When I was walking the dog this morning, I couldn't help but think about the times of yore...my life, the yesteryears.

The number one stupid question an employer can ask: "Where do you see yourself in the next five years?" Five years ago it was 2004 and I was ending my first tour of duty.

I can honestly say, I didn't see being married yet, I didn't anticipate actually coming back to school, I figured I'd be an appendage to my folks for a very long time. I didn't foresee starting and watching the demise of a business, nor did I anticipate what it would be like living paycheck to paycheck.

I couldn't help but laugh this morning as a cool Northern breeze swept past me, up until I got married I considered sleeping in an activity that would span well past 10:00 A.M. Now I consider sleeping in getting up just an hour or two just past sunrise, roughly 8:00 A.M. and sleeping in late would be perhaps to 9:00 A.M.

If there is one thing that I have learned well, is plan on not planning, you can count on not counting on the things you set in sight (this isn't the hard and fast rule). God has a will for us, we can either fight it to our misfortune or we can embrace it.

Eric brought up a point that I'm going to side track on: Inkscape vs. Adobe Illustrator CS4...I'm willing to contend as well as GIMP vs. Adobe Photoshop CS4, but I think I already know the outcome. I, however, will succeed that Inkscape and GIMP are good for what they are, however, when it comes workflow, adaptability, plug-ins, color accuracy, and so on...Adobe wins hands down. Now, like I said, I am will to take the challenge and be proved wrong, but there is a reason why Adobe is the cornerstone in the market place as far as graphic design and such is concerned.

I also understand why professional and well to do enthusiasts use rendering farms such as the Nvidia Quadro Plex VCS or a few Nvida Teslas compiled with an Nvidia Quadro which is maximized by their CUDA technology (simply amazing by the way). I was using one of the schools sMacintosh's the family product by sApple, running a Intel Core 2 Duo processor at 2.66 GHz with 2.5 GB of R.A.M. running at 667 MHz (pretty pathetic, if you ask me, for a computer company "known" for it's graphics work (sorry to any sApple fans out there)), and was using one of the blending tools in Illustrator, the Twirl tool, and in about 15 seconds of using it various places the sMacintosh froze, crippled by the mathematic complexity of the pretty twirls. So, to recap, the rendering farms take in all this information and provide smooth seamless work, but not without a price.

ATI...it was nice knowing you! Ooo...and stick around for expansion on the rumors that Nvidia may enter into the CPU market!!!

Here is my first project working with Adobe Illustrator.  The assignment was to create a road sign diagonally 6" x 6" that could be about anything we wanted, it just couldn't have any words or numbers.  In one of the .PDF files there are the appropriate captions.  Admittedly, on Mega-man and Alf and Gizmo I was getting very close to the deadline and thus rushed them a bit.  All are traced pictures using the pen tool.  If you think that all illustrator is good for is 2D design, check out this website.

http://www.khulsey.com/masters_yukio_miyamoto.html

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