Day 302

Originally uploaded by Anthony J. Martinez

So the photo you’re looking at is me actually passing out. In the 10 second delay between pressing the shutter release, and the shutter actually opening, I managed to pass out. This new pillow rocks, thanks Mom! Not only does my back not make me want to raze an entire geographic region when I wake up, but my neck isn’t killing me either. I’ll enjoy it while it lasts. The only problem with this marvelous new pillow is that I sleep like a rock now, even with the loud crowd I live with I’m damn near impossible to wake up. It’s a good thing I can get dressed and be at work in a matter of minutes.

In other news, there isn’t a whole lot going on, and that’s a good thing. For Christmas, I went ahead and bought myself a new toy – in the form of Photoshop CS3. While around $700 for software might induce choking in a number of people, consider this – my OIF3 Christmas present to myself was a $2300 custom 1911. Gimpshop is still nifty, free, and can handle much of what I want to do, but it lacks in areas I simply can’t figure a way around. Photoshop being the “industry standard” has a plethora of tutorials, forums, groups, and other sources of instruction available for free. When I was spinning a wrench for a living, I could have done the job with bargain bin tools from Wal-Mart, but I instead elected to buy the right tools for the job and ended up with a mix of Craftsman Professional, and Snap-On (and some MAC, and Matco.) Same deal here, I’ve got my RAW workflow solidly worked out in Bibble Pro, but post-processing in Gimpshop leaves something to be desired. On to Photoshop I go.

Not being able to remember if I said this yet, I’ll say it now (again, possibly.) Texas State University can expect my attendance starting Fall 2008, with a Mass Communications (Print Journalism) major, and a Photography minor. I’m pretty excited about the whole moving on with my life thing, and pleasantly surprised that there are actually nice homes in the South Austin/San Marcos area that I can afford. That’s about it for now.