Domestic Geek

I went to the coolest presentation on Adobe Photoshop CS3 last night at the Denver Media Group function that was definitely worth the $15 I paid to attend. The presenter was Jay Kinghorn, a local Adobe Photoshop Certified Expert from Boulder. He was very knowledgeable, personable and packed a lot of information into the hour and a half time frame we had. I could've listened to him for hours. I must say I am impressed with how Adobe is developing Bridge and Camera Raw. Having not upgraded to CS2 when it came out, I was really unaware of the capabilities for photo corrections the newer versions provide.

I also got to see a couple of teachers from Platt, a girl I knew from school as well as a former coworker from the ad magazine in Larkspur (one that I don't despise). She was telling me how she and two other designers no longer worked there (2 were laid off and 1 quit). That leaves the original two and one of them had to take a pay cut. I'm trying not to be happy about someone's business floundering, but truth be told I am just a little. I'm so grateful that I'm better off now.

On good work-related new today, on July 1st I am eligible to participate in our 401K plan. w00t! Since they'll match up to 6% of my pay, I am thinking of doing that, but don't know if I can handle that much of my paycheck missing right at the moment. I'll definitely at least have 3% put away. That's like getting a raise right there in the long run. See, I didn't have the remote possibility of benefits at that old company. Speaking of benefits and thus dental, a pretty large piece of bone worked itself out of my gums today. Ick.

There is going to be doing a full day DMG event on September 13th that I would love to attend, however since the head of my department and one of my senior coworkers were talking about going this morning, I doubt they'll let me off for it. I told him I was interested in going and since that event is 3 months away, I'll have to wait and see. I guess it will depend on how busy we are at the time.

OK, I'm off to work on my craft blog for a bit. I totally screwed something up last night and had to get Marcus to revert to an earlier version of my database. D'oh! heh.

A coworker and I were talking about gardening a few weeks back and she mentioned that she and the kids were starting some sunflowers to put outdoors. I lamented that I haven't grown sunflowers in years since I really don't have a place that receives enough sun. She brought me a little seedling today and told me I should try growing it in a pot on my little back porch. That was so thoughtful, but the poor little guys seems awfully small. I wish I had purchased that small greenhouse at the local craft store that Nina and I saw a few years ago. It would be perfect to nurse this poor little guy along until he's strong enough to survive outside in a Colorado summer.

A store I've written about on here before, Online Discount Mart, has some Greenhouses very similar to the one I wanted back then. I've glad they're still available and I will definitely be getting one soon. While looking for greenhouses, I couldn't help but notice all the great new products they've gotten for summer—flags, statuary, birdbaths and lots more. They carry such a vast array of great items for the garden and the home. I'm still going to get a garden gnome from them, too.

I just noticed they have a Tips & Ideas section in their sidebar. I'm going to go peruse those links and see what great information they have to share.

I know I promised everybody a link to the craft blog on Sunday, but I ran into a few snags with the template I downloaded. First of all, I'm a little frustrated by coding hacks that don't know how to nest elements properly. Second, this whole WP way of doing things is throwing me a little. I'm used to having my whole index in one template and this modular thing is a little annoying. As soon as I've got it all figured out, then you guys will get a link. Sorry for the delay.

You know how I said the only thing I was going to miss when we dropped our satellite package down to the bare minimum was Mythbusters and the stuff on The USA Network? Well, I guess it's only going to be Mythbusters now.

Yesterday was the season premieres for both The 4400 and The Dead Zone. I did one quick check of their site hoping for episodes to watch before I sank to bit torrenting them or something and THERE THEY WERE! Woo Hoo!!!! You have no idea how happy that made me!

I hope they keep showing them.

So Marcus and I spent a good part of this weekend ripping some of our DVD collection to our iTunes Server (with a handy little program called Handbrake so we can view them on our AppleTV. What sucks about the iTunes information palette is it is geared towards songs/music. What to do if you want to add metadata to the movie files so that you can see the rating, synopsis, director, actors, etc? You go download a cool little app called MetaX that I found through the Handbrake forums. It can grab the data from Amazon for you and then embed it into the movie file or you can enter in all that info yourself, if you're so inclined. It's pretty darned cool!