I was thinking that living here would be a stop gap in between either working on an anti-whaling vessel or moving to a Nordic country.
What I ended up realizing is that I didn't really have the training to go on a large anti-whaling ship and that they weren't going to bring me on and that moving overseas is right pain in the ass... not to mention expensive as fuck.
So while I have been in Philadelphia I have made a couple of really great friends, worked a couple of different jobs and really started to feel pretty settled.
As far as jobs go, I was working for a couple of different computer repair places. In one shop I was working on taking a bunch of old busted up computers are turning them in to a couple of working ones. The problem there was I was working with almost all shit parts and the pay was of the same caliber. At the other place, which was miles outside of Philly I lied and told them that I had a car and could get all over Philly easily. One part of that was true. I could get all over Philly pretty easily... just on my bike. I used my bike to get to different appointments all over the city and fix people's computers either in their houses or in businesses. The problem with this job was that we offered free diagnostic work so people were calling us in to tell them what was wrong with their computer and then trying to find a better rate somewhere else to get the work done. It wasn't until I was about a week away from quitting that they figured out a way to get money out of these people.
The house that I live in is amazing, it's an early 1900s Victorian in a pretty great part of West Philly. We have some pretty great neighbors too, a lot of older folks that are really supportive when we have shows or parties. We have had a few shows so far, you can actually check out information about shows at the house here.
My girlfriend's birthday is coming up soon and I am going to get her a really great gift that I think she is going to love. I am having it made but I don't want to say anything here and spoil the surprise. Once I give it to her I am hopefully going to get some pictures of her with it. The end of October is when we started dating so it will be one year for us at the end of the month, which is pretty exciting.
Really the last couple of exciting pieces of news are that my good friend Onis and I are working on a couple of songs that we are making together. He has some equipment at his house and I got him the latest version of Ableton 8.1.4 so we have been jamming out and making some electro/house/disco craziness. I am really excited about what we have done so far and if you want to check out the rough draft of our first song and also some other stuff I have worked on alone then check out my soundcloud profile. Oh, and if you have any interest in having your own, fulling functional copy of Ableton then just email me because I have all the newest releases.
The other thing is that I went to GDC2010 this year hoping to start meeting some people within the games industry. Reason being is that if you know me even a little bit you know that I am obsessed with games and everything having to do with them. With minimal programming knowledge but a love for the craft I went hoping to meet some East Coast people who I might get involved with on projects in the future. I expressed met a bunch of really great guys from New York and while hanging out with them I expressed my love of classic arcades, my want to build arcade cabinets and my hope to be involved in anything like that in the future. Just in the last month my friend in New York has been working with the people from Babycastles as they are going to be opening a Video game arcade in a Manhattan studio just a few block from Times Square. He told them about my situation and I am going to working for the month of October to build them an arcade "cabinet" for the show. I put cabinet in quotation marks because what I am building is more of a housing. It will probably be about 6-7 feet tall. It's internal frame will be made out of wood and chicken wire and will be covered in giant, hand sewn quilt. I am calling it the cloth monster and I am really excited about it. They seem to be excited too, which is encouraging.
Well that is pretty much all that is going on in my life right now.
More updates as they come.
