Nam, the other tech at my office, is on a much-deserved vacation. The week before he left it was rather slow, but it seems that all hell broke loose the day he hopped on the plane. The first few days were a hectic mess of working on multiple projects/problems for clients concurrently. I’m not begrudging him for taking a vacation, but I have been rather swamped for the last week. He won’t be back until next Tuesday. I may give him a big hug when he walks through the door.
My 365-day photography project is still coming along rather well. I did sorta mess up and failed to take a picture one day – but I did take one about 30 minutes after midnight of the next day (before going to bed) to make up for it. Christine says that it should still count, since my “day” doesn’t typically end until around 12:30 a.m. anyhow. While I see her point, I’m going to try and not repeat the minor infraction.
I still get occasional calls from creditors looking for Melissa Hayes, the person that previously had my work cell phone number. It’s down to just one, maybe two, calls a week. I finally got a live person to pick up on one of the automated messages so I could tell them that it was no longer her number.
A few weekends back I took off to Big Bear by myself. I needed a break from people and felt like clearing my head. It was a much-needed trip and I came back feeling a lot better.
Christine, Sam, and I enjoyed going to the Renaissance Faire not long ago. Sam was the only one of us who dressed up, but we had a good time. I’ll definitely consider dressing up the next time I go to one.
I’m looking forward to this weekend. With as busy as I’ve been – and another 3 days more of it – it’ll be nice to end it with a 3-day weekend.
The owner of our shop finally got around to getting us (his technicians) some mobile phones. This is a good thing, as I am hesitant to give a client my personal number. This proved to be the correct way to go after giving out my number to just 2 clients that ended up calling me on evenings and weekends a few times.
On the very first day I got the phone I received 4 calls. All of them from different collection agencies looking for somebody named Melissa Hayes. I let each one know that this was no longer her number and they said that they’d take the number off their contacts list. Lather, rinse, repeat … It’s been a couple of weeks now and I’ll still get at least one call a day from some new collection company trying to reach Melissa.
The worst of these calls are the robo-callers that just leave a number to call back between certain days/hours. It’s too much of a pain to try to call them while I’m at work so I can tell them that this is no longer her number. I have a few times, but this is just getting ridiculous.
Thankfully, the calls have subsided. If they had continued at their original pace, I would have insisted on getting a new number.
The first month of my 365 Days of Photography project has flown by rather quickly. I’ve learned so much and have enjoyed pushing myself. As expected, I wasn’t always feeling inspired or particularly motivated, but I did as promised and took a picture of something every day and posted it to the online gallery.
Here are a few of my favorites from the past month:
Messing around with googly eyes and a chip clip.
Veggin’ out in the kitchen.
OMGWTFizit!?!?
Death of a mannequin.
As you can see, I’ve tried a lot of different ideas. Some of the ideas work out well, some don’t, and some just need more work to get right. Hopefully this becomes easier for me to deal with so I can start writing about things other than this crazy project!
I’ve been kept busy enough with my 365 Day Photography project that I’ve let my blog languish out here in the cold expanse of cyberspace (does anybody really call it that anymore?!?) for far too long.
The photography project is moving along just fine and life has settled into a nice even rhythm, for the most part. After today’s visit to the doctor I’m feeling some added motivation for getting into better shape. My blood pressure is higher than it should be, but not dangerously so, and I’m about 20 pounds too heavy. I admit to having beome a bit lazy and not as active over the last year or so – and my eating habits probably aren’t the healthiest either (but oh, so tasty!). So that’s something that’s gotta take a higher priority for me than it has been lately.
Today I took a picture of Rece that I’m quite proud of:
It was fun to see an idea for a photo in my head and to actually make it work. This did take some effort, but I really like the result. I learned a lot while doing it, too!
Anyhow, that’s my update for now.
This entry almost forgot how a proper entry should behave!
I’ve been following this guy’s YouTube videos for awhile now. He takes clips from Star Trek (and other sources) and creates some bizarre and hilarious shorts from them. Here’s his latest:
Here’s another video done by the same guy that did the monster truck video that I put on my blog not too long ago. This one has a story to it and I think it’s fan-damn-tastic! Click the full screen icon on the video to see it better.
Our office got a call from one our clients today reporting a problem. We checked and quickly learned that their Internet connection was down. Nam took the call and immediately went to their office to help them get it back up.
15 minutes later, I get an email from one of the other users in their office:
Subject: Internet not working
Message: Our internet is not working
Obviously Nam was successful in quickly restoring their connection.
I replied back to the user to let them know that a phone call was the best way to report loss of internet, since an email won’t get sent until their internet connection is restored.
Week 1 of 52 has passed and I’ve taken at least one picture a day and uploaded it to my 365 Day Flickr set. I’m slowly working on expanding what I do with my photos and have been happy with what I’ve come up with so far. What’s been a (pleasant) surprise to me is how much easier this project feels than the previous Month of Pictures project did.
Here are my favorites from week one:
One thing I find that I’m fighting is my tendency to (over)use familiar techniques and post-processing effects. So it’ll be interesting to see what I can come up with over the next 51 weeks.
I started with a light switch, but it turned out looking like crap. Then I tried a corner of the ceiling in my bathroom … hmm … not interesting enough to start off the project. Sitting next to my computer I spied a spindle of CD-R discs, the light reflecting off the top one, which got me thinking. So after taking 24 pictures all over my apartment, I finally came up with one I liked:
It’s not amazing, but I think it’s pretty and rather interesting to look at. I’m positive that I’ll have days where I don’t give a shit and end up taking a lame picture of something stupid, but I’m looking forward to being pushed like that – outside my comfort zone is often where I tend learn something completely new.
I’ve added a link to the right side-bar to my 365 Project Flickr set. Buckle up, it’s going to be a wild ride!
