April Fools

In honour of Apple Computer's 30th Birthday, why not celebrate by buying a new Mac or an iPod! No? If you're not into celebrating Apple's birthday, you can instead celebrate Nunavut's 7th birthday.

Speaking of fools, George Bush et al had a bad week when confidential memos came out and where published by the New York Times. Jon Stewart of The Daily Show reports on this. I realize this is technically "fake news" but I truly do believe, most times, it's the closest thing we have to the truth. If you aren't mad enough, you may want to try this site.

I wish I could say "April Fools".

Last Day at "The Centre"

Well, it's my last day at "The Centre". It's the first time I've ever left a job that I didnt want to leave. Usually I get sick of a job and then feel like I need to find a good excuse to leave.

I didn't think I'd feel sentimental about it being my last day, my last time using the Mac Mini they bought me, the last time I walk to the washroom to fill up my mug with water, but I should have known myself better. This was a very good job - A dream job for a student. In the end it was probably played a big hand in helping me get the grades I needed. I rarely felt stress, I could take off any time I wanted, and people just knew that during Midterms that I wasn't coming in on Friday, maybe not Thursday. I got to listen to CBC Radio when I worked or whatever I wanted on my iTunes.

Oh well. Goodbye work place who's name no one could remember exactly how it was said.

Postcard Project, Part II

My only class today was cancelled. So after straightening things out with the people at the Ministry of Transportation (a whole other story) I headed into work early. After reading Shroom's comment to my previous blog I decided to undo somethings to the postcard and change somethings I liked. By the time the human wurl-winds came in, they liked the postcard quite a bit. The took to, again, changing things for the sake of changing things. I got the feeling that if we had another week to work on this, I'd be working on it right up until the deadline again. In the end I let them take a few liberties with the design, some of their suggestions were good though. The main thing is it's done and my superiors are happy!

I can't believe how long it took to produce something that, really, could be completed in less than a day. But with all the picture changes, revisions, blah blah blah... Oh well.

So, what else is new Travis?

Lazy? Who isn't! Don't read the italicized parts if you don't need full explanations! And now, my Blog entry...


Well, it would seem that March 31st is my last day at the Centre of Excellence for Kids Who Can't Read Good. You see, my boss is leaving and "The Centre" is not wanting to replace him. I am his assistant.

As their last act as my employer, they've decided to drive me absolutely crazy with a Post Card & CD project. The idea is that The Centre has generated research on literacy amoung children in northern communities. So I'm designing a postcard that will be sent out to people on our mailing list with information about how to get the published research. When they contact us, we'll send them the journal along with a CD with some sort of database on it. I'm also designing the CD cover.

This project has been going on for about a couple of months now. There have been endless changes made to the postcard. There is always something else that one of the chefs wants to try with this soup. Everytime I print off a final product I'm asked to try to change something and these people don't realize that for some of these experiments I have to go into the original picture, play with saturation, brighten, selective colour, lighten, resize, copy & paste into the postcard template I made, resize, save for web, open illustrator, open the document, copy & past into postcard layout template, resize, print.

On Tuesday I thought we were done the postcard. But I got an email today saying that we need more changes because of how much "blank space" there is. Being a graphic designer who lives for and has learned not to fear clean, white space, I want to scream. I want to yell at these people, "Look, I can appreciate that you want this postcard to look as good as possible, but we've been spending two months on this postcard! Think of how much money we are spending on a postcard that people are either look at and either toss it or they are going to go through with getting the research." And the postcard looks good! It looked good a month ago! Now there's this huge panic to get it done because it needs to be done by March 31st.

Well, I meant for this to be a short post. Oh well.

Oh no. I just realized I've turned into one of those people who blogs about work.

More on all this later. Stay tuned!

Hey Travis, what's new?

If there ever was a time to have been blogging, it was last month. Sorry for the belated entry to my once faithful readers.

First, I got engaged. That's right. Okay, well, first I guess I should say, to those who don't already know, I got back together with BlackMamba and now we're engaged.

I proposed on March 6th at on the spot where we started dating, in front of the school I asked her out at (she was doing her placement at the time). Maybe someone can help me with the name of that school, it's the one behind the Burger King.

Anyway, we're getting married July 1st, 2006.

The other big announcement is that we bought a house. It's a great little starter home. We get possession on April 7th. This was a great, eductional process. I got a crash course in what to look for in a house, where to go, what to get, etc. We had to go through a lawyer to make an offer, get a mortgage, and get insurance. I'll sleep a lot easier now that I know that if a plane flys into our house, we're insured!

My Flu Haiku

Haiku 1:

Need to eat. Can't eat.
Crucial studying time gone.
I didn't need that!

Haiku 2:

Confined to my bed.
Only move for toilet needs.
Daytime TV sucks.