Grues, Games, and Gainful Employment

So I now have requests in to several individuals to allow me to use them as professional references when I attempt to get a job this summer, and I'm just waiting to hear back before I start filling out online applications.

Seems like the old "sidle up to the place of employment with the classified ad clutched in hand" method of job-hunting seems to have fallen by the wayside. On the one hand I'm a bit disappointed by that, but on the other I'm glad to be saved the trouble.

In any case, I've got two projects that will also be keeping my attention for the rest of the summer, along with (hopefully) my job. The first of them is a bit of interactive fiction that I started last summer, but put on hiatus when school started kicking my ass. I picked it back up again yesterday and added a few more rooms on to it, along with at least one instant game over for the player.

In my experience, IF enthusiasts seem to like those. At least, the third or fourth time I was strangled by the janitor in The Lurking Horror, that was the conclusion that I drew. Strangely enough, it had to be the time I went to try to catch the snippet of the game where you realize he didn't blink the entire bloody game that I figured out how to beat him. Go figure.

The other project is (at the suggestion of a friend) to write my own role-playing game. I've been working on the opening fluff since yesterday, and I've got a good solid four pages or so of it (single-spaced, at that). I'm liking it. It's going to have some nice layers to it, I think. Or at least as many layers as Western steampunk fantasy can have. After I'm done writing this I'm going to post a chunk of the fluff on Literary Bushido, just for the hell of it.

So between those two and the job I'll (optimistically) get, it seems I'll have a fairly productive summer. And hey, one of my reference hopefuls just emailed me and said that he would. Just one more to go before I start putting in applications.

Then I will be gainfully employed. How about that?

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It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.