mkh2

I've been gone from here for a long time... I wonder what I was doing. Hm... Well, RL and all does run some interference, but this past month, well, I must confess I was rather more interested in two things: Plants vs. Zombies and a site called Carbonrally. I don't know why I like it so much, other than I like seeing how all the little things I try to do help to reduce my carbon footprint.

I go by CerridwynEldritch (yes, I know, odd name... but I like it for a nom de plume) and I decided to make my own team called "What a Wonderful World." (Hey, I love that song.)

If you like, you can join my team here or just check out and maybe join Carbonrally here. I'd put up the little badges but I don't know how... haha, probably have to be subscribed to dA, huh?

So... I had planned on posting last Saturday - it had been a very hectic week and I had finally had time to unwind, kick up my feet, and post. I turned on the computer, checked my email (wanted to see if my bill statements were up yet) and then -byoop- no more internet.

Yeah. Great end to a week.

Hm....so let's go over what I had meant to say about last week first:
After finals, I finally had time to sleep... and then I went to work. Only, I forgot to bring with me my cell phone and, of all things, the paper to call in for, you guessed it, jury duty. As I feared, the very night I couldn't call in to find out was the night that I was told to come in at 7:45 the next morning. And, of course, you couldn't call in to hear about your jury duty was eight in the morning. So, of course, I was late.
Many, many hours later, I got to go home, after getting stuck in traffic, of course. The next days were work, work, work, and, oh yes, work, with liberal doses of dealing with the naughty kid at home. Then, finally, last Saturday, after coming home from work, dealing with all the chores that had piled up over the week, and seeing my sister and her husband who had come over for a quick visit the day before Father's Day, yup, that's when we lost the internet... and the television... and the phones...
We had been dealing with some electricity issues, but this time there was such a horrible power surge that it messed things up a lot worse than it had been. We had some electricity, thankfully the fridge, the microwaves and the clocks still worked, as did most of the upstairs lights, but all the rest of the stuff downstairs were... We just got the power running again and the internet back today.
So, this week was spent not only working and trying to get the net back up, but also dealing with an incredibly cranky demon child who was feeling put out that she couldn't watch the evil one, 'H*nnah Mont*na,' and thus needed to be watched constantly.
Because there was no television she....
*sneaked into mother's room and painted herself with mother's nail polish
*wrote all over herself with black and red ink pens (she has horrible handwriting, by the by)
*sneaked into my room to steal some crayons - thankfully was caught before she could color on anything
That's only a bit of what she did, though thankfully it was nothing too, too, too bad.
And the other night I watched her by myself so the 'rents could finally get away from her. They were getting really stressed out.
But, hey!, hopefully she will be back with her family by, say, September. My Dad says he can hardly wait and plans to celebrate.
As for me...I'm tired. So tired. I couldn't fix my file that got messed up when the power surged, though I plan to do so later, so when that gets fixed, then I'll post. Until then, I'm gonna try to get some rest.
P.S. I just love these little mood horror guys. *points down*

*wipes off blue face paint*
Wahoo! Finals are over and I did a better job than I expected, considering a couple things, namely:
a. I was told last Monday to completely change my layout for the calendar project (the "rejects" have been posted to here already)
b. I do have work and other classes to deal with, taking up some of that time
c. I've been sick, so when I was home I was doing school work and when I wasn't doing that I was sleeping
d. I was stuck at one point on the magazine layout project for my other class and no matter what I did I couldn't seem to move forward... highly annoying, that

So, after work last Saturday, I had been fruitlessly trying to continue work on the magazine and not making any progress so I decided to take a break. For some odd reason the article from a different magazine popped up in my mind because I had recognized the artists the girl being interviewed had mentioned that she liked. One search for the article later I looked at the artists mentioned and then, finding myself thoroughly engrossed in the history of one of the artists, I wanted to try something different.

Twelve hours later (a good four of which was reading and writing and then rewriting the article to go in the magazine... oh, and probably two more just oohing and aahing over several pictures that I hadn't seen before) my project was done, and on a completely different topic that what I first was working on. That's right: what had taken me more than two weeks to do for my initial project (and obviously longer as I never finished it) was completed in less than a day's worth of work. Really, for the design aspect, it was about six hours, which means about two hours work put into each two page spread. Only real issue was that, well, I wrote too much.



That's right: I wrote too much. My sleep-deprived mind didn't want to get rid of any of it, so instead I changed the font probably ten times trying to make it seem like less so I could fit it into a smaller space without losing any of the readability. I finally picked one font, only to realize when I had it printed up that, oops, I didn't save the file using that font. It's still readable but...

Actually, I get the feeling I'm one of the few who actually wrote my own article...

Ah well, I'm going to back over my article and see about paring it down and tweak the layout a bit so I don't have any of the issues I had in class which, this time, were only very few. (Normally the teacher would nitpick on every little thing he could think of on mine, which was a bit odd considering that my level of work was fairly sophisticated compared to several of the other students and he didn't bear down so hard on them... wonder why that was.) Not bad for having missed, well, all of the pre-final days of critique (due to feeling poorly, though I did work on my project each of those days) for that class.

However, and I did find myself agreeing with the teacher on this, I found the second of the two-page spreads to be most successful and will be posting it, as is, and will keep that version up after I finish editing the article to be how I think it should look.

On a last, happy note: the teacher decided my new layouts for the calendar looked pretty darn nice, which made me glad - not really for me because, honestly, I could care less - but because, as this was a group project I would have felt very bad if I had pulled the others' grades down because I didn't put in enough effort. They aren't exactly my style, but I'm still pretty happy with them so I'll post them as well so... more marvel and dc will be up again.

Okay, okay, enough yammering. Guess I'll do a quick posting now and hit the sack, eh?

Welps, I submitted more stuff. Again, it's mostly school stuff but, to be frank, I've been quite busy what with school, work, and helping taking care of the foster kid. Whoo boy, she is the biggest brat I have ever met and let me tell you, I've known lots of brats. We've had her for about five months now and I've had more migraines these past months than I've had in the same number of years, I'm sure.
It's no wonder I'm so irritated. *points to the little mood dude below*
I can hardly wait till BlizzCon - it sure will be nice to get away from her for a while. *sigh*
I'm wondering if I should get a subscription. Heaven knows I'd be more willing to do more work on here if money is involved. *laughs*

Well, it's been a while, hasn't it? I had meant to be on so long ago, but I got caught up with waiting and waiting for the Ad*be software to get in and when it finally arrived at the campus, it was just in time for me to purchase and install on the computer and work for many hours that night to finish my final that was due the next morning. I was so darn sick of the aggravation I had concerning the software I didn't want anything to do with artsy stuff for a good long time - which was good, I suppose, since the next semester I had didn't have any of those types of classes.

Hm.

SO... This semester I was quite happily anticipating getting back to the computer. 'How exciting,' I thought, 'to be learning something new about art and design.' According to the class titles and descriptions, I was to learn about "Production of Visual Information Design" and "Principles of Design Management." I soon learned to call them "Photoshop class" and "Illustrator class" respectively. In the beginning we were taught a tiny bit of how to use the programs - enough for a beginner class, and then we had to get critiqued based on whether or not the teacher liked our style of work. Bleh and double bleh, I say.

When I take a class that says it's going to be about such and such and such, I don't want it to be about this and that and something else. It had better be about such and such and such! Otherwise it is a waste of my time and my money and I don't like wasting either.

A few students who have the same level of skill as I do are constantly praised for their work in class - basically, their styles appeal to the teacher. The rest of the students, despite their varying levels of skill, their hard work, or quality of product always received negative criticism. I believe in constructive criticism. I'm sorry, but when the teacher finally decides start in on a student because their work "has no meaning," by which he means "theme," despite the fact that everyone he had looked at earlier had about the same level of theme or meaning as the person he likes to pick on, well, I have to say I lost quite a bit of respect for the teacher. "Meaning" my right foot.

Peh.

My left foot too!

I can't wait for classes to be over.

That said, I'm gonna just post some stuff that I had worked on for this class and the class for the fall semester.