In other news, I made a super snazzy dance mix CD. It is strategically designed to be played loudly in your car in order to get your booty a-shakin’. While sitting in a car, but pretending that you are actually in a club with light-up floors and John Travolta. In fact, it will cause you to see all of the other drivers around you as actually being John Travolta. Such are the benefits of such a mix CD. Here are the songs, in order (with my way awesome TI-99/4a Winamp skin), on the mix CD:

I’d love to make extra copies and swap with people if they feel so inclined. I will also accept baked goods in lieu of mix CDs.

Job hunt is still working it’s dismal business. Or not working, as the case may be. I kinda wish my resume wasn’t all over the board. I also kinda wish I’d gotten my degree in something other then freaking illustration. Or at least double-majored, or something. I am still super-excited about trying to go back to school, but I suspect that it may be easier for me to grab a 2nd bachelor’s before attempting grad school. I want to do computer science, and, while I did take several math and CS courses during my first runaround in school, it’s not nearly enough to be able to get into grad school with. Meaning that even if I got accepted, I’d still need to take many undergrad courses. At grad school pricing. So, taking them as undergrad would be more financially astute. That, and apparently to get into the grad school I’m looking at (University of Colorado), one needs four letters of recommendation. My current job recommendation list of people wouldn’t translate so well into recommendations for grad school, and most of my undergrad teachers barely knew I was there where I was in their class, much less 8 years after the fact. Albeit, when I was actually in college, my dilemma was of the “my adviser is a landscape painter, this helps me not for computer-related grad school programs” sort of issue as well. And, I’d also need to retake the GRE. And study for the GRE. Err, and move to Colorado first, and get a permanent address there so that in a year’s time, when I actually start school, I’ll be considered in-state and quality for the much-lower tuition rate.

And then I’ve got these ingrown ideas about how I’m really just supposed to be doing art. I suspect is has to do with labeling. From when I was young I was the Artist to my parents (no Prince involved, mind you), and continued being the Artist for quite some time, despite having other things I was also good at and also enjoyed. So I tried the ‘art for a living’ thing (though the ‘art’ part is arguable), it’s called ‘painting bunches of identical urns over and over and over again until your brains fall out’. There are other ways to achieve ‘art for a living’ but they tend to involve painting many things that all seem similar, giving yourself a ‘look’, and then continuing to paint with that look so that people feel you’re consistent enough in what you create to trust you to create something for them. The whole ‘look’ think is tedious, to me. I find value in having the flexibility to create a range of art types.

In any case, developing a site/application to me is pretty much like drawing&painting a picture anyhow. You get this idea in your head of how it’s gonna look/work by the end, you map out what you’re gonna do (sketching a framework, or writing out a framework and setting up basic files with empty classes and functions sketching your future intentions with them). Or, if you’re like me, you neglect your framework and jump on in, leaving lots of correction for later (I’ll paint something so the shading ends up completely inconsistent with things I do later, and needs correcting/I’ll write out logic so a little part of my application becomes awesome, but needs complete rewriting later to become consistent with the rest of the larger application and to not have ridiculous redundancy). And in the end, I always have touchups. I’ll go back and darken/lighten things for better contrast, or I’ll go back in and add comments and change whole sets of variable names, just for better readability. In any case, I think doing art and writing code are exceptionally similar tasks.

And on a final note, I need to stop thinking that brownies are the ideal breakfast food, they’re not exactly the Breakfast of Champions here.

I finally got around to reading The Tipping Point, which gave me mild Freakonomics flashbacks and makes me want to go prowl around the social sciences section of Ye Local Library. Also need to get ahold of the two pre-Miles Bujold books at some point. Read her fantasy book “Curse of Chalion”, it was OK but fantasy just doesn’t seem to be my cup of tea, methinks. Either that, or I’m reading the wrong kind of fantasy.

The cats were getting all yowley last night and staring at me with googoo eyes, as it was dinner time. So I got out my camera and decided to mess with them. They’re so used to eating out of the bowl, I wondered what would happen if I just laid the bag of food down in front of them. Took them awhile, sniffing around and staring at me and such, but eventually they figured out what was going on. Kinda.

They each managed to nibble a little bit, then wandered off, apparently bored with the exercise, deciding that waiting for dinner wasn’t worth dealing with this weird bag that also extruded food. I want to put little saddles on them and get gerbils in cowboy hats to ride on them.

We ate at Mekong Delta, which I highly recommend eating at if you’re ever up there. My pork and spring rolls on vermicelli was quite delish, and I even had enough left over for meal #2.

http://varoper.imagekind.com

I’ve got some other stuff I need to scan in, but it’s all lodged in a ceramics studio at some mall or another.

I’ve been working on some Salami Day t-shirt ideas, and am remembering the vast bridge of differences between Photoshop and Illustrator. D’oh! Progress is slow but progressing. I’d love to be able to print up a bunch myself (assuring they’d be good quality and a reasonable price), but I think the initial cost is more then I’d be able to handle, and I’m just gonna end up doing cafepress or zazzle or another of such sites (higher price for the final product, but little to no overhead). Maybe once I get an idea of if the random public might be interested in some quality salami-related clothing, I can consider beyond those options.

In other news, what should I do for spring break? I don’t *technically* have a spring break, mind you, but I’ve decided to give myself one anyway. See, I’d wanted to drag Drew off to do something fun for that week, as it is his spring break. But then I found out that his is pretty much all gonna be devoted to D&D purposes with Robbie and JD. So I figured I’d just take a chunk of that week and go off on my own. I want to leave the state, and go meandering around and look at interesting things in a cheap way. I might try couchsurfing.com, and see what sort of fun that could evolve into. I’ve also got people who I’ve never met irl, or people who I’ve met rather infrequently, or people who I haven’t seen in a long time due to distance and/or falling out of touch. So if anyone wants to hang out with me the week of March 7-14 (and maybe even give me a couch to crash on some night!) I’m up for suggestions! I’m up for any suggestions, really, if anyone knows of anything neat going on on this side of the Rockies (which is about as far as I’m willing to travel, I figure).

So, uh, give me ideas!