Alright you Mac fiends, this is the moment you’ve been waiting for. I need your help. I’ve got a crazy fast Mac Pro with 8G of memory as my work station and besides Thunderbird and the Adobe Creative Suite, it’s got NOTHING on it. I need suggestions for the best Mac apps out there. There’s a few I know about in passing, like CandyBar and Toast, but what else does the Mac community have to dazzle me with?
I think it goes without saying that no one, under any circumstance, should be at work at 6am. Unless of course you have a job that involves being some where at 6am on a regular basis. Early AM tollbooth attendant or donut maker for example. In which case you’re more than allowed to take off around noon. Those of us working a regular 9-5 however, should not be at work at 6:00. Yet hear I sit.
We’re doing a big multi-day shoot this week and we get started around 7:00, so “someone” needs to be here before that to open the place up. I love it when bosses say “someone”, as if there are 200 people in the room and they could ask anyone at random. No, it’s you and them and “they” certainly aren’t that someone. It’s a universality. Much like Murphy’s Laws. You, the non-boss, will be the one to come in early.
It’s almost enough to make you want to be the boss, simply to make someone else come in at some unnecessary hour for some unnecessary reason. Never mind the fact that you live, literally, 10 blocks and under 5 minutes away and that your employee has a 45 minute commute in early rush-hour traffic. No, the sensible thing to do is ask that person to get up extra early and come in while you enjoy sleeping late and having that extra cup of coffee.
I’m not complaining of course, merely speculating.
Or it could be that I only have one more week until I start my new job. Not that I’m counting the days or anything.
10.
I’m going to go make more coffee.
Now that all the papers have been signed, all the T’s crossed and the I’s dotted, and all the announcements and notices given, it’s probably safe to tell you guys. As of May 12th, I’ll be employed at a large (if not the largest) NASA contractor as an art director/graphic designer in their internal art department.
It was an opportunity that kind of came out of left field and that I wasn’t really expecting at the time. I had no intentions of leaving my current job but the chance to work for NASA was simply too good to resist.
Leaving will actually be very hard. This job has been very good to me and I valued highly the advise and wisdom of my boss. I’ve grown a lot here and I’m sad to leave but I’m looking forward to new challenges in a more “corporate” environment.
Compensation didn’t play a large part in my decision but from a benefit stand point, I’m very happy. I’ve never had things like dental coverage or a 401k before.
My new job will mostly involve working on job proposals, brochures, internal graphics, photos, posters, trade publications, etc. I’ll be doing quite a bit of Photoshop/Illustrator work as well as redesigning their intranet site.
I’m also excited that the job might involve a little bit of travel. They need quite a lot of photos and stock material for the brochures and and proposals and they want to start doing that internally as well. But that’s further down the road. For now I just need to brush up on my Illustrator skills, since that’s where it sounds like I’ll be starting.
I also get to play with a wide variety of new fangled toys. My work station will most likely be a quad-core Apple with 16G of ram and a cinema display. There’s also talk of getting a laptop, most likely a powerbook. I don’t really know how to feel about that. There certainly isn’t anything wrong with any of that, and the cinema display will surely ease the pain, but being thrown into Apple-land full force from what currently is a 100% PC world will take some adjusting.
I’m excited. This is a big change for me and I think it’ll be a good one. I can finally start saving some money for a house. I can pay off those student loans, start a retirement fund and all those things that normal grown-ups do.
These next two weeks will be long ones. Not from the “it’ll be uncomfortable because I’m leaving” standpoint, but because we have a lot of work to do before I leave. I didn’t want to leave my boss in the lurch, so I have a lot of project and loose ends to tie up before I go.
Anyways, just wanted to share the good news with everyone.
Matt out
Well gang, I am, despite rumors to the contrary, still alive and kicking. We’ve had what I’m sure I’ll refer back to at some later point as the “month from hell” at work. I’ve worked numerous 12 hour days, come home exhausted and cranky, and I simply haven’t had the time to check even my email, let alone sit and write a post. Life should stop its whirring, buzzing, clamoring insanity soon, but for the meantime I just wanted to check in and say “hi”.
There’s a couple random things I wanted to touch on, first of them being my car. I’ve somehow managed to go through 3 sets of $60+ headlights in under a year. I was thinking it was a wiring problem or perhaps a short somewhere until this afternoon when I decided to do a little digging myself. You see, my car has a four light system, not the normal two. Each of these four lights are crammed so far up inside the front of the car that until today I always just had them changed when I got an oil change. I figured a trained mechanic could install a headlight, so I didn’t think twice about it. Well, today I decided to handle it myself. Mostly because my car just had an oil change and bringing it into a mechanic for a headlight replace just seemed ridiculous. I pulled out the owners manual and started to thumb through it. It seemed easy enough so after buying replacement bulbs I gave it a shot. Turns out that someone, at some maintenance long ago, had snapped off the retaining springs that actually hold the light bulbs in place. They were resting there, in their sockets, by only a flexible rubber washer. The one that kept going out had it’s socket completely mangled and was barely staying in place. The area around the bulb was also “scorched” for lack of a better word.
What this says to me is that at some point, probably $180 ago, someone had put my headlights in so completely wrong, that they’ve been causing problems ever since. This also means that I’ll need to order not just new bulbs but whole new headlights and housings as well. I think they run about $300 a set. I’m not pleased. All this because some ass tunnel couldn’t seem to get a paper clip sized clip back into place and instead broke it off to make it fit. The upside to this is that I now know what mechanic I’ll never be going to again and where I’ll be shopping now on (the guys at my nearest Advanced Auto Parts were exceptionally helpful, even looking under the hood to help me figure out my mystery).
I also wanted to touch briefly on Halo 3, and more specifically, Amazon.com. Of course by now you’ve seen the commercials and the ads and I’m sure everyone is fully aware that Halo 3 comes out tomorrow. I will not however, be waiting in line anywhere at midnight to obtain my copy. I stopped doing that a long time ago. I’ve also stopped shopping at EB and Gamestop entirely, but that’s a topic for a different post. No, instead I’ve taken to preordering things online. Having seen the “preorder it now and you’ll have it on the 25th” ads all fucking over Amazon I decided to preorder it there. I didn’t have any reason to distrust Amazon. I assumed that if they said people would have it in their hands on the 25th that, being one of the largest retailers on the planet, it would most certainly happen. I’m a little confused then to find out that my credit card has been charged (as in “we charge your card when it ships”) but my expected delivery date is October fucking 3rd! Sorry Amazon, this shit is unacceptable. Not only did I pay for 2nd day shipping (which it was suggested I wouldn’t need to – allegedly Super Saver was going to get it to me on the 25th as well) but Oct 3rd is most definitely out of the realm of “2nd day” as well. I wouldn’t have minded getting it on Wednesday. Even Thursday would have been ok. But NEXT fucking Wednesday is just out of the question. All of the cool launch week events will be over and done with before I even get my copy. I’ve already yelled at some Amazon guy at a call center in India about this and he kept saying in broken english that unless there was a problem with the actual product there was nothing he could do. I almost feel like going and buying a regular edition tomorrow (I ordered the collectors ed.) and then selling it when my copy gets here. Arg!
A couple of other random tid bits… my single day of TV is returning. Typically I don’t watch much TV (although the food network has addicted me from time to time) with the exception of Monday. Two and a Half Men, How I Met Your Mother, and CSI:Miami are all fucking brilliant. I’ll be watching the season premiere of the Office on Thursday as well, but tonight is really what I’m looking forward to. I was encouraged by Nagle’s list of shows he’s waiting for, there seems to be an interesting mix of stuff this fall. Now, if we could only stop things like “Kid Nation” from ever being made in the first place…
That’s about it for the moment. I’ve got to shut down this rig before the storm comes. It looks like doomsday outside and the wind is picking up. I’ll get back in the saddle of posting as soon as life calms down, which will hopefully be soon. I can’t take much more if it doesn’t.
Matt out.
Today was a very interesting day. It could be said that the job I have allows me to meet and interact with people I normally wouldn’t. I’ve met CEOs of major companies, athletes (both famous and rookie) and various people in positions of influence. This weekend we took pictures for Little League, the organization. They’re in Houston having their 27th International Congress, something they do every 3 years. On Friday I had the opportunity to meet future hall-of-famer Dale Murphy, the former Atlanta Braves star. Today, speaking at their luncheon, I had the pleasure of meeting former president Bush and his wife Barbra. While that was certainly nice and all, I have met presidential type people before. I’ve met both Al Gore (while he was VP) as well as current president Bush. The highlight for me today was meeting and talking to Karl Ravech. He was the emcee for todays event.
What really got to me was, during his presentation, he was talking about “emotional moments in sports” and, of course, he brought up the 2004 Red Sox. He grew up in New England and has always been a long time Sox fan. He echoed every New Englanders thoughts and said “growing up, it had been pounded into me that the Red Sox just weren’t going to ever win”. He was lucky enough to be at the World Series, and down on the field when they won. He described the emotion and the tears of joy. It was very moving. I was getting a little misty behind the camera.
Thanks Karl. Thanks for making me cry about the World Series…. Again! Cause I sure as hell did the first time.
It’s been a long two months. Here in Texas its gone from unbearably hot to mildly aggravating. Now we’re getting into the rainy season and, since everything is bigger in Texas, the storms are frequent and violent. This afternoon we’ve lost power twice already. I worry about making this post so I’m typing as quickly as I can.
Recently I had the opportunity to watch The Departed. I’m not quite sure I can give the movie a high enough mark to properly describe it’s brilliance. There’s no question that Scorsese is at the top of his game. That was the best ending I’ve seen to a movie since The Usual Suspects.
On the job front, although I can’t go into specifics, I’m currently checking out alternatives to my current employment. Not by shear choice of my own, but at my employer’s suggestion. Apparently the books look a little lean.
I have hope for a few possibilities I’ve found. One actually involves working for the Army Intelligence branch in a quasi-secretive fashion. That’s definitely something I can’t give you details on.
We’ve also found a new church home that, for the first time, I actually enjoy going to. The people are extremely friendly, the sermon isn’t heavy handed, everyone is laid back and really upbeat. It’s quite a nice change of pace. We’ve made quite a few friends and actually enjoy spending time with them outside of church. Most “church friends” aren’t the kind of folks I’d invite over for a BBQ, but these people seem to be an exception to the rule.
So, it’s mostly a job hunt around here lately. There’s also a small photo project I’ve taken on, just for myself, to chronicle life here in Texas. I’m hoping I can make it into a book and bring copies up north for the holidays.
Actually, that brings up a good point. I’m coming home for X-mas. I’ll be back in New England the day before my birthday until a day or two before New Years. A nice long break.
I tried to clear that trip with work, only to get a tentative “we’ll see, I guess it’s ok” answer, but, in all honesty, I’m hoping to no longer be there by the time this trip rolls around. Even if I’m not, it’s not something I going to fight my boss about. I’m going, they can just deal with it. I’ve worked too long and too hard to even be questioned about time off. After three years, if they don’t see the value in me as an employee and can’t seem to find it acceptable that I take one week off a year, then that’s not some place I want to work at any more.
Other projects I’m thinking about are an audio podcast for SavvyNation and trying a review/web tidbit site with Chris. I’d really like to get others involved the audio production, mostly because I doubt I have a great “radio voice” and it’s always nice to have some color commentary to back you up.
We’ll see how that goes. I wouldn’t be holding your breath or anything.
Ok, gotta run, the house is shacking with thunder, probably a good time to shut down the PC.
Matt out.
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