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|| Long overdue update. ||
6 years ago
Just wanted to brush some dust off this account and make some attempt at bringing it around to the current year. I'll be going over a brief summary of the past while. There'll be a TL;DR at the bottom if you'd rather skip to the brief version. It's going to be mostly stream of consciousness writing so it might wander a bit.
So, the last time I really touched this account was sometime mid 2017. Yikes. That's a pretty long time. A fuckass load of stuff has happened since then. I've been attending college at RIT since 2016, currently in the latter half of my third year in the computer science BS program. It's a five year program but I'll be finishing a year early, so that puts my graduation date sometime in may next year. Fuck. So much has happened since I first drove up to Rochester. I guess I'll briefly go over my time there to start.
So, overall, my college experience has been a solid 'eh'. My major is hard. The courses are pretty brutal. I offset some of the mindless studying about algorithms and operational times by taking Japanese classes as my immersion ( a degree requirement where you have to take 4 courses in a cluster on some topic ). First couple years were alright, definitely some big obstacles as far as certain courses go but nothing too too bad. Japanese was fucking rad, I loved all my professors. Super glad to be where I'm at with the language, I've always found languages to be pretty neat.
Beyond just courses, my first couple years at RIT were spent mostly alone, save for a couple social endeavors. The first being a hella rad arcanine lad I managed to meet through the telegram chat for the school -- shout outs to him, doubt he'll read this ( I don't recall him using FA or twitter at all ) but he knows who he is. Other than my roommate I think he's the only person I interacted with regularly during my first year away from home. We'd go to dinner and hang out and stuff. He's a soft boi. Sweetest person I know. He's also the reason why I went to the small number of events on campus that I did -- he'd invite me & encourage me to tag along.
That leads into the other social endeavor of my college time -- Dota. I had already dabbled in the game a bit in my later years in high school, but I didn't really pick it up in a more tryhard sense until college. I found out that our school had esports teams for a lot of different games, and my arcanine buddy ended up trying out with me. I was pretty ass at the game back then, so I didn't make the cut, but he did, so I'd get to hear about it sometimes. That really motivated me into trying to get better at the game, so I started putting more time into it and have since made some pretty rad friends through party queues and such.
My second year was moderately more social, as I had met some more people in the RIT fur group who were pretty chill. I'd go to brunches and stuff on Saturdays and I think I might have gone to a game night or two. The more exciting thing was that tryouts opened again at the start of the new school year and I was ready -- I practiced all summer for that shit, I was stoked. I ended up making the team as one of the least-experienced players that tried out ( I think I was sub 500 matches back then ), and got placed as the team captain. Definitely a defining moment in my college experience, something I'm gunna keep with me forever. Also MY BOY ARCY MADE THE TEAM AGAIN TOO, FUCKIN' SQUAAAAD GOALS. That was super rad. We both made the team, positions 4 and 5, which was pretty much the dream. The team was a bit shoddy for the fall season but we ended up ramping up (after a straggler dropped out and got replaced) in the spring and played into the 16 bracket of the spring playoffs which was further than any D2 team had made it before. Additionally, I was out of first year housing and into my own room in an apartment with my old roommate and Arcy, which was waaaay nicer than being crammed into a tiny room and having to share a bathroom with a floor of dudes. Nothing else of note really happened that year, though I did learn some more neat stuff and had some cool classes, as well as going to some more events.
The summer of 2018, between my second and third year at RIT, I got my first full-time job as part of the co-op/internship requirements for my degree, working as a software engineer for a finance analytics company. It started out rough -- I was having some personal issues, which made the change super hard. I don't have a car (yet ™), so I had to commute in via trains and buses. It was shitty, but I had a part time remote job I did on the rides, which paid for the fare and then some, but was also super boring. I ended up bonding with a particular buddy a lot though -- I'd talk to them on the rides while I did my work, was pretty cozy. The job was okay -- I mostly did a lot of unit testing up until the last few weeks where I developed a small feature. Good resume fuel though, and it paid well, so it was overall a good experience.
This past semester, the fall semester of my third year, was definitely the most eventful. Tryouts for dota happened early on, I made the team again, as the captain once more. Sadly Arcy wasn't with me -- he had to head off on a year of co-op/internship, so I won't be seeing him again till fall 2019 (gunna hug him to death when I do). I took some really tough classes, which left me tumbling around, busy as fuck constantly. Though, I got a lot more social -- I went to a lot more events, and met more people. The telegram chat got some upgrades, with RSVP bots and a channel designed to make event planning easier, so that definitely had some influence on me attending stuff. Shoutouts to my RIT furry squad -- there are a ton of great people in that group and I'm super thankful that I've gotten to meet all of them. We had a fair amount of parties/celebrations, and even did thanksgiving together, which was real sweet. I also went to MFF, which was pretty neat, saw a ton of friends and made some new ones. I went from 'fursuits are weird as fuck and make me really uncomfortable' to 'Oh. Hm. HMMMM.' within 48 hours. I gotta admit, some of them are rad as fuck and I totally get the vibe now. I also got a lot more involved in the furry dota community, more specifically the Dota 2 Furs group, playing with some buds I made through party queues and in-house matches.
The main highlight of my third year so far was definitely my dota team. We were actually pretty decent, which felt super rad. We placed second in the league for the fall semester, which got us into the winter invitational playoffs. Unfortunately, 2 of our players had to drop out at the start of the spring semester, as one of them had to leave the country for an internship, and the other had personal matters that forced them to take a break from college. This fucking SUCKED, as it lead to us having to use substitutes for the first playoffs match (these playoffs being single elimination) and we got bodied. That was a pretty big blow for me, having lead my team through to the peak of RIT D2 so far, only to have it crumble as half my team had to get swapped. Since then, we've shuffled the new players' positions around, and tried to find something that works, but it's a work in progress for sure. It's been super frustrating, as the average skill bracket of our team took about a 1.5-2k MMR dive, but it's the hand I've been dealt, so I'm trying my best to work with it. We practice three times a week, and I often go over replays from the previous practice before we start. I stream all of our practices, as well as when I play casually with friends, over at https://www.twitch.tv/gariyuu if you want some quality dota 2 content.
Currently, I'm on co-op/internship with the same company I was at over the summer last year. I'll be working until mid August, then heading back to school for my last year. This past week was my first week back at work, and it's been an adjustment, but I'm looking forward to getting down to business and doing my best to learn as much as I can while I'm there.
BUT THE REAL REASON I MADE THIS JOURNAL: What about the art?
So. Doing commissions really fucked me up. It warped the way I approached art, to the point that I started getting really anxious whenever I even thought about bringing my tablet out. I've been working to repair that for about two years now, and I'm slowly getting back into the swing of things. I've not finished a piece in a long time -- I make it to the sketch or a bit further, then feel horrible about how it looks and scrap it. Though, I'm at a point where I think I'm making progress -- I'm working on a ref sheet for myself, which I'm hoping to have done sometime this month. I've wanted to redesign Gar for a long time, so that's in the pipeline and should be coming around soon enough. As far as this account goes, I'll keep posting here, but I likely won't be taking commissions for the foreseeable future unless it's for friends. It just weirds me out too much and puts me in a bad headspace.
TL;DR -- I still exist, college is weird man, I play dota 2, art coming soon™
P.S. If you ever wanna hit me up, my discord and telegram are on my page. Always down to meet new folks.
So, the last time I really touched this account was sometime mid 2017. Yikes. That's a pretty long time. A fuckass load of stuff has happened since then. I've been attending college at RIT since 2016, currently in the latter half of my third year in the computer science BS program. It's a five year program but I'll be finishing a year early, so that puts my graduation date sometime in may next year. Fuck. So much has happened since I first drove up to Rochester. I guess I'll briefly go over my time there to start.
So, overall, my college experience has been a solid 'eh'. My major is hard. The courses are pretty brutal. I offset some of the mindless studying about algorithms and operational times by taking Japanese classes as my immersion ( a degree requirement where you have to take 4 courses in a cluster on some topic ). First couple years were alright, definitely some big obstacles as far as certain courses go but nothing too too bad. Japanese was fucking rad, I loved all my professors. Super glad to be where I'm at with the language, I've always found languages to be pretty neat.
Beyond just courses, my first couple years at RIT were spent mostly alone, save for a couple social endeavors. The first being a hella rad arcanine lad I managed to meet through the telegram chat for the school -- shout outs to him, doubt he'll read this ( I don't recall him using FA or twitter at all ) but he knows who he is. Other than my roommate I think he's the only person I interacted with regularly during my first year away from home. We'd go to dinner and hang out and stuff. He's a soft boi. Sweetest person I know. He's also the reason why I went to the small number of events on campus that I did -- he'd invite me & encourage me to tag along.
That leads into the other social endeavor of my college time -- Dota. I had already dabbled in the game a bit in my later years in high school, but I didn't really pick it up in a more tryhard sense until college. I found out that our school had esports teams for a lot of different games, and my arcanine buddy ended up trying out with me. I was pretty ass at the game back then, so I didn't make the cut, but he did, so I'd get to hear about it sometimes. That really motivated me into trying to get better at the game, so I started putting more time into it and have since made some pretty rad friends through party queues and such.
My second year was moderately more social, as I had met some more people in the RIT fur group who were pretty chill. I'd go to brunches and stuff on Saturdays and I think I might have gone to a game night or two. The more exciting thing was that tryouts opened again at the start of the new school year and I was ready -- I practiced all summer for that shit, I was stoked. I ended up making the team as one of the least-experienced players that tried out ( I think I was sub 500 matches back then ), and got placed as the team captain. Definitely a defining moment in my college experience, something I'm gunna keep with me forever. Also MY BOY ARCY MADE THE TEAM AGAIN TOO, FUCKIN' SQUAAAAD GOALS. That was super rad. We both made the team, positions 4 and 5, which was pretty much the dream. The team was a bit shoddy for the fall season but we ended up ramping up (after a straggler dropped out and got replaced) in the spring and played into the 16 bracket of the spring playoffs which was further than any D2 team had made it before. Additionally, I was out of first year housing and into my own room in an apartment with my old roommate and Arcy, which was waaaay nicer than being crammed into a tiny room and having to share a bathroom with a floor of dudes. Nothing else of note really happened that year, though I did learn some more neat stuff and had some cool classes, as well as going to some more events.
The summer of 2018, between my second and third year at RIT, I got my first full-time job as part of the co-op/internship requirements for my degree, working as a software engineer for a finance analytics company. It started out rough -- I was having some personal issues, which made the change super hard. I don't have a car (yet ™), so I had to commute in via trains and buses. It was shitty, but I had a part time remote job I did on the rides, which paid for the fare and then some, but was also super boring. I ended up bonding with a particular buddy a lot though -- I'd talk to them on the rides while I did my work, was pretty cozy. The job was okay -- I mostly did a lot of unit testing up until the last few weeks where I developed a small feature. Good resume fuel though, and it paid well, so it was overall a good experience.
This past semester, the fall semester of my third year, was definitely the most eventful. Tryouts for dota happened early on, I made the team again, as the captain once more. Sadly Arcy wasn't with me -- he had to head off on a year of co-op/internship, so I won't be seeing him again till fall 2019 (gunna hug him to death when I do). I took some really tough classes, which left me tumbling around, busy as fuck constantly. Though, I got a lot more social -- I went to a lot more events, and met more people. The telegram chat got some upgrades, with RSVP bots and a channel designed to make event planning easier, so that definitely had some influence on me attending stuff. Shoutouts to my RIT furry squad -- there are a ton of great people in that group and I'm super thankful that I've gotten to meet all of them. We had a fair amount of parties/celebrations, and even did thanksgiving together, which was real sweet. I also went to MFF, which was pretty neat, saw a ton of friends and made some new ones. I went from 'fursuits are weird as fuck and make me really uncomfortable' to 'Oh. Hm. HMMMM.' within 48 hours. I gotta admit, some of them are rad as fuck and I totally get the vibe now. I also got a lot more involved in the furry dota community, more specifically the Dota 2 Furs group, playing with some buds I made through party queues and in-house matches.
The main highlight of my third year so far was definitely my dota team. We were actually pretty decent, which felt super rad. We placed second in the league for the fall semester, which got us into the winter invitational playoffs. Unfortunately, 2 of our players had to drop out at the start of the spring semester, as one of them had to leave the country for an internship, and the other had personal matters that forced them to take a break from college. This fucking SUCKED, as it lead to us having to use substitutes for the first playoffs match (these playoffs being single elimination) and we got bodied. That was a pretty big blow for me, having lead my team through to the peak of RIT D2 so far, only to have it crumble as half my team had to get swapped. Since then, we've shuffled the new players' positions around, and tried to find something that works, but it's a work in progress for sure. It's been super frustrating, as the average skill bracket of our team took about a 1.5-2k MMR dive, but it's the hand I've been dealt, so I'm trying my best to work with it. We practice three times a week, and I often go over replays from the previous practice before we start. I stream all of our practices, as well as when I play casually with friends, over at https://www.twitch.tv/gariyuu if you want some quality dota 2 content.
Currently, I'm on co-op/internship with the same company I was at over the summer last year. I'll be working until mid August, then heading back to school for my last year. This past week was my first week back at work, and it's been an adjustment, but I'm looking forward to getting down to business and doing my best to learn as much as I can while I'm there.
BUT THE REAL REASON I MADE THIS JOURNAL: What about the art?
So. Doing commissions really fucked me up. It warped the way I approached art, to the point that I started getting really anxious whenever I even thought about bringing my tablet out. I've been working to repair that for about two years now, and I'm slowly getting back into the swing of things. I've not finished a piece in a long time -- I make it to the sketch or a bit further, then feel horrible about how it looks and scrap it. Though, I'm at a point where I think I'm making progress -- I'm working on a ref sheet for myself, which I'm hoping to have done sometime this month. I've wanted to redesign Gar for a long time, so that's in the pipeline and should be coming around soon enough. As far as this account goes, I'll keep posting here, but I likely won't be taking commissions for the foreseeable future unless it's for friends. It just weirds me out too much and puts me in a bad headspace.
TL;DR -- I still exist, college is weird man, I play dota 2, art coming soon™
P.S. If you ever wanna hit me up, my discord and telegram are on my page. Always down to meet new folks.
Still cute as ever :3
In all seriousness, I hope all goes well for you and that you can find time to relax from any pressure/stress from class/work/art. Can't wait to see the ref sheet/redesign of Gar, too!