I’m headed up to Summerfest tomorrow for the afternoon/evening. Should be a really good time - there are always tons of good bands playing, beer, good food, etc. I used to go nearly every year but haven’t been the past couple. I’m returning tomorrow because one of my favorite bands is playing! 30 Seconds to Mars!

Edit: August, 2006

Summerfest was awesome and I have tons of pictures. I’ve been slacking lately, but I promise to get them up in the Photo Gallery soon!

I was getting like 15-20 spam comments a day through this blog and now I don’t get any.

Thanks to Spam Karma 2 by Dr. Dave.

If you have any issues with Wordpress spam, check it out for sure! It will end all the moderating/deleting/blah.!

This PSA brought to you by me.

I’m going to be messing with new themes the next few days. So this place might be slightly dis-jointed until I get it adjusted the way I want.

Maybe someday I’ll attempt a full theme myself.

Stay tuned.

I’ve been trying to come up with my top 10 bands/artists and my favorite album by them - but it’s a slow process. Why you ask? Because I like too much damn stuff. And it’s hard figuring out whether I go with “all time” favorites.. Or ones that I’ve come to love and obssess over in the last few years - there are quite a few in that category.

So maybe I’ll make 2 lists. haha.. Or maybe I’ll continue to do nothing. Not that it matters.

Useless post 101. Contact me for instruction.

I’ve finally tried to bite the bullet and teach myself Adobe Illustrator. I’ve been using Photoshop for 6-7+ years and I’ve known for most of that time that I need to learn a vector program as well. But everytime I opened Illustrator and messed around I just got frustrated because I didn’t know what I was doing. And the same tools and commands in P-shop do totally different things in Illustrator. It usually ended with me shutting the program down and cursing at it.

Since I’ve gone back to school - and it’s going great - I somewhat have a clearer path to what I want to do.  And I’m seeing the resources and skills that I need to aquire layed out in front of me.  So instead of wasting more time (I’m not getting any younger right??) I sucked it up and picked up a book on Illustrator. I’m over 1/2 way though it and starting to feel more comfortable with the program. Seeing all the options it has and it’s abilities, I’m only upset that I didn’t learn this sooner. It’s such an essential tool for digital media.

If anyone knows any good Illustrator resources, I’d be happy to check them out. After I finish the book, I’m going to go through whatever tutorials and tips online that I can find. I want to master this program and finally create the images that are in my head. (Scary, huh?)

I really should update this more. My step-sister’s father passed away almost 2 weeks ago. He seemed to be doing better and they were about to take him off the respirator when his heart stopped during a routine check-up. Pretty shocking to a family who was told he was recovering. They are now just trying to cope and I know my step-sister is having a really hard time with it and beating herself up about a lot of things. But this is just something she has to go through in order to heal. There are lots of steps to the healing process. She keeps asking “will this ever go away?”. Go away? Nope. It won’t. But it will lessen and you learn to deal with it. My Grandfather passed away 7 years ago this October and I don’t think I’ve ever “gotten over” it. If I were to take more than 5 minutes thinking about it, I would still probably break down. I miss him. She will miss her father terribly and I just hope she finds the strength to begin to heal. It’s a rough process, everyone knows that.