Indeed, you may not have heard it here first, but tumbledry will be getting a redesign. The redesign, really. This upcoming iteration is projected to take us through the next six years of online presence. Six years. Wow. Why so long? Long college years and dental school (crossing my fingers) lie ahead. Thus, the site will slowly be less and less of a digital design playground and more and more of a workhorse journal for my thoughts, hopes, dreams, and fears. The latter is really what I have always wanted it to be, but it has eluded me because of a desire to change the look. A combination of several factors have made me consider stopping this constant redesigning:
1.) I just got Adobe Photoshop CS2. Combine this with 5 years working on JASC Paintshop Pro, I consider myself competent (only competent, many many people out there can clean my clock with digital imaging, so to speak) with digital image manipulation - it’s time to put those hard-earned lessons out there with understated elegance … and then give myself a rest.
2.) In my job developing a large amount of the code at the St. Thomas CAM, I feel it’s time to write some real code, something elegant, maintainable, and efficient. I’ve learned a lot these past 12 months, and intend to make the code behind this version of tumbledry the best yet.
3.) This is the last time for a while I will have the time to do this.
That said, it is time. I will be working on this for at least one month, and really my projected goal for this to be done is the 4th of July. I may miss this date, but things will be certainly done by the end of the summer. Tumbledry v14.0 will be fast, beautiful, and most of all, durable. I look forward to sharing it with all of you.
Where have I been, you ask? Well, first I got hammered by finals and the move out. Let me tell you something (as I probably shared last year). One of the best workouts you can possibly imagine is moving an entire dorm room worth of stuff down 8 flights (5 floors) worth of stairs. And yes, I am dumb enough to bring things like 45 pound receivers, 2 35 pound speakers, a 70 pound sub, a 35 pound computer (that still gets me), and a 50 pound sack of foam. So, let’s see, the total for the big stuff alone is … 270 pounds worth of awkward huge items. Just plain stupid I tell you, that I bring all that stuff. But it’s like people in the days of the Wild West - kill two oxen and ruin a couple wagon axles just to get a piano out into the west. Then again, I can see myself doing that, too. Must be a genetic “break your back to bring luxury items” sort of allele. I hope it’s recessive, because I wouldn’t wish it on my kids.
Second, I got hammered by a weeks worth of yardwork. Yes, I did get paid for it in the end, which was a great bonus, but I did enjoy helping out my mom and dad with their landscaping task.
Check that thing out, 61 feet of garden wall around the outside (the new part). So, you say, “Alex, that’s really easy and I could do it in two days without complaining.” I would respond “NOYOUCOULDN’T YOUWOULDDIETRYING, OHLORDDONOTATTEMPT.” That’s some of the hardest, rockiest clay soil you will ever, I repeat ever gonna say it again EVER try to dig in. Makes you handy with a pickaxe faster than you can say “I wish I was more handy with a pickaxe.” Either way, 5 days and 4 million calories later, here we are with a beautiful garden set to grow throughtout this short Minnesota summer. Makes me rather philosophical: it seems that all beautiful things are a result of the serendipitous culmination of large amounts of energy, perhaps that it why we value them so highly.
The unbelievable folks at St. Thomas got together and got me a 200 dollar gift certificate to the Apple Store. I was absolutely blown away by this birthday gift (earlier in May), and jumped at the chance to get the music player that my ears have always dreamt of. They wrote:
We love you Alex - thanks so much fo all your help & for being so so great!! We know you really want/NEED an ipod - here’s a start! We all owe you our computer’s lives! Happy Birthday! - you are the BEST!
- Elise, Emily, Emily, Jordan, Kim, Dan, Ryan, & Tony
Guys and girls, you are the ones who are so so great - I never thought twice about patching up your compy’s after Internet Explorer decided to be a really really crappy browser. Computers can be a handful to maintain sometimes, but I like to be a good neighbor and it was my pleasure to delete the bad and restore the good. I had the time, and sometimes I knew what to do (only sometimes, many times I ad-libbed it and just acted like I knew what was going on).
If you’re wondering owning an iPod is exactly how I imagined it. The fidelity is incredible, the usability unparalled, the fit and finish astouding, and the ease of making a playlist on-the-go unexpectedly easy. There wasn’t much I hadn’t expected after reading ipodlounge.com for … many many months, although I must admit I ignored the install cd assuming iTunes would work with the iPod right away, which was a mistake. So, use the CD when you get an iPod. By the way, definitely get a case from Burning Love, the best iPod cases that you will find. Mykala got me one for my birthday (it matches her other amazing gift - a huge CordaRoy’s sack of foam perfectly!).
I must admit, I felt genuinely appreciated and affirmed and warm and fuzzy inside - you know how they say “what goes around comes around”? Well, that is, in my experience, completely true.
Oh Binz Refectory, sometimes you manage to amaze me. Despite my previous extremely poor food experiences (you may recall the cooking fluid in my fried rice last year), something has been going dreadfully right at my local cafeteria these days. Indeed, today I had exactly three minutes to run in and try to find something to eat. My arms were full with end of term projects, and I thought to myself as I ran to the building, “It sure would be nice if they had something good to eat, preferably something that could be held with one hand. Otherwise I’m going to be stuck with one of those Red Delicious Week-Old apples they always have.”
Lo and behold, I got precisely what I was looking for. As an added bonus, this was a new food - I’d never had a breaded chicken sandwich there before; what luck! The picture was taken as I waddled back to class with all my arms full.
A couple of more success stories like this and ‘food at the binz’ is going to be out of the red and into positive food experience territory. Really, though, my stories of suffering at the hands of excruciatingly gruesome dishes are more entertaining than the successful dining experiences. On that note, I’m on the lookout for “casserole super surprise” night: in the name of entertainment.
