Ooh Expo!

After hiking through the woods a couple dozen times this weekend I was a bit worried about how I would hold up at the Graph Expo today. I shouldn't have worried. By the time we got to the McCormick Center I was already giddy.

Being the sole representative of my company at the expo might have made me feel really grown up...except for my "business casual" attire of a hoody & jeans...and the fact that my objective for the expo was to grab as many freebies as possible.

So mostly it was like college, except that being with people from our split off company I sometimes had to actually listen to what vendors were saying. But that was fun too because I got to play pretend and act like maybe I actually knew what was going on. Even more amusing was when I actually did!

The only sad moment in my day was when we were driving up to the center and I thought about how funny it would be if I ran into Prof. Davis with a new group of graphic design majors going to their first expo. Oh yeah. That can't happen.



The rest of the day was, literally, a bunch of giggles. Leslie and I laughed. All. Day. Long.
I don't know the last time was that I've laughed so much. All the other attendees looked serious and bored the whole time. We laughed about ev-er-y-thing. Vendors, freebies, other attendees, demonstrations. All funny.



And I did get a ton of cool freebies. Mostly posters, but I got a nice pen, a usb-multi-port, a bag & some spiffy die-cuts too. A lot of the posters I had no interest in because mostly they were just pictures of pretty, often scantily clad, women. Could it be because most expo attendees are men? But towards the end we visited the HP booth and, whatever HP lacks in service (it's a lot) they make up in posters.

Mary HAD a little lamb

It's time to bid farewell to Mary and her...well I guess the lamb was already gone. The point is, that the person who was hosting the image let their photobucket account expire or deleted it or some silliness of that sort.

Now we have the butterflies...I'm not sure how long they're staying. They are more cheerful than Mary & Co., but for me the most cheerful thing would be if this blasted thing fit the screen right. Sadly I don't know enough about code to make that happen.

So. We'll probably be seeing another change soon.

It's a Party!

I don't normally write about graphic design sites on here, but PhotoShopStar is having a sweet give away to celebrate it's second birthday. Posting a comment gives you a chance at winning some minor goodies, but linking back to the site and the sponsors lets you win some much cooler stuff.

The prize I'm drooling over most is the free 1 page design by psd2html. Basically I would design my web page and they would make it work. For someone, like me, who consistantly fails to understand web coding, this would be amazing.

Ok, so that's the only prize I want.

The Blubs Wordpress theme liscence might be amazing - but I don't Wordpress.

And I don't have actually have anything I want to advertise on PhotoShopStar (though freelancers are probably getting giddy at the very thought).

Even so, it's pretty cool.

Daniel

My little brother is nine years younger than me and five inches taller. Last summer he decided he wanted to get a job, but for a year he has been told by everyone that he needs to be at least 16. That's how he got a job at the cow farm.

Our mom thinks it's good because he'll learn responsibility. I think it's good because it will toughen him up. He thinks it's good because of the money and with his new wealth he has purchased what no game store can keep stocked: the Nintendo Wii.

Since I'm visiting for mother's day, I got to enjoy the newness of the game with everyone else. We played Wii Bowling and Mario Karts. I kind of expected it to be cooler, but it's still a good time. I'm a better bowler on the Nintendo than in real life.

This morning I convinced my brother that he wanted to go clothes shopping with me and Mom. The last time he wanted to go shopping with me he was eight and I promised him that we would stop at the candy store and KB Toys.

He'd given up a concert to have some more time with me, so I wanted him to come along rather than just waste the extra time. Originally he looked at me as if I'd asked him to accompany me to hell. But I explained that having me in the store was better than a frantic phone call about what he should buy, so he agreed to come. I think he reconsidered the wisdom of that once he was in the car, but with help from the sales guy we managed to purchase two pairs of jeans that are indelibly cool.

Our mother still has no idea why those jeans were cooler than the others. I took photos and I'm making her a chart.

all over

Well, the biggest bummer of this weekend is that Holly and I did not get to throw our friend a birthday party. We'd thought her parents would be taking her out next weekend, but it was this one. So I'll be making this trip all over again next weekend so we can do this thing. Hopefully my boss will let me have Monday off so the trip won't be awful.
Here's some photos of our Friday adventures.


My sisters picking up measuring tapes as we enter the great land of Ikea. If we had actually been buying something they would have been very handy.

Bethany shows off a finger puppet.

Holly loves this game, but is her first ever Jumpin' Jackpot win.

Bethy pretends to beat me at air hockey (she really did beat me, but Holly didn't think to take a photo until after we were done).

productivity

Last week was a long bummer of a week. The kind of week where even when good things happen, you only barely recognize them as that. And good things did happen, I got to hang out with some of the girls from the Link. I saw my sister, got lost in Ft. Wayne, drew some killer drawings, and got to hang out with several other friends besides. It just didn't register.

All day today I've had a hidious migraine and the feeling that perhaps one of my organs has ruptured. I still feel better than the seven days leading up to today.

This week is going to be different, though. I can feel it. Despite the feeling of impending death, I'm being shockingly productive. I mean, aside from this blog post. I'm helping to plan a friend's birthday, registering my plates, doing my taxes, buying health insurance...and I think I'll even get some work done on my greeting-card venture.

It's a good day, made even better by the fact that I didn't have to wait in line to renew my plates and when you renew your plates online the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles takes $5 off your bill. Most places charge you extra for doing things online, as if automation is costing them extra, but the Indiana BMV is being my friend and that makes me happy.

HTML

Ok, so I've figured out enough HTML to get this up, but I don't know how to make it fit the whole screen or how to stop it from running into the scroll bar...so this may come down soon. It's still kinda funny.

Sci-Fi Nation

A disturbing new robot is out from Toyota. With Japan's population growing really old and reproducing very little robots are apparently the best solution.

Granted, these white, alien looking machines are not nearly as disturbing as Zeno the 17" boybot, which was inspired by Supertoys Last All Summer Long, by Brian Aldiss which also inspired Spielberg's A.I. - yes, that's right, David Hanson read a depressing book and said, "How can I make that kind of emotional trauma a reality?" It's inspiring, really.

Evidently Toyota made a trumpet playing robot 3 years ago. Toyota marked this move as trying to keep up with Honda's Asimo, which has been hired out as an office servant and keynote speaker, but could they possibly be starting a robot orchestra?

Good mornin', good mornin'

Twice this week I hit the snooze button on my alarm and it never came back on. So last night I went to Walmart and searched for an alarm.

In the Warsaw Walmart alarm clocks are near the watches in the jewelry department. It kind of makes sense. It would make more sense if they were in the electronics department. In the Walmart near my house the jewelry department is next to the electronics department, so finding an alarm clock should be easy. Should. Tragically Walmart hates it's customers.

I wandered the store and finally found alarm clocks with the luggage.

My alarm clock isn't cool. It's main features are that it automatically sets the time, switches to daylight savings, and has a backup battery so you don't have to panic when the electric goes out.

But online I found the Bim Bam Banana puzzle alarm clock.

When the alarm goes off the puzzle pieces come out and the alarm won't turn off till you solve the puzzle. Clever, but at $50 it's a little pricey.

Another clock, which I think might be the most brilliant invention ever to tell time: is the Sfera. “When the alarm chimes in the morning, the only way to silence it is to reach up and gently tap the Sfera. This action initiates the snooze function, but it also makes the Sfera rise above your head towards the ceiling. As it slowly rises away from your reach, you must stretch higher each time to gain another ten minutes of snooze. When it reaches the ceiling, you have no option but to reach for it and drag it back down to your bed – an action which switches off the alarm and forces you finally to get up.”

Yes - amazing. But not in production.

In my search for more about Sfera I discovered the bedzine blog. They have a clock section. It has all kinds of crazy, inovative, and outragiously expensive clocks. They shake, they fly, there's even a clock that decides for you, when you should get up.

But my favorite clocks are the dawn simulators. I wake up alright when it's bright outside, but I have a devil of a time trying to wake up in the dark, even when I've had more than enough sleep.

"Our wonderful biorhythm clock will restore your pizzazz and let you start the day alert and ready for anything. Ordinary alarm clocks wake you up suddenly, so you jump from deep sleep to consciousness in seconds. That leaves you needing time to "wake up" properly – and you may even start the day feeling irritable, tired and needing coffee to get going. "

While I am emphatically against the use of words like "pizzazz" I think the idea of a clock that slowly gets brighter and brighter till I wake up - is fabulous.

The act of waking up is traumatic all on it's own - I don't need an obnoxious buzzer scaring the snot out of me to make the experience any worse. I used to have panic attacks any time my alarm would go off. It just isn't a good way to get my day started! Unfortunately this lovely clock costs $99.

This little bugger does the same thing, but it costs $69 rather than $99. I know, at the point you're paying more than $20 to wake up you've already lost your mind, $30 more or less doesn't change this.

My personal plan is to buy one of those vacation light timers and a lamp. The light comes on. I wake up. All is well. And for less than $20.

"Hey There Delilah" always gets stuck in my head and I always endup walking around the house singing some sad emo guy's song, hating his girlfriend for inspiring the song and wondering what would posess someone's mother to name their daughter Delilah.

My sisters, hearing of my dislike for this song, put me on to this video.

So now, whenever that song pops in my head I think, "Oooh, you live up in a treeeee, oh you live up in a tree, you live up in a tree" and that just makes me laugh.

So today's lesson is that as long as a serious love song can be turned into a song about Cicadas we'll always know that there is a bit of good in all of us, even the fool who wrote that emo song and his silly girlfriend in New York.

will work for fiction

I don't know anyone lives without good fiction playing a large role in their lives. I have not read a new book in an entire week and already my life feels less worth while.

Because Indiana is a barren wasteland there are no book retailers in the area except for the itty Christian bookstores which, like the library, are not open on Sundays (and also, don't carry much good fiction) and the book/magazine section at Wal-mart (mostly magazines, and whatever was on the Time's best seller list two years ago).

I have an entire hour to kill, and I'm just not sure that I can make it.

In happier news, I bought my little digicam and can now take pictures any time I want without worrying about using up film or printing pictures that just didn't turn out right.

On the down side, I really wish I'd had money to buy a more expensive camera. I feel like I chucked half my life's savings at something that, ultimately, is not what I want.

However, I haven't fully figured out how it works yet. I'm positive that the camera has more to offer than it appears at present (for example, it has a 6x zoom and a macro setting, but appears completely unable to focus on anything when it is that close in...but I'm sure once I read the manual I will be able to make it do my bidding).

I wish it would hurry up and get warm outside, so I can have something nice to take pictures of!

There's a spiffy new contest for what apple's next product should be after the contreversial iphone (some other company already had the name). Some the entries are so-so, but some are hillarious... the ido engagement ring? In real life...talk-about-tacky...online...hysterical. I would so buy the Washing Mac-hine. The ihop jump rope is pretty cute too...but if it were real there would be the obvious legal entanglements.