No laughing, okay? Just remember, this is after only my first week of using PhotoShop. This is a folder cover design. Class, meet my homework assignment. LOL. If you don't have anything nice to say. Dot, dot, dot.
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I knew you'd ask, so here is my 1st time (re)design. LOL
There's no more wondering about whether or not I should run 4 office. ROFLMAO!
Right off the bat, let me tell you that when starting a post using ZoundryRaven, you can't (unless using the space bar) indent the first sentence. In other news, starting school to become a Web Designer/Webmaster has made me realize that I am truly a geek/nerd at heart. We've always had the suspicion, but because there was always this thing in the back of my mind that said, "Don't you think you should be outside? They say that's really good for you. You know, vitamin D and all?" LOL.
FYI - picture will enlarge, at least a little when you click them.
I do go outside. Sometimes I just stand on the porch & think. Other times I sit in the chair on the porch thinking, watching and listening to nature. For example - while sitting on the porch after dark last night, I was able to hear at least four different bug sounds from the trees. There were frogs (don't know their name), there were crickets and they sounded either huge or there were just a LOT of them. LOL. There were two others, at the moment though, I don't recall what each one sounded like. Since we gave Annabelle away, we've been de-constructing barriers we had because of her.
We took the gate between the cats' litter box and Wii area down. We no longer need to keep the pooch from eating though disgusting cat Tootsie's. We put up the gate immediately after bringing her home so she wouldn't even get in the habit of having cat-snacks. I found out the quick way when we had only had her for a couple of weeks that she needed a fenced yard. I let her off the leash thinking would walk to the front door, outside, and she bolted, heading up the middle of the road and a car was coming. Yesterday I went outside with the intention of carrying the boards from the fence-gate (wall and hinged door) to the shed. However, after taking that first board to said shed, I decided on the way back that it was a good afternoon to work on taking the fence down. What made me think of that was when I came out of the shed I started walking around the fence to the porch. That's when I determined it would be better not having to walk so far, which would be possible if the fence wasn't there. I had gotten the fence wire unstuck from it's grass 'tie-downs', on the porch side, but had stopped working on it a couple of days before because the fence wasn't easily coming loose from the edge-grass so I could roll it up. Just in the off chance that the other end would come loose, I grabbed the end and straited pulling. Surprisingly, it came loose and the more I pulled the more of it loosened up. Different day, different results I guess. LOL.
From that point on I was working on getting the wire fence rolled up to move.
Speaking of which, I'll go take a picture of where the process ended for the evening last night. Once you see the picture you will notice that the t-poles still need pulled up and stored somewhere. Maybe the small shed will house them, or perhaps the wood shed. To be determined. Also, notice that the yard was mowed, and will bee gone over again to clean-up the area in front of the house. That yard had been there for a couple of years now, so we didn't think of it as an ugly add-on. Once I got the fenced moved and the yard that it surrounded mowed, the front does look like less eyesore.
Don't know if that'll make a huge difference when our next Realtor takes pictures for the purpose of selling this place or not, but to us we think our home has better curb appeal now. Hopefully!
After coming in after working on the aforementioned yard, for dinner/supper (still got my western meal-names issues) I started getting itchy. My first thought was that because I was outside after the sun moved over the horizon, that those nasty biting bugs (mosquitoes, flies, etc) had got me when I was soaked in sweat. It wasn't until a few hours later that it occurred to me that I didn't have bites where the itching was. I did get a couple of bug bites, but that was it. Anyway, all the "itching" was actually a symptom of the MS that I have overdone it. My muscles had been exercised more than the MS usually allows. That made all LOT of the nerves upset enough to send what turned out to be tiny pain signals from my brain that have the exact same feeling as a bug bite. You could call it a mini exacerbation, but this morning I woke-up without those pain signals, so.
Other tan that, I did get the extra hose I found in the shed spliced into the ever increasing shorter water hose from the pump house. After I did that, I knew as soon as I could get the spray nozzle all the way to the wall side of the porch. Then, and only then could I hose all the air conditioner sweat, dead bugs that Annabelle had killed but didn't get around to eating, and plain old dirt sprayed off. Which I did, but not until I had gotten the fence down. Plus I had to find all of the bricks that had been laying around the inside of the fence so that Annabelle would be less likely to dig holes under it. She was a Cairn terrier and was always digging for moles. She really didn't like that there were sometimes opossums & ground hogs outside of her yard that she couldn't get to. That obviously really annoyed her. LOL. I decided that the riding mower would fit between each of fence poles, therefore I started mowing. I did find *one* brick in the grass that I hadn't moved when there was a suddenly loud clanking of the mower blades hitting it. All in all, thinking about all the bricks I did find, it was amazing I didn't miss more them. LOL. I'll take a picture of all the bricks I moved onto the porch. Anyway, I will need to hose the porch off again once the poles have been taken down and the pole grass tufts haven been mowed over.
The other things I have been obsessed with is the new software from school that I got earlier in the week (Adobe Creative Suite 4 - Master Collection). Primarily I was playing with the Dreamweaver web site designing program. I did spend quite a bit of time playing with Adobe Photoshop CS4 too though. I had taken what I knew to be a really cute picture of Mango sitting next to Rain. Unfortunately, because of the nerve damage caused by MS, I no longer have picture-steady hands. That almost always means that pictures are a little blurry. I took it upon myself to see if I could make Photoshdop 4 make the picture clearer/focused. Although I'm fairly sure an experienced Photoshop 4 user would have made it so that no one would know it was blurry beforehand, I'm still brand new to it. There are a lot of freaking picture editing tools in Photoshop! It'll take time and instruction to become proficient with it. Proficient I will be though, eventually. Same goes for the use of DreamWeaver, though I have started designing a new web page to show my learning experiments (another blog needs written). It will be a learning guide for nerds learning this stuff after me, hopefully. Nah, it will Be!. I was reading blog help- posts/articles yesterday about 30 HTML Best Practices for Beginners . One of the suggestions was that you show off some of the stuff you've learned because "There's always someone with less experience than you". I want to be a well respected Webmaster when it's all said and done, so I am doing my part as best as I can. How well is yet to be seen. LOL. Oh, I have a lot more to learn before that though. The 'Inrtroduction to Web Design' class starts tomorrow and the teacher suggested I start looking over the textbooks I got, and playing with the programs. She was happy to hear that I have already read the first chapter and part of the second of the text as well as playing with the programs already. It's what I do! I get new computer programs, I install and play with them. Right? Seriously, who doesn't? LOL. Oh yeah, and I've watched a few videos for "beginner web designers, plus read a few how-to articles.
I am REALLY liking Pandora - Internet radio. Not only do they track and play the artists you like hearing, but they also play the explicit versions of songs that have them. I know it's just that some songs sound better emotionally with the explicit lyrics, to me and that the censors need to go a way! I know I'm not the only one being "protected", that it's not just me who finds ratings and the pursuit of "clean" music annoying and condescending. Am I?
You are now caught up with my life. Welcome to it. LOL!
Normally when I write a blog-post I use my blog-writer program. Although I can also do it this way using my email program , I don't if I have a picture (or several) to go with the 'story'. This time, I don't, hence the email usage. Oh, I'm sure I could find a picture to go with this, but I don't want to. lol.
Anyway, my daughter posted to her blog yesterday, something she rarely does. I also have a FB friend who writes in her blog regularly which I enjoy reading. Basically, they have made me think about my infrequent blogging. I must admit though, in my personal opinion my prose aren't all that interesting. I know, I know, I really need to grow some self-esteem in that regard and/or stop putting my writing down. The reason I stopped writing to/in my blog regularly is because I used to, according to my wife, post only when I was angry/annoyed with something. I've been working really hard to be more positive in the way I think about life - stopped following politics was a huge help - FYI. I've also decided to not be a whiny person, to just take things in stride, see the silver lining if you will. So anyway (love that word. lol) I also don't want to come across as one of "those" people who are annoyingly optimistic whom never gets annoyed with anything. Here I am. See me Type! LOL. Another reason that I stopped writing blogs regularly is because of Facebook . Since I don't have much drama in my life (intentionally), and really don't do much that others would consider "exciting/adventurous", I figured just short blurbs to FB would be enough, and probably still is. Today I just got a bug (literally and figuratively). In the literal way it is that I found and disposed of a noisy cricket ( green bug ) that's been bugging me for two days now. The cats don't seem bothered at all, which in and of itself is baffling. I think there is another one though. I heard it a while ago, but weirdly, it's being quiet except for the occasional 'chirping' or whatever it's called. Now that I mention it, of course I haven't heard it again. sigh.
In case you didn't know, I have started going to college online, which will eventually turn into an Associates Degree in Web Design Technology . I have been asked why, after being on Social Security Disability-only income since 1998. The reason is two-fold really, maybe more. lol. 1. I'm only 46 years of age, which means theoretically my official retirement, according to the gov., is not for about 20 more years. Although I'm perfectly okay with the lifestyle (poor) we've been living, I think there's no reason we have to live in poordom (invented word) forever. Plus, one of my 'children' (used loosely because she's almost 19) is no longer being officially home-schooled, and my son (almost 16) is very smart (dare I say 'genius' in a non biased way? lol) and self-efficient about with his education. That means I have time to do my college work when I need to without worrying that I'm neglecting my family. Besides, it only takes so long to do house chores like laundry, vacuuming, bathroom cleaning and dish washing. LOL. I'm 5 weeks into the quarter at ITT-Tech University (online) and doing well (on 1 assignment I got a 99%, the rest have been 100%). The 2 courses I'm doing right now are 'prerequisites' I believe. One is "Problem Solving Theory" and the other is "Strategies for The Technical Professional". The 2nd one is only a 6 week course, so next week is the final week of that one. A week later I will be starting the course "Introduction to Web Design", which I'm very excited to get going! I've even read the first chapter of the textbook in it's entirety for the class. That's something I never did in high school. What the hell has happened to me? LOL . As much as I literally hate commercials on television, one of the ads that I saw for ITT-TECH got me. Sigh. It was the one with the older gentleman who said that he decided he was ready for a career change so started an education at ITT-TECH. That's when I thought, "Why not, what have I got lose? Nothing! ", and here I am, a college student again after a 9 year hiatus.
Earlier I mentioned "laundry", and I do need/want to get a load going into the washing machine. My wife ended-up starting it, and didn't look happy about it. Eek! That and there are a lot of misspelled words with red squiggly lines under them (above) that need fixed. Let me tell ya, it was really hard not to correct them when they happened. I heard that it's better to continue writing even though you know there are mistakes, so that you don't get side-tracked and stop writing. So you don't lose that 'creative vibe' before the end. Did it work? :)
Just sharing what I finished fixing today without making it worse. LOL
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