Working out with a trainer is unlike any other gym workout I’ve ever done.  He makes me want to cry every workout.  Sometimes my muscles get so tired, I feel like I’m working out but I’m mostly just hanging on to the bar while he’s moving it.  The first couple sessions were tests to shock my body.  The first day I didn’t eat enough and felt like passing out at the end.  The second day was a little better.  Now I try to eat throughout the day but it gets hard sometimes when I’m working.  This week he had me work on isolated muscle groups.  Just when I wanted an exercise to be over, he would strip a little weight and have me do more reps, strip a bit more and do even more reps.  Those burn like crazy.  Today was leg day.  My legs were so tired, I could barely finish the last exercise.  Then, when we were walking across the gym to another machine, my legs gave out and I had to catch myself on the ground.  Holy crap!  I’ve never had that happen before.  We started laughing as I hobbled back up and finished the workout with some ab work. It took me a couple of minutes to get down the stairs after that workout. I’ve already gained about 5 pounds since last week so he must be doing something right. And no, I’m not trying to get huge.  Think of Ryan Reynolds’ transformation from Van Wilder to Blade 3.

I’m getting pretty settled into work life. Everyday has a challenge and I’m learning a lot. I’ve been digging into a lot of Maya API programming and Python scripting both of which are turning out to be pretty powerful. When I was first starting my job, I was expecting to get a lot of grunt level work but I’m happy to say I’ve been getting a lot of cool assignments thrown my way. After a lot of college jobs serving people, I can easily say that I am happy with my career choice.

One of the benefits of not being in school anymore is that when I’m off work, I don’t have to do anything. When I was in school, I was always working on my reel or learning on my own.  Now that I don’t have to do that anymore, I am free to take up other hobbies. To give myself something to do, I signed up for a bunch of personal training sessions with this guy. I’ve been working out at my current gym for a couple years now and at other gyms for the past 6 years but this will be my first time with a trainer.  He said that I have good genes because of my build and I’ll shoot up about 15 pounds over the next 2-3 months.  Whoa! Hopefully, I won’t end up looking like this guy.

Check it out. Believe the hype.

I just finished my first week at Imagemovers Digital. All I can say is I love it. Confucius was right when he said, “Find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” I’ve looked forward to every day of work this past week. Not a day has gone by where I haven’t seen something amazing. I’m surrounded by some of the best in the industry and there’s so much I can learn. It was kind of intimidating being thrown into the midst of so many talented people. But it keeps me motivated and eager to learn more. It’s kind of weird thinking I’m going to spend the next couple years of my life working on a movie. But when I see my name roll up in the credits, it’ll all be worth it.

There’s nothing quite like the experience of being a poor student bachelor. One of my roommates recently moved out of the house. She took all her belongings with her, which includes all the kitchen supplies and utensils. My kitchen belongings consist of one bowl, a shaker cup, and a fork that I found in the dish washer when we first moved in. Have you ever eaten cereal with a fork? It’s a sad sight to see. Anyways, I came home yesterday and had the craving for a nice bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats. Good thing I have a bowl! I look in the sink and my bowl is sitting there, shattered in a dozen pieces.

What…the…hell? My one bowl, the only thing I was eating out of, is no more. Now I saw the bowl that morning in the sink and it was good as new. Very suspicious indeed. I heard there was an earthquake that day so maybe forces greater than my own decided I shouldn’t have that bowl. No matter. Being the resourceful person that I am, I poured the cereal into my GNC shaker cup. How hard could it be to eat cereal out of a shaker cup with a fork? Well, I never got the chance because as I looked at my cereal, I saw that it was covered in ants! Arggh, foiled again! I threw my cereal away and decided to go on to Plan B: order pizza.

I call the pizza place by my house but no one answers the phone. What’s up with that? I’m hungry here! Being too lazy to drive down the hill to go to the pizza place in person, I move on to Plan C: canned goods. I open my cabinet and find a can of baked beans and some peaches. However gross that sounds as a dinner, I thought it would fill up my stomach for the night. But something was missing. I don’t have a can opener. Blast! As I hung my head in defeat I grab the plum that’s on the counter and have a piece of fruit for dinner. You win this time, student poverty, but your days are numbered.

I was looking at the front page of YouTube today and saw a video of Brett Dennen playing in a studio in Kentucky. It’s really cool seeing him become so successful the past few years. When I was 10 years old, he was my summer camp counselor. I later worked with him at the same camp for a couple of summers and became good friends with his brother, who is really my asian brother from another mother. Brett’s an all around awesome person and if you haven’t heard his music, I suggest you go check it out!

It’s the beginning of the end of my time at Ex’pression College. I’ve just finished my final demo reel as a student, which you can view on my splash page. I have one last 5-week term and I’ll be done with school. I can’t wait because then I get to start working on my first feature film. It’s going to feel weird not being a full-time student since I’ve been one for the past 21 years.

I’m also moving to a new place with sweet roommates so I’m looking forward to that. Now it’s just a waiting game for the next few weeks until I finish school and move. The waiting game and a little Bioshock will have to hold me over until then.

This is my latest site. If you’ve been following along with me, you’ll know that this is something like my 7th generation website. However, all the sites before this one used all my own code as a backend. I’ve decided to ditch about 3 years of stored posts from my old database to move over to the wonder that is WordPress. Never fear, if you’re here for my DirectX tutorials, they’ve all been transferred over along with my Maya exporter.

What’s been going on in my life these past few quiet months? Besides my normal school work and part-time job, I finished a short film I have been working on with a team of my classmates for the past 6 months. It was an interesting experience full of many long and sleepless nights. Last week, I attended Siggraph as a student volunteer in San Diego. I met a lot of great people at Siggraph and made a lot of good friends that were once only acquaintances. With school coming to a close in a couple of months and my major school projects behind me, my life is starting to return to it’s less crazier form. I’m about to graduate from Ex’pression College in a couple of months. When I graduate, I’ll begin working at my dream job at a great new animation studio. I couldn’t have asked for a better job. I guess hard work really does payoff .

Great job, great family, great friends, a new niece…I pretty much love my life right now. Fjorg! Stay passionate, stay determined, take a chance, and great things will follow.