the pure interest

Thank you so much for all your compliments yesterday everyone. They really mean a lot - when I post these things it’s not necessarily to get a bunch of praise, but feedback either way, and of course the positive stuff is always appreciated!

So I’ve decided to start a .mac trial (60 days - I like that they give you a full two months) mainly for the “Back to My Mac” feature, where you can connect and control two (or more) of your mac computers remotely. I’ve had this need for the last few months especially when sometimes I’ll end up needing to work on agency work from home, and I don’t have all the files, so I end up emailing them to myself, etc. It’s just not efficient. In theory, .mac allows me to have not only storage space online (which I can’t say I’ve been too thrilled with - a friend of mine and I use it to transfer sermon mp3s and it often crashes my computer if I try to copy too much at once), but remote management of both macs depending on where are at. You can do screen sharing, but I’d probably avoid this since on Mondays and Tuesday there is another designer sitting at this computer and I don’t think she’s appreciate her mouse and folders being taken over by me Anyway, for $100 a year, if this works, I think it will be super helpful and very worth it!

Anyone else have experience with .mac that they could weigh in on?

Thanks - and have a wonderful Wednesday! GE Shareowners meeting is today, (big deal in our town) so I hope to go down to the convention center later and get a look at all my agency and some other vendor’s in towns hard work in helping GE put it together!!

It’s been a while since I’ve felt this overwhelmed both freelance work and agency work. There is so much going on I am trying to make lists as its the only way I can think to cover everything that needs to be fixed, updated, designed, prepared for print, billed, etc. I am thinking it’s likely I’ll be here at work until about 8:00 tonight. Which wouldn’t be so bad except around 5:00pm a ravenous hunger begins that is insatiable. Also our house is filled with girl scout cookies which was a very stupid move on my part as I’m eating about 8 a day.

Last night I went to a Casting Crowns and Leeland concert. I really enjoyed the whole night, it was amazing… I wasn’t a huge fan of CC but live they are incredible!! And Leeland are just so amazingly talented and worshipful for being so young. I saw a ton of people I know and it was great.

Amazing news flash. Our tax lady just called. WE ARE GETTING A REFUND!!! That is the FIRST time since we got MARRIED that this has happened. And when I have my own business??? I guess I should buy a laptop every year!!!

********************************************

I was checking my yahoo mail and this article came up about Oprah’s big give. I have to say, I sort of agree with it’s stance on this program… I LOVE Extreme Home Makeover, and there is an element to that show that is similar to Oprah’s Big Give, but it doesn’t elevate it to a game. The focus is always on the ones who are being helped and in need (which is why you cry your head off when watching it). What do you guys think? Check out the article below.

‘Oprah’s Big Give’ puts good works in a bad light

Enlarge ABC Yay for giving: Oprah Winfrey hosts Oprah’s Big Give, an altruistic new twist on reality-TV competitions.

By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY

Anyone old-fashioned enough to believe in keeping acts of righteousness private should give a wide berth to Oprah’s Big Give (ABC, Sunday, 9 ET/PT), Queen for a Day as reinterpreted by the Queen of All Media. An Apprentice-type game that turns charity into a competitive sport, Give will strike you as immensely uplifting or horrifyingly vulgar, or an odd combo of both.

Good works clash with bad behavior, altruism shares space with publicity-masked-as-charity, all wrapped in the familiar reality-genre clichés. And at the stomach-churning center is that old American TV belief that every problem can be solved with a take-home prize, without any consideration for underlying difficulties.

Sunday we meet Give’s 10 big givers, who are broken into five teams and given a picture of a person in need. Their task: Figure out what the person needs and raise the money to provide it. At the end they face three celebrity judges (Jamie Oliver, Malaak Compton-Rock, Tony Gonzalez), even though they’d be better served by advice from people with hands-on experience in raising money without the benefit of celebrity.

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition treads much of this same maudlin, TV-knows-best territory. But at least that show doesn’t turn the people it’s making over into pawns in a game — a game that inevitably elevates the players’ problems to the level of the people they’re supposed to be helping.

It’s bad enough that what the people get has no necessary connection to what they need or deserve. What’s worse is it’s completely cut off from what they want, because the “prize” is decided by people who barely know them. For all its new-age trappings, Give is a throwback to a time when the poor were expected to be grateful for whatever they were given.

Seldom has the drive to do good works been as alarmingly, offensively presumptuous. When a homeless woman says she had hoped to be trained for a job, you can’t help thinking she may have had the best idea of what was best for her. Might there not be some widows who don’t want to be surprised with a block party or toy-buying spree, or who don’t like strangers telling their children how to best mourn their father?

There’s no doubt everyone involved means well, but then you do know where that road paved with good intentions leads, right? And it isn’t heaven.

Happy FREEZING Friday!!

but swamped with a project i am basically working on now for no money - which is ok because it is for a friend, but it is difficult. I’m trying to finish it up as efficiently as possible but for some reason I decided to make a design that is like…… 600 layers in photoshop, so every file takes a while to work with (despite my new compy) (business expense for next month is more RAM).

 I am so sorry all… in that I had to hit a “mark all as read” in google reader this morning. I just couldn’t do it… over 300+ unread items. But I love you all… and I hope you still have it in your heart to read here.

Danielle made her hubby Dave and I dinner last night, and it was so good… like an Asian ginger beef & noodle stir fry with sugar snap peas. The beef was organic so I didn’t feel totally flipped about eating it after the big beef recall. I mean, what is happening in our country??? Well all over the world really there are food scares. It is… frightening.

In other good news other than crazy work-ness, I have lost a few pounds…. so I am happy about that. But I’m not totally overjoyed yet because I’ve been fluctuating with those 3 lbs for a few weeks now. It’s amazing, if I just eat light, smaller portions and keep my cals in a good healthy range, my body responds almost immediately - more so then to exercise… 

That’s all I got for today —- thanks for reading if you did :) 

This is what my Illustrator Toolbar looks like right now:

I have to say, I’m glad Apple and Adobe are so prompt with their updates, but then sometimes I’m not. Almost veryday when I come into work, there is either an Adobe update that takes over my computer, or Apple ones that require me to shut down everything and restart. This morning I got here at 8:05, and it’s now 8:45, and my updates all just finished. Usually I can’t see the results of them - I’m probably not attune to the problems enough.

Does anyone else out there using CS3 with Leopard (or any other OSX for that matter) notice a large lag time in between applications, and slow slow, most of the time-force-quitting to get them to shut down. I can handle it - I haven’t had any crashes while in the middle of things (well..maybe once)… but it takes a ridiculously long time for these apps to shut down. Maybe it is a lack of RAM. We have 2GB here on  2.4 ghz iMac Intel, which is more than I’ve ever had before, but our tech guy told us 4GB should be standard for the kind of apps we are running. But to double our RAM was over $700 PER MACHINE. Sometimes, you just can’t ask for that much from your employer, if you want to keep your job. And at home, there’s no way I could afford anymore RAM on my MacBook Pro 2.2ghz.

But, after all that apple busting, I saw this this morning, and it cracked me up so bad and was so dang cute I couldn’t stay mad.

hehe!!

I have some majorly cute stuff to post that I’ve printed or had printed this weekend… yay!

Did anyone else forget about the time change this morning? Brian and I were so tired last night, we talked in bed after kind of a rough, stressful day, and then we were falling asleep by 11:00…. this morning we got up, forgot to change our clocks and went about our business. He left for church, then about 15 minutes later, came back and looked at me… sort of smiling, and was like…. Is this the weekend we were supposed to set the clocks back?  YES!!!  Now I am heading into the agency to fight with the new iMac some more. It’s rough! Transferring data is so long/time consuming/and erroring! 

Hey all! Well one of the new 24″ iMacs came in at work today. I tried so hard to get tons of work done so that I could be really responsible and set the new machine up only in the last hour. Well, a bunch of hiccups happened. It didn’t go so hot. I eventually did get it up and running, but no files transferred. I wasted about 45 minutes looking for a firewire cable as well, and then in the middle of installing the Leopard upgrade, I accidentally unplugged the iMac. I almost cried, I was so scared I ruined it. It just restarted though… so I lost some time but it seems to be ok… then, right after it finished, we had power surges in the area, and the power shut off and hard restarted the iMac which was also not good. So all in all, my iMac had a very rough start, and I’m pretty nervous about it.

The other day, I had to take some photos for the new church building… Danielle & I are working on some photography to put up as artwork! She is getting some today, I’m sure they turned out awesome. Anyway, a few were ok… and of course there were some beautiful fall colors. Here are a few for ya:

Goodnight everyone….

Well… it was beautiful. We received a family pack (5 license) for the office today. A little scary to install, took about two hours. The interface is really nice. So far, very fast and smooth. “Enjoyable” as they say… polished. It’s an adjustment for sure. Spaces are really neat although a bit confusing. The updates to Safari seemed significant in that some glitches I was having seem to have gone away… anyway. I know people have seen examples like these already, but here are some screenshots… fun! (Yeah, I put the Leopard background on.

Next week, I will be installing it on the three G5s at our office. Our two new iMacs are in Shanghai right now. (Did I mention that the office is getting two new iMacs?) 24″!! It’s an exciting time. My job is going so well right now… I’m really feeling happy, even though I’m busy, I’m appreciating it all. Tons of work, more flexibility, more appreciation for what it is that I do. It’s a nice feeling. I realize so much of my struggle was the “roped in” schedule. I know I’m lucky, and I totally am grateful. I am certainly blessed. In other news, I did a fun photo shoot for some artwork for the new Grace building… and I hope to post some tomorrow and the rest of the weekend.

And now… do I dare?

You girls all have cute ideas and stuff. I don’t want to copy. For now, we’ll let this post be the first and see what happens!!