So, how is everyone doing lately?

The Core RPGC Main Forum
41

This is what I’ve always been told, but an observation I made at a luncheon today for students graduating with Latin honors (cum laude, magna cum laude, summa cum laude) is causing me to re-think that. There were about 30 of us there and out of those 30 about 20 had jobs lined up, most of the rest were going on to medical school, I was the only person entering a PhD program, and only 2 people hadn’t found employment in their field or a graduate program. So out of a group of 30 that represents the top students in the graduating class only 7% were facing an immediate employment crisis.

So it makes me think that if you distinguish yourself in school you can still get your foot in the door. Of course, once you’ve been working more than a month the diploma is still just a fancy wall decoration.

42

Say hi to McNulty and the gang for me. Also, please don’t get shot!

43

I don’t remember when I did my last life update so here’s a long-form.

I finished college ('05) in Massachusetts and law school ('08) in California but elected not to pursue a legal profession because I hated it. I lived in St. Louis for a couple of years while my (at the time) fiancee finished med school. We got married in 2010 and moved to Connecticut for her pediatrics residency at Yale. There I got a job working at a comic book and card store who’s owner was also running for state government. I participated in both, and the position has grown to the point where I essentially run or co-run the business for him and also assist him with his political stuff – was the treasurer to his last campaign. So now my wife is basically finished with her residency but about to start a neonatology fellowship at Yale (focuses on ill or premature newborns basically), and I’m currently deciding whether I’ve taken my current job as far as it can go or if I should stay in it for the long-haul. At some point we’ll probably have a kid, but not there quite yet. Sometimes I think I have a plan for jumpstarting the site, but I’m not sure if I have the commitment for it and don’t want to half-ass anything. Nulani deserves all credit for this place still existing if she hasn’t been thanked already by y’all.

It sounds like most of you are doing ok as well! It’s nice to see a lot of the familiar names.

44

Aw, thanks. Except for when the host goes bankrupt, it doesn’t require that much work, luckily.

45

Is Baltimore really that bad? I’m supposed to go there for a conference next January…

46

The statistics are a little high for violent crime, but not as bad as, say Chicago. I’ve never been but with the number of big cities I’ve noticed most cities have the same issues that lead to crime.

As for myself, I graduated with my BA in Digital Design last June and started my own Graphic Design company. I now have a few steady clients while also working full time as a security guard for my alma mater. Having some one else provide benefits like health insurance is appealing - also free education if I pursue a Masters!

Oh, and I got a dog :slight_smile:

Edit: I remembered incorrectly. Baltimore has a higher crime rate than Chicago, at least according to this.

47

Dude those crime rates are really damned high. Like 9 times what it is here. What’s wrong with the US :V

Here, have the stats for my city. From Maclean’s magazine.

Homicide
Rate per 100,000 population: 3.1
Canadian rate per 100,000 population: 1.6
Percentage difference from Canada: 92.8%

Sexual assault
Rate per 100,000 population: 73.7
Canadian rate per 100,000 population: 65
Percentage difference from Canada: 13.3%

Aggravated assault
Rate per 100,000 population: 28.5
Canadian rate per 100,000 population: 10
Percentage difference from Canada: 185.4%

Robbery
Rate per 100,000 population: 156.1
Canadian rate per 100,000 population: 89.1
Percentage difference from Canada: 75.1%

Breaking and entering
Rate per 100,000 population: 649.1
Canadian rate per 100,000 population: 577.2
Percentage difference from Canada: 12.5%

Auto theft
Rate per 100,000 population: 515.6
Canadian rate per 100,000 population: 271.7
Percentage difference from Canada: 89.8%

48

Man, I haven’t been back here in ages. Nice to see a lot of the members from when I was active are still here. Congratulations to all of you who acheived your PhD’s. To those on the road to a Masters , good luck!

Sin, I thought you were happy doing your research in Montreal but it seems you’re just happy pursuing your passion.

As for myself I finished my Bachelor’s in Computer Science six years ago (the time really flies) and have been working since. Started off pretty good with an internship and then contract jobs. In the end of 2009 contracts dried up and job requirements went up. I was unemployed for a while. I went back and did a one year certificate in bioinformatics hoping to leverage my programming skills in the health industry. I found a programming job in a printing company to recoup the money I spent and to pay the bills while I look for other jobs. I’ve been there about a year and a half.

49

Ha thanks for remembering. I’m a little surprised that the job market dried up for Comp Sci and that things didn’t pan out for bioinformatics. It just seems like those areas are really in demand. Was it an issue of geography?

I did an MD PhD program, so I’m bouncing between medicine and research. The residency / fellowship combo I’m going into is a direct extension of that where I’ll save time on my medicine training and have specific guarantees for the fellowship.

I’m hoping to not get shot in Baltimore. In ref to what Zeppy was saying, the Wire was a recurrent topic of conversation during my interview day. UMDMC is in a fairly decent area and where I’m going to buy a condo / be renting while the negotiations work out is the eye of the storm if you look at a crime map. Hopkins is in a shit area of town and there are armed guards in some entrances. That + people being assholes there made me not want to go there.

Its funny your wife went into peds/neonatology. I had a lot of fun in peds. Nearly did peds myself. Neonatology is a lot fun too. You had a crazy ride, man. The last time we had heard from you, you appeared thoroughly disillusioned and disappeared in Missouri. SK and I were worried.

50

Things dried up because in 2009 it was the pit of the recession. It was like a switch was flipped. Jobs had I applied for that required 1 year experience now suddenly required 2 or 3 plus experience in the specefic things they used.

It may be geography. A lot of the postings I saw for Toronto and the surrounding area required an advanced degree and/or experience in the field.

51

I was in Baltimore in December, and the harbor area has definitely developed really nicely. Some of the new developments on the east and south sides of the harbor were really cool as well. Still not sure it’s a place I’d want to settle down at though.

I’ll be in New York this summer selling my soul for lots of money on Wall St. Haha, jokes on them, whatever remained of my soul is long gone.

52

You should sell your soul for lots of BitCoins.

53

Yeah it was a calculated decision. Overall its really cheap and I’m not worried about the financial aspect of it. Whether or not I’ll want to stay in Baltimore following my training will depend on whether or not I like it there, opportunities elsewhere and opportunities for the gf.

I didn’t really consider moving to New York in my applications, my friends told me the hospitals there were hell and it was even less affordable than San Francisco. Even without debts, resident pay is pretty shitty. It sounds like this won’t be much of an issue for you though.

54

Its funny your wife went into peds/neonatology. I had a lot of fun in peds. Nearly did peds myself. Neonatology is a lot fun too. You had a crazy ride, man. The last time we had heard from you, you appeared thoroughly disillusioned and disappeared in Missouri. SK and I were worried.

Yeah St. Louis was pretty miserable. It was right after law school graduation when I was trying to work in other fields and right around when the economy exploded. I couldn’t get much work beyond some tutoring, I remember interviewing at a “sports marketing” company that I subsequently found out basically was just college kids shoving flyers under wiper blades for a company that jumped offices whenever the bills got up there. Things are much better now, but my wife and I will both have our share of loans to repay for a while when her fellowship is done.

The Wire is a great show, probably my second favorite behind The Shield. I always find it ironic how Baltimore has become sort of proud of the series despite initially reacting to it negatively. You shouldn’t be happy about such bleakness!

55

U.S. law enforcement officials cracked down this week on the Bitcoin economy’s biggest exchange, Mt. Gox, accusing its operator of running a money transmitting business without the proper license and freezing several of its key financial accounts.

The move sent a brief chill through the Bitcoin community, though some enthusiasts shrugged it off as an inevitable consequence of the cyber currency’s growing public profile. A few even defended the feds. “This isn’t the government trying to kill anything,” one commenter wrote on Reddit’s Bitcoin discussion board. “This is them locking accounts because they didn’t file the right paperwork.”

Mt. Gox is by far the biggest exchange in the Bitcoin economy, handling about 66% of all currency conversions.

The drama started on Tuesday, when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security obtained a warrant to seize the contents of Mt. Gox’s account with Dwolla, a payment processing network based in Des Moines, Iowa.

Dwolla is one of the key services used by Tokyo-based Mt. Gox to let its American customers convert U.S. dollars into bitcoins and vice versa. The company stopped processing transactions to and from Mt. Gox’s account after it received the warrant and tried to distance itself from the dispute.

“We’ve informed the users that we believe were most immediately affected by the action, but literally have no additional information or insight on the matter,” spokesman Jordan Lampe told CNNMoney.

Mt. Gox said it is investigating the matter. In the meantime, it posted a statement saying U.S. customers will only be able to deposit and withdraw funds with an international money order or by using OKPay, an international currency conversion system.

Will any customers lose funds? That’s currently unclear. Federal officials now presumably have control of any funds that were sitting in the account’s coffers, as well as a Wells Fargo account that was also targeted.

DHS declined to comment on its investigation, but it provided several news outlets, including CNNMoney, with a copy of its seizure warrant.

According to the document, Mt. Gox’s U.S. subsidiary set up a Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500) business account in May 2011. At the time, the company filled out a “money services business” questionnaire and said it was not a firm that dealt in or exchanged money for its customers.

Not so, say the feds. Because U.S. dollars can be passed back and forth on Mt. Gox through bitcoin conversions, they consider the site’s operations to be a “money transmitting activity.”

The crackdown comes less than two months after the U.S. government issued new rules saying that virtual currency exchanges will be subject to the same kinds of anti-money laundering rules that banks have to follow.

The volatile currency is becoming a significant economic force. The value of 1 bitcoin zoomed from $20 at the start of the year to a record high of $266 in April. It’s now worth about $115. There are roughly 11 million bitcoins in circulation, giving the entire economy a market cap of around US$1.2 billion. To top of page

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MAGIC THE GATHERING ONLINE EXCHANGE

57

Everything Obama touches turns to shit.

58

I just finished my second year going for a Graduate Certificate in GIS (and potentially a MLA). My first year didn’t attribute to much as I was at my old University where I was only able to take one relevant class per semester; both provided little to no practical field experience except how to use GIS software. Also, all the graduates from there who got jobs at GIS companies were mostly programming and didn’t know anything about GIS itself. (Geographical/Geospatial Information Systems). I transferred to a different college last August who’s program was many times better than the previous. Currently, I’m working a paid internship for the US Forest Service and about to start working towards a capstone project.

GIS is a really interesting field that’s more than map-making; it’s best described for the most part as a visual database from a spatial standpoint, albeit the mass majority of it is from a Geographical standpoint. I had planned on going into a second BA in Music Business in 2009 right after receiving my first, but a dead car, a triple threat of family health problems, and a few small seizures put a stop to that. I had a few misadventures for a couple of years before deciding to go back to college. I lucked out because most MLA programs require that you have a BA in damn near anything to enter. Also, from what I understood a few years back, there’s a good bit of GIS positions out there, but not enough people to fill them.

Apart from jerbs and schooling, I went to MAGFest XI in January ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAGFest ), which was quite possibly one of the greatest experiences in my life so far. I met people I had been talking to online anywhere from six months to ten years in person finally. I met the guy who did the soundtrack to Actraiser, Beyond Oasis, Streets of Rage (many more), shook his hand, and told him I was a big fan of his works for the Genesis. Also, I had a “full circle” moment; within an hour of each other and (almost) in the same room was the composer of the early Castlevania series, the guy who taught me how to use Modplug Tracker who I started talking to because I liked his Castlevania covers, and the guy who’s VGM and chiptune works heavily inspired me musically, whom Guy #2 had recommended to me. I … think that makes sense? It’s hard to describe.

Speaking of, I still write/rearrange music. I’m not so horrible at mastering/post-production as of late.

59

Streets of Rage 2 had like the best video game music ever. The song from level 1 still randomly comes to me sometimes and I can’t get it outta my fucking HEADDD!!!

60

Damn, the lot of you and your fancy doctorates are intimidating.

Well, I’m a few months from graduating as a translator (it’s actually well paid here, if you can manage to find the work) and struggling with the “find the work” part so that I can finally move out of my mother’s house and… like, start being an adult. I’m 25, probably should have gotten started on that a while ago. For the time being, I’ve been giving private English lessons to several students and discovered that I’m apparently not completely incompetent at this teaching stuff, so I went and wrestled the administrative paper lion to secure a substitute teacher position at a couple of highschools.

It’s actually rather terrifying how goddamn easy it was to get those jobs, since I have ZERO official credentials as a teacher and no pedagogy training. I just flashed my “I know English” papers and they just went and tossed me in front of thirty impressionable kids. I had heard English teachers were in high demand here, but damn.