was 90+ at about 7:00, so I've had to shut my computer down to let my air conditioner have a fighting chance.

So it turns out 90% of my anxiety was exactly what I thought it was: my lack of action. Now that my resume and cover letter are written and I've handed in a few applications, I'm feeling much less anxious. Like I said before, it's all exciting now. The only anxiety left in me is the desire to start working!

I'm gonna keep watching law & order, get ready to hit the sack.

and so it begins

i have submitted an application to Google and two to Apple.

ドキドキ

even without the help of the career center (and my account is still disabled, for the record), i'm starting to assemble a pretty good catalog of job opportunities.

there is an open listing at Google's san francisco office for newly graduated Software Engineers.  there are two open listings at Apple: one entry level software engineer position, one junior engineer position for iPhone development.

goodbye, anxiety.  hello excitement.

the anxiety is starting to get to me.

i'm trying as hard as i can to hold on to my positive outlook.

and, once again, bureaucracy stands between me and my goals.

i'm sure some of you can recall how i have complained at length about the paper-pushing processes at SJSU.  specifically, about that one semester when they denied my grant paperwork and left me penniless for two months.  that wasn't the only incident, but it was by far the worst thing the university had done to me.

...until today.

this week was to be the end of my "vacation" and the beginning of my job hunt.  i was supposed to start yesterday, but my insomnia and the subsequent dose of lorazepam made me rather loopy.  i didn't wake up until 6:00 PM, and by then i wasn't really up to pouring over job listings.  i did get enough brainpower flowing to e-mail two of my professors asking for recommendations, and both of them agreed, which made me quite happy.

so i sat down and made the decision to start my researching today.  i got up at 10:00, procrastinated a bit, and about 20 minutes ago put my hands up and opened up the SJSU career center website.  i clicked the login link, typed in my information, and hit submit.

Your account has been disabled. Please contact your Career Services Office for additional service

so apparently as soon as someone graduates, their career center cuts you off.  they e-mailed me a form on friday, which i filled out and sent back.  but i have no idea how long this will take to process, and since i'd much rather go through the career center for this, i'm sort of dead in the water until they get everything set.  i can work on my resume, but there's only so much i can do with it.

hell of a system, right?  "oh congratulations on your achievement, we will now cut off perhaps the best system for finding a career until you send us a form and we decide to process it."

;_;

had a rather shaky experience just now

i made the mistake of looking up "job interview" on wikipedia.  it led me to an article on microsoft's interview style.  after reading it, a niggling little doubt started forming on the back of my mind.  as it grew, i realized it was irrational but did nothing to dismiss it.  i took my vitamins and crawled into bed.  the doubt lingered, and in the darkness of my room, started to grow.  it manifested in some exceedingly irrational thoughts, which i won't delve into here.  but they kept mounting, and soon i could feel my blood pressure rising and my heart rate increasing.  soon after i opened my eyes and the thoughts had almost brought me to tears.  so i got up and took some sleeping pills.  the instant i woke up i drove the niggling doubt out of my head, and i feel a lot better.  but it was still not something i'd like to experience a second time.

like i've said before, i should be in bed right now.  but i've got a lot of thoughts rolling around in my head and i'm going to try to make some sense of them.

i think for a while now, despite what i've said before, i wasn't able to appreciate the gravity of my current situation.  or if i was able to appreciate it, i wasn't able to really think about what's going to happen.  it's just impossible for me to imagine what the next forty-something years are going to be like.

i think back on the last two years, and i really wish i could have had the perspective i do now back then.  intertwined with all the work was a series of feelings and emotions that i didn't even realize i was having until now.  once i was able to relax and decompress from five years of labor, i was able to peel away all the stress brought on by the workload and examine my college life in a new light.  it's something that, if i could, i would relive.  i'm sure that there will be many, many more experiences in my life that i will want to relive with even more intensity, but right now, if i could sit down and stare at a television for five years and relive those moments, i would do it.

bringing back fragments of those times fills my heart with warmth, and happiness.

which is why comes next is making my head spin.

although this is a huge unknown for me, i am stepping into full adulthood.  my second glove has been removed, and all that's left is for me to begin what i was destined to do.  but what's making my head spin is...i feel so strongly about my past, and these feelings have edged out experiences i had in high school that i was sure would stay with me my entire life.  and since i still have another 70-something years on this planet, i will only experience things that will bring out feelings in me strong enough to edge out what i'm feeling right now.

just thinking that what i'm experiencing now isn't as strong as it gets is what's making my head spin.

as much as i'd like to continue resting and relaxing, i want to get a head start on this.

on monday, i'll begin my search.

however, tomorrow is still free.  so since i have nothing planned, i'm going to do an actual nerd update.  i haven't ranted about anime in a while, so i think i'll cover that.

well

i did have lofty plans to upload a bunch of pictures and talk at length about the fancy electronic gizmo i was going  to build today.

however, that was contingent on my box of parts arriving today.

the mail carrier tried to deliver the parts today, but couldn't get my attention or something.  i'll have to go pick it up on monday.

i did go out today and buy everything else i needed, though.  although two bundles of wire and a board don't really say much about what i'm going to build.

i'm going into san jose on monday, so i might not be able to build the thing until tuesday.  but considering it has all of 15 solder joints, not including whatever is necessary for the buses i'll need to make, it shouldn't take very long.  we'll see