Jodag.NET

So, in general it’s been a ton of time since this place has been updated. No storytime shit, no new pics no new backpacking or snowboarding and nothing new at all. Sucky.

Now that the academy is over, hopefully I can rectify that situation, starting now. I have my badge and am starting work tomorrow (Nov 1) at an anonymous location. It’s an Off Highway Vehicle park, so mainly I’ll be handling enforcement and medicals, which is good to go. It’ll be a good solid learning experience and the location is awesome. About an hour north of L.A. proper, but in a completely different world. It’s out of a small town named Gorman at the top of “the grapevine” which is the mountain range that seperates the central valley from Socal itself. So it’s a small town (less than a thousand fifty people and no other towns for miles), in the mountains, but just about 1-1.5 hours away from the biggest city on the west coast.

I have state housing, in a canyon with no neighbors and a locked gate. I have a cost of living bonus every month because the park is in LA county. I have no real reason to complain about anything yet. I’m excited as fuck.

What I start tomorrow is called the FTO portion of my training. For the next three months my FTO (Field Training Officer) and I will be attached at the hip. Every time we interact with the public he’s going to be grading me and making sure I’m doing everything from writing tickets to arrests to medical aids correctly and most importantly safely. After these three months, I have 9 more months of probation and then a fat raise.

What else is going on…I went back to OC at the end of my 1 week vacation between the academy and work. I was going to have dinner with Efong and he wound up inviting a bunch of old Interplay clowns (Jmitchell, Egood, Dchee, Pchan and Jkirkland). So we spent alot of time just looking back at the Interplay days fondly. They are mostly still all in the game industry and are working for different companies since Iplay is essentially dead. And each of them said that Interplay was just fun, the people and the environment. Which is something that the companies they are working for now are definately lacking in some ways. Sad in a way I guess. I miss Iplay on occasion. There were some damn fine people there and I learned alot while I was there. RIP BIS, once again.

Oh well, one other thing I’ve realized over the last 2 days is that I am blessed with amazing friends. Truly blessed and in all honesty, I have no idea why.

10.19.03

We got a new couch this weekend, well we actually got it awhile ago it just got delivered this weekend.  I cannot find a spot or position on it to be uncomfortable, god what an upgrade from stupid futons.  Sita and I have had a futon since we first got married, and I guess I never really realized how uncomfortable they are compared to real couches before this.  So, comfortable new couch + Josh = Josh didn’t get as much done this weekend as he wanted to.

Good news with the new couch, we had to store the old futon somewhere, so we chose the garage.  With that in the garage, one of the cars has been officially displaced into parking outside from here on out, which frees up allot of room in there.  Room for a heavy/speed bag stand that Fong and I have been wanting to hook up for awhile now.  Scott used to have a speedbag in his garage on Stonehill, we would spend hours at a time hitting that bag.  The bag, when hit right sets up a rhythm (sp?) that you can listen to and forget your worries, it was very therapeutic.  Scott, come on down!

Other news, I got a Canon F1 to help me in my goal of learning how to take photos the right way.  I took it with me on the way to San Clemente this morning to get a haircut.  I wound up spending most of the morning down there since the 5 was lockjawed solid with beach traffic (hot weekend down here in SoCal, hit 80’s or 90’s inland on Saturday, crappy).  So I bought a couple rolls of film, since I only brought one and started taking pictures of surfers, birds and flags so far.  I didn’t even finish one roll of film, I think I’m a bit too cautious on the shutter right now. 

I am quite excited though, I’m really looking forward to seeing how the pictures turn out, I’m sure my excitement will be equally matched by my disappointment upon seeing them though.  Right now I’ve got the pictures stored in my head, and they look great in there, I just have a feeling that out of the 2 major settings my camera has, I screwed up all three of them.  I guess we’ll find out later this week, I just have to finish off that roll of film…

Back to the couch for me now though.