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6. What's your favorite book? Why?

7. If you're in a spaceship, orbiting a planet, and you need to dock with another ship, in an identical orbital track, but several minutes behind you, what maneuver do you perform?

8. If you could send one message to everyone in the world, but had to limit it to five words or less, what five words would you send? For the sake of simplicity, assume it's being beamed into everyone's head and magically translated to something they understand.

9. The singularity is coming. Would you rather live forever through genetic engineering, cloning, and other biological advances, or be uploaded into a computer? Why?

10. What's the most poetic phrase you've ever heard? E.x. some of my favorites are "Airplanes dance behind your eyes",  "Primal screams and ocean dreams", "The war was in color", and "Upon the end of your feral days."

Yeah, the general policy is 6 months, but the idea is that there is genuine improvement during that time, so that the new application addresses the issues for which the old one was rejected. It doesn't apply as well to a "challenge" gig though, since that's not going to improve. Hmm... does that make any sense?

What I'm trying to say is, if you have actual art and comics to show in 6 months, you can reapply.

Challenge, eh? Hmm... methinks you may actually have the verbal aptitude to survive. :-)

Let us begin!


1. In what state did they find the corpse?

2. Falcon 9: better than falcon punch?

3. If Muhammad's image has never been shown, how do we know we haven't already seen it?

4. The Rye or the Kaiser?

5. Fnord!

Wow... about the only thing I've done consistently for the past 20 years is breathe! Don't get me wrong, it's great that you found something that can keep you content, but personally I go nuts even in a "good" job in less than 12 months. The longest I've even lived in a single town was 5 years, and even that involved 5 moves. Still though, glad it keeps you happy. I hope I can find something like that sooner rather than later.

Hey, just for the record, I'm not saying "give up on your dreams" or that I'm some great arbiter of what you should or should not do... I just look for creativity as a condition of something I give away FOR FREE. I pay for this out of my own pocket, and well, to be blunt about it, I can do whatever the frak I want. Am I a bit particular about who I select? Yes, sure I am. Don't take it too hard though. I'm just saying you don't qualify for a free site here. By all means, go and do the best you can and follow your dreams. "Ad astra per aspera" and all that. :-)

Well, that point is to express your creativity and personality beyond what your art or other work (or lack there of) is able to show. The questions (and the idea behind the challenge) are intentionally a bit confusing and ambiguous, because that leaves them open to be answered in different ways. The way in which people choose to answer shows a lot about their personality and how they express themselves. You only managed direct... and well, boring... answers. Sorry, but you failed.

Hmm... haven't done a challenge in a while. I'm feeling sphinxish enough I guess.

1) Current event question: How would you stop the oil spill? Explain with some decent detail, specifically, why you think they haven't tried your idea yet.

2) Science multipart question: a) Why is water blue? b) Why is water REALLY blue? c) Why is heavy water not blue?

3) Throw-a-furry-a-bone question: Why a wolf? If you had to be an extinct species instead, what would it be? What about if it had to be fictional?

4) Extemporaneous subject: Counting Cats in Zanzibar... discuss.

Just those who haven't updated. And as per above, the accounts that I never heard from have since been disabled. If you're website is working, you have nothing to worry about.

So, I think this qualifies as "art" or, if not that, at least "Awesome!"



I took that a couple nights ago from the front yard of my house. I think it's pretty sweet. :-)

Click here for full size: http://xepher.xepher.net/Pictures/index.php?displaypic=Art-ish%20Pictures/lightningstrikes.jpg&non_lr=1

Alright, so I just now got around to actually disabling the accounts that haven't responded. Two weeks, and I'll delete them if I haven't heard from the owners. (Well, okay, it could be longer if I forget again, but at least 2 weeks.)

While I understand the desire to keep a professional portfolio, showcasing only your truly top works, that's not really the purpose of Xepher.net. The intention here is to let people share their creative output, especially when they'd be unable to do so without such a free service. For art sites without a central focus (e.g. a comic) that generally means having a large-ish quantity of works available for perusal. Since visitors will ostensibly be coming to see the art, not a thrice weekly comic or something, there needs to be a fairly large amount of that available. That's why I don't usually accept small/focused/professional style portfolio sites... though in fairness, many artists here have a comic, or a large gallery, or a photography project, etc... AND keep a separate portfolio as a section of their site The main focus of a site always has to be sharing free, creative content though, and professional promotion has to take a back seat to that. Don't get me wrong, I love your art, but XN isn't a portfolio host... You're already on carbonmade, which, while I understand it's limited in what you can do, IS specifically meant for small-ish, professional portfolios.

Bottom line is that, if you're wanting to share your work with the world, and need a free host to help with that, XN is the place. On the other hand, if you're just wanting to show some select examples in order to get hired, I'm afraid you'll have to look elsewhere. I do wish you the best of luck though, and I'm sure you'll go far no matter where you end up.

Well, the art is very impressive, but given what you're doing for an education, you don't need a sysadmin on the web to tell you that. :-)

One quick question... the current portfolio looks to be just a sampling (around 30 images for the entire site) of your overall output. When you say you'll be frequently adding new works, are you planning to keep just a "highlights reel" like you have now, or move to a more inclusive gallery?

So I just came across this...

http://www.wolfire.com/humble

A bunch of cool indie games, as cheap as you want to pay for them. Windows, Mac, and Linux. And it supports Child's Play!

Same reason I quit my last job... once I mastered the few unique things about the job, it felt like a real waste to spend all my time/talent just doing the same basic things over and over. I never got the chance to build anything new. Worse, was that I wasn't just stuck maintaining systems I'd built or setup, but rather had to fix the billion stupid setups various clients had.

I think you're right about "jobs" all being monkey work these days. I really think owning something independent is the only way to make it work. If I can scrape the money together, I'm seriously looking at opening a sandwich shop. Either a Jimmy John's or a Firehouse Subs franchise. Both look like pretty decent investments. Simple to run (no real cooking) with high profit margins. JJ's actually lists approximate income and revenues on the site, as well detailed cost outlays. Basically, I need to scrape together about $100k cash + $250k loan, but stand to make $250k/year net profit. Out of curiosity, anyone here ever worked at any places like that? What was it like. Also, what about just eating there... which one do you prefer?

So I quit my job last September, as many of you may know. I've been jobless since, living on my savings. It's not critical yet, but it is shrinking. I moved to Houston in December, thinking the change of place would inspire me a bit more, perhaps help me find some direction for my life. However, every time I even try to look at employment stuff, I just get depressed. It seems like all jobs suck. I refuse to believe this is true though. I'm determined to find a job that I can actually somewhat enjoy, AND have the rest of my life work out nicely too.

So, my question to all of you is this... are there jobs that DON'T suck? What about your own job, what do you do, how do you feel about it? Is it a challenge? Worthwhile? Do you feel like it's going somewhere? Does it make the Earth a better place? Or are you, like me, feeling stuck in jobs that are pointless dead-ends that just shower you with money for doing no real work?

Don't limit your answers to any sort of "rational" answer either. I'm just trying to find some sort of job that doesn't make me want to commit genocide. (Yes, genocide... "I'm a pimp, and pimps don't commit suicide.") I don't care if it's local, or in Lithuania, anything has to be more interesting than what I've been doing in IT.