I'm writing this on May 21, but I've been in Atlanta for a week and a half by now. I only now have my website up again so this is my first chance to update my journal again. Since so much has happened, I'm going to break it up into several sections.

The Drive

It all started with the drive. In total it took about 12 hours. I wanted to get there at a reasonable time so that I could get set up, so I woke up early and left at 4:30am. I like driving at night when the roads are empty and you can just set the cruise control and go. But the short sleep and early start backfired. Doing the drive alone was tough and several times I felt like I would fall asleep. Other than that, the drive was good.

Housing

When I first got here I was a bit upset about my living situation. I had arranged to stay in the GA Tech AEPi house over the summer, because it would be cheap. When I moved in, I started to have second thoughts. I knew that fraternaties are messy, I lived in one for 3 years. I thought I'd be find with that but I found out that I'd gotten pretty used to not having to deal with it over the past 2 years. And someone else's mess is always more disturbing than your own.

I was going to stay here just until I found a new place which I began looking for right away. I actually had 2 options that I looked into. One option was a friend who graduated from the ETC's place. I would have had it all to myself and it was very nice, but it was expensive and not in a very nice neighborhood.

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I'm just about ready to head out on my long excursion to Atlanta. My car's all packed. (I was actually amazed by how much I could fit in there.) I'm going to be a little sad to not be in Pittsburgh this summer. I've been here for 4 summers in a row. I'll miss hanging out with my friends, the weather, July 4th BBQ and fireworks, dressing casually, and working lazily. Today I played frisbee on the cut with Brian and listened to bagpipers practice. I'll miss that too.

The summer is also a chance to start over. Explore a new city. Meet new people. Reinvent myself. Hopefully this good will outweigh. We shall soon see. I have done too much tonight already. Must get to sleep if I'm going to hit the road very early. Later.

Yesterday was the Turner-Davies wedding. I really enjoyed it. Particularly because I was in the wedding party. A year ago when Mike first asked me to do it, I was surprised that he counted me so close a friend. Thinking about it, I did spend a lot of time in his room his last year and he, Weiss, and I were the core Denny's crew, going sometimes 2 or 3 times a week. That's a lot of quality time spent.

And it was those little thing, the rehersal, the limo rides, waiting to be introduced at the reception, sitting all at the head table, and wearing the tuxes, all the time that it wasn't the big crowd but just the bride and groom and a few of us friends, that made things extra special for me. I'm really happy for Mike and Michelle. I don't want to say anything too sappy, but it is obvious that they are good together and it is great to see friends fulfilled like that.

Seeing the rest of my friends who came was also fun. Some excitement was taken out of it by seeing many of them at carnival only a few weeks ago. It is always fun though. These are people I used to hang out with every day, so I'll take more than once a year now if I can get it. Weddings (or really any gathering I guess) bring out all the old stories. Talking to them also reminds me how alike we are. It's great when you can have conversations where you talk about something without ever saying what because you think so alike you both know what you're thinking.

It's about time that I speak about what I'm doing this summer, since it officially starts in only a few days. I know previously people heard me whining about my troubles finding a summer internship. My friends were not inclined to hear it since they just assume that I'm awesome and should have no problem getting a job. I won't go into right now some of the problems I think there are that prevent me from doing well at a job search. But those reasons aside, part of the problem was a lack of effort. I started my search a bit late, didn't apply as many places as I should have, and wasn't prepared enough to show all my best work and have it make me look good.

Well, I was lucky enough to land an internship opportunity with one company that I'm pretty excited about. I will be in Atlanta working for a relatively small startup company called PlayMotion. I met the founder of the company at the IAAPA trade show back in November. They work on projection systems that allow people to interact with their whole body creating a fun installation for a museum or other public space.

This will be my first real internship, but also my first summer not living in some place I'd call home (if you don't count my summers at camp when I was younger). The logistics are tricky I'm still working it out. A new city, new people, and a new job. All things that both scare me and make me excited. I am someone who doesn't like change or to do anything different. I've spent the last 4 summers living in Pittsburgh and working for Randy at Stage3.

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Today was the last day of final project presentations at the ETC, and my group presented. That should make me done with school for the semester, and you'd think I'd be happy, but that's not quite how it went. Oh our presentation went well. I think people were pretty impressed with how much we accomplished this semester. The dome, our project, was something that people at the ETC didn't have real confidance in, and as was our goal, I believe we restored faith in the dome as a viable platform. Although why we had to work on a clearly second class project in the first place is unknown.

And that's just the beginning of the problem. We went third today, right after the two largest and most successful projects. I don't think it would have really been fair to put anyone after them. Compared to what they achieved, our work looked pathetic, even though that was really only due to difference of objectives. Our goal was, without a client that actually wanted our games, to make many prototypes to test features of the dome. So not only does work that is intended for the dome have to some strict limitations that make it hard to achieve a high quality look, and not only is work built for the dome almost impossible to show outside the dome without another reduction in quality, but our goal was explicitly not to pollish our experiences. In contrast, the Give Kids the World movie, along with Animateering, and the Interbots Initiative had client with a definitive idea of a deliverable on a close deadline for a very finished product capable of being played with by kids.

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This week I got a new car, a black 2005 Toyota Prius, a hybrid. First let me tell the story. Last week, on tuesday, I called my mom to talk about my plans for this summer. If you don't already know, I'm going to be at an internship in Atlanta. I was talking about how I was going to manage to get down there with all my stuff, and how I will commute to the job. My mom suggested that it might be about time that I get a car. This was the first I had thought about it in a while, and the first time I thought about it seriously. It was something she said that got me looking at hybrids. I did some comparison online, of all the existing hybrids as well as several conventional cars. I just kept coming back to the Prius as one I really liked. It had the best gas milage of any I'd see, it was competetively priced, and had the coolest technology. I'm a fan of high tech gadgets. If you read about when I got to drive a fully electric car a year ago, then you'd already know that I like the idea of electric.

I thought that a Prius would be unatainable. From what I'd heard there was a 2-6 month waiting list for a new one. A used one would most likely be a 2003 or earlier, before the great set of improvements in 2004. I thought I was going to have to make the difficult choice to wait, either with no car or with a less desireable used car, or else buy a car that may have been a second choice. As luck would have it, when I was considering used Priuses, I discovered a little secret. Although the dealerships have long waiting lists, sometimes they get in extra cars that are not reserved or someone withdraws from the waiting list.

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