Software/tech engineer in the arts (most of my job is music production software but occasionally it's other stuff too).

I dropped out of college (by accident) but my bosses are fine with it (this is a boon of being in software). They're encouraging me to go finish my last semester while working part time.

My GPA is horrible (it's part of the reason for the drop out). Some software places will kinda scoff at you for that (Google/Facebook/Microsoft/etc. in particular), but smaller places that don't necessarily have the "big name" factor will consider much more than just that (because they don't have thousands and thousands of applicants). However, at a certain point in a career, GPA doesn't matter. I'm considering grad school within maybe two years; what I've often heard is having a job really kinda negates GPA (it's the experience trumps grades point everyone is making).

I also do music production (it's the reason I went to college too) but I haven't really kicked that too far yet. I do some writing as well; I've done some game journalism, personal and as a writer (though I never took it as far as being paid, but I know a decent amount of people who did). Nowadays, all my writing is here. :) I do dance, as well, but I never quite got to the stage of being competitive. I think I'll get back into that, though.

Tips to the engineers here (since that's all I know about): get internships. I had one literally every summer of college and it very obviously helps when finding a job. If you can't do that, work on a personal project and GET IT DONE. Rough, or not, it's still work. If you're in software, it helps to be able to show some code, or do it on GitHub or equivalent place (doesn't even have to be clean; it's just super easy to look at and is standardized in evaluating potential applicants).

Hello, folks, you know the deal, but there's a bit of an odd exception maybe; it's certainly more complicated than the usual fare. Please read the post thoroughly to understand our situation!

* Looking to play in ESEA Open next season when it rolls around (probably mid May, by my estimation). This was our team last season (http://play.esea.net/teams/64343). To explain our score, we played some ridiculous teams at first (Lazer Bryans, BIG BOYS, some others were among our opponents) AND we ran into some serious technical issues we had to play many of our matches 5v6 (also we got really tired of playing said 5v6 matches, so our team status ended up dead).
* There are three of us and a backup looking to fill in our roster. Currently it's:
- jacobgoddard on demoman
- CGC002 on passive scout
- me, mana, on either pocket, roamer or aggro scout

* We're looking for people who can fill in the remaining spots:
- 1 Medic
- AND 2 of these classes: pocket or roamer or aggro scout
- This can include a pocket/medic combo too!

* None of us rage, so, neither should you. That said, a little bit of fire is a great motivator.
* Right now, we plan on playing together for a long time, Vector Gaming style (Shwan forever!). This means even if we lose, we'll rebound, learn and strike back harder than before. Even among the three of us, I think we're very smart players and we focus.
* We would like at least 2 seasons of UGC 6s and/or a season of ESEA Open or more (if you're comfortable with playing with us!).

As for the schedule, ours is generally in the night; two of us are on the west coast, however, both of us are able to accommodate east coast schedules (or will be able to soon, in my case). Here are specifics:
- We don't want to play an obsessive amount as our team (feel free to do so on your own!); all of us are relatively busy (my random posts on this site might give you an indication!) so we want play for short times but smartly; I'm planning on getting regular scrim partners and of course we'll schedule demo reviews and flat out DM practice and the like occasionally, depending on what we feel like we'll need.
- Generally this is going to be somewhere in between 6 PM PST to 9 PM PST on weekdays and variable times on the weekends (none of us know our solid plans for the weekends yet). We'd like to play for 1 to 1.5 hours of solid practice (i.e. scrims) in this time, obligatory, for at least a couple days of the week (most likely 3 out of the 7 days).

Perks:
- Hang out with cool people!
- Get connections to top people in TF2 (the ramen chronicles)!
- Stay at my residence if you need a temporary place!
- We have nothing against polite, honest, legitimate criticism!
- A kickass, intelligent bunch of players that know how to frag like mad!
- FUN!

Here are our profiles:
mana http://steamcommunity.com/id/nulflo
cgc002 http://steamcommunity.com/id/cgc002
jacobgoddard http://steamcommunity.com/id/jacobgoddard

Also please let me know if there's more information I can put in here.

Mouses work natively, so, yes. I just checked and the Logitech mouse configuration software supports Windows 8. The page is probably slightly outdated.

It's this one: http://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/optical-gaming-mouse-g400?crid=7

You're weird, Dane, but it was nice meeting you at LAN.

Context: five or so of us were hanging out getting lunch (me, Dane, CGC002, b4nny and bl4nk), but we got lost. I guess eating so late made Dane hallucinate or something.

And are you sure that this "light" wasn't my phone's GPS?

I haven't had it as long as some people here (since November 2012) but it's an excellent mouse; it's not the smallest mouse but it is one of the lightest (at least in comparison to the Zowie EC2 eVo, which is the smallest "fantastic" tier mouse I've found). It seems to work oddly well for my small-ish hands. I tried to get used to the EC2, but in the end I just reverted back because the weight was just so perfect for my Soldier, Sniper, and Scout play. Unfortunately, the price went up to $34 as I checked, but that's still a ridiculously good price. Just make sure you don't have an angle-snapping one. I sincerely doubt that you'll get one at this point, but just look up "logitech g400 angle snapping" and there is an official Logitech forums post about how to find out if you have one. Amazon is great with customer service so as long as you have everything in (you'll probably have to open the box to find out if it has angle snapping), you'll get a refund or a replacement. You could also just try it out and ship it back if it's not to your liking.

This is actually what I was originally brought on for; I'm about to kick it into high gear for writing literally all this stuff. enigma's actively figuring out how to integrate it into the site (though there's no ETA on that, yet, neither is there one for me).

After a draft, I'll most likely be taking suggestions, corrections and also writing submissions for stuff I don't know in depth, most likely from the community (maybe a couple of key people first, but definitely expanding as time goes on).

Patience. Still incoming. I know enigma has started work, but it will be ready when it's ready.

Oh, I totally agree; I must've misread something but that's definitely what I meant by hitting a middle spot; enough investment to want to legitimately play matches.

b4nny and blank will both be there in about 15 minutes; we got lost trying to get lunch that it accidentally rolled over.

Sure, no one lives on winning TF2, but on one hand you have great competitions like ESEA LAN and on the other extreme, CEVO and UGC 6s, both of which have been varying degrees of bad. In order to motivate for good games, there's gotta be some kind of motivator somewhere.

That said, this whole discussion is moot because we can't do it.

enigma just told me that two letter domains are reserved. :( Any other ideas for short domain names? Three or more, unfortunately, is what we're going to have to go with.

Just to hype it out, b4nny and bl4nk are here at Seattle LANfest. Last night, over a hot, dinner at night, b4nny confirmed that HE WILL BE COACHING TONIGHT. So, what are you waiting for? JOIN IN THE FUN!

enigma is trying to figure out the best way to fix this problem; I'm also trying to work on a guide for new players.

Anyone able to look into the tf.tv domain? I've tried, but I'm not an internet expert so I actually couldn't see who owned it using normal WHOIS methods. It'd be a FANTASTIC short name to have but it will probably be incredibly expensive (I tried to get a two letter domain name and it was about to cost me 2k/year). But I never managed to get a number, so.

I have no idea if enigma wants to do rings (honestly, he's getting pretty busy at the moment, what with priorities on improving the site versus advertising and LAN coming up); but I believe the cost is too much for right now; it'll definitely result in growth, but it won't result in $100. The best thing to do is name changes on yourself (mocha and I style our names as so: "mana | teamfortress.tv", as does lamefx occasionally), or weapon name/description changes.

enigma already mentioned the reasons we can't do it right now; that's not to say it won't happen later, but all it boils down to right now is that we don't have enough staff to run it (one person volunteering to admin it is not nearly enough), program it (someone mentioned "programmers"; it's JUST enigma) and we're unable to form the prize pool as of yet. It's just not feasible to run a tournament right now.

If you want to keep running ideas, feel free, but without a realistic prize pool, honestly, it's incredibly difficult to build a tournament around it where people will play and care (example, CEVO, right now). Not to mention we really, really, really don't have the staff to run it.