Thursday night Jess and I went out Xmas shopping at Future Shop and Chapters. I had a few ideas for gifts but none of them panned out, so I still have a lot more to get. I did however buy a super amazing present for my siblings and step siblings from etsy.com. I won’t say what it is but it is awesome.
Then yesterday I went out for dinner and drinks with a friend and one of his friends who just got back from sea (they are both in the Navy). Went to split Crow for dinner which was surprisingly good; I had only ever been for cheap drinks before. Then after Splittys we went to Pogue Fado. Had a few more beers and hung out. A few more of their navy friends showed up too which was cool. I went home around midnight but stayed up for a bit to get some water in me before sleep.
Also yesterday I purchased Adobe CS4 Design Premium. Because I am a Dal employee I got the educational discount which means it cost me all of $420. Pretty amazing considering it retails for about $1800. I figure if I am going to do anything even remotely connected to design with my life, it’s better to get this now. And now I have Flash and Illustrator and even the ones I’ll never use like Device Central. I’m happy with the purchase, an early Xmas present to me.
Oh and I wrote this completely from my iPhone while CS4 is installing. This will be my first post from the WordPress app, we’ll see how it goes…
Prorogue is my new favorite word. I had never even heard it until yesterday, and now everyone is saying it. I wonder why.
Last night me and Jess played Scrabble again. It was fun, though this time I wasn’t nearly as smart and couldn’t make any really great words. She ended up beating me by about 30 points. It doesn’t help when you pick up a Z M Y K as the last 4 letters in the bag. And Jess’s sister stayed over last night which was cool.
Here is a picture of my hand during the second last round. Not good…
Today at lunch I watched CBC coverage of this political drama we are in right now. I don’t want to turn this blog all political, but I don’t think delaying parliment is going to solve any problems. We are going to be in the same situation as we are right now on January 26th. And then we will deal with it.
And that’s about it. I think I’m going to do some online xmas shopping now.
After some deliberation, I decided to uninstall World of Warcraft last night. I figure that considering I just quit my job, and am trying to figure out what I am going to do with the rest of my life, it only makes sense to devote a bit more time to that and a bit less to battling the Scourge in Northrend. I’ll probably come back to it in January, once I’m in a new job and on track to figure out where I am going (more on that later). I made it to level 78 which isn’t bad. I’ll get up to 80 in January.
Then today I went to work and had a pretty good day. It’s hard to stay focused on getting stuff done when I know I will be leaving soon, but I am trying to still be a good employee dispite the fact I will be leaving in 2 weeks. Oh, I should mention now then that I will be done my job on the 12th of December, next Friday. Sweet. Today also a potential replacement for me was interviewed and I got to meet her. She seems like a good candidate, we’ll see what happens.
At lunch today I played around with animoto, which is a web app that creates an automatic, awesome looking slideshow from photos and audio. I brought in a Peter Bjorn and John song and a bunch of pictures of me (I can be a bit narcissistic sometimes), and gave it a try. This is what came out:
I don’t 100% love it, but I think it’s pretty cool considering it took all of 3 minutes. I think I’ll play around with it a bit more over time to make a few other ones.
Ok, so on to life. Over the weekend I spent a lot of time thinking and researching ideas for what I want to do with my life and one idea I’ve come up with is something along the lines of Interactive Design/Information Architecture/User Experience Design. There are so many jargo words for these things, but ultimately what I am interested in is how people interact with technology, and how technology can become more accesable to everyone. But of course I don’t really know how to do that. But I found a really cool program in Vancouver that teaches just this- Interactive Design at Capilano College. So I’m thinking about applying and seeing how it goes. It wouldn’t start until September, so I have a lot of time to get myself a bit more web design savvy before I apply. I also got in contact with some of the recent grads from the program and am going to ask them a bunch of questions to see if it will be what I think it will be.
It’s also a cool idea because Jess and I have always talked about moving to Vancouver at some point, when the opportunity presented itself. Well, the opportunity may have presented itself.
Oh, and for the time being, until September, I am thinking I will just get a simple coffee shop type job so I can interact with people again and then also have some free time to pursue more web based ideas; maybe some podcasting, definately some CSS editing, other things as I come up with them…
Dave Everyday 