Back From Vacation

I recently went on a week long trip with my beautiful girlfriend to the beach. It was great fun! We swam in the pool, and jacuzzi. I followed in my tradition of digging a big hole in the sand. This one could possibly be the biggest one I've ever dug. We also ate at all the good places by the beach. I had some amazing sea food! I also got to cook for everyone! Dorito casseroles are awesome!

Now that I'm back, I am in full work mode again. It was hard to go a full week without working. I did find a few ways to work on things. I edited the beach pictures we took while we were down there, and I started up a new blog that I will link to here once it has gained enough momentum. Since getting back, I've found a few job opportunities that I'll be exploring this week. I hope everyone else has had a great first half of March.

On a side note, today is my sister's birthday! I wish she wasn't out of town. Happy B'day lil sis!

Oscars

Yay! The only 2 Oscar categories that mattered to me were awarded to the most deserving candidates. Wall-e won best feature length animation. I recognized every person to whom Andrew Stanton gave credit...cause I'm a nerd like that. And I liked the shout out to Ed Catmull, although I would have described him as the Godfather of computer graphics, not God. Watching the history of Pixar makes me sad because I wasn't there to share in the adventure of pioneering the industry. I'm glad they beat out Kung Fu Panda, even though it was a hilarious movie, and I have to hand it to Dreamworks for making a great animated flick. However, I wish they would get off the pattern of alternating one good movie, with one hackneyed movie.

The other Oscar category, to which anyone could have guessed the winner, was best supporting actor. Heath Ledger earned that award outright; posthumous or not. He took great care in crafting the role of the joker into the sadistic, crazed madman we never expected. I'm very glad that the political slant of the Academy didn't steal what he rightly earned.

Madea, Mexican, and Mad Kicks

The weekend is off to a great start. It was a very long day, but every minute of it was fun. To give you guys an idea of the happenings, here is a google map detailing the day's shenanigans:

View Larger Map

So here is brief synopsis of each of the points:

A) That's the start of the magical journey. Home :)
B) Picked up my girlfriend and her mom.
C) Went to the Rave Motion Pictures at Lee Branch to watch Madea Goes to Jail.

This was a great movie by the way. I haven't seen all the Tyler Perry movies, but I definitely liked this one the best so far. Stephanie agreed with me that this one was her favorite, and she has seen them all. I liked the laundry list of cameo's appearing in this flick. Needless to say, I'll be seeing it again tomorrow.

D) Went to Panera Bread by the movie theater.

I had my usual, the half soup and sandwich consisting of the Frontega Chicken Panini and a French onion soup in a sourdough bread bowl. It's so choice. We also briefly looked in an art gallery in the same shopping square, and then went to get me some new tennis shoes from Academy. The new kicks are a pair of amazing New Balance sport tennis shoes. They advertised it as having 88 points of contour or something? They look good. They're built solid. I like. Thank you Stephanie's mom!

E) I wanted to take a scenic route home, and show Steph's mom my dream house in Birmingham, so we took to the back roads. Since Shook Hill was close to the house I like, we swung by the neighborhood to see how old money in Birmingham spends their cheddar.

F) Arrived at my dream house just a mile out from the Crestline Village. I use to pass this house every day when I worked at the UPS Store, packaging shoe boxes of candy for soccer moms and shipping them to their kids at Summer camp.

G) Finally arrived back at Steph's house to drop off her mom. We didn't take the straight shot back, we exited Mountain Brook by Brookwood Mall so we could look at a few more nice houses along the park there.

H) As soon as I changed into my new shoes, Stephanie and I were off again, this time driving to my grandmother's domicile.

I) From there, we were on our way to dinner when my Aunt Ginger called. We invited her,to eat with us. She accepted, and since we were almost there, we stopped by Bed, Bath, and Beyond to give her a chance to catch up.

J) Arrived for dinner at Iguana Grill.

This was a new restaurant for Steph and I, and it was awesome! The lighting and overall mood is quite different from your run-of-the-mill Mexican place. I saw a fellow alumni from highschool, and Steph saw a current classmate from college. Then we ate a great meal with my grandmother, Aunt Ginger, and Amy Thomas. It was long, and full of blissful conversations varying from Church of the Highlands, to living situations, to President Obama.

K) Went back to my grandmothers, turned on the fire, made some wassail, and watched a couple episodes of Arrested Development.

L) Dropped Stephanie off at her home, and then went back to mine. We didn't take any scenic routes this time. Can you imagine why???...lol.


Like I said, the day was eventful. After the 3.5 hours of driving time, and 108 miles driven, I'm only reminded of how blessed I am to have such wonderful, generous, loving relationships in my life. Praise the Lort, Hallelujur!

Random Things

1. My big toenail fell off after playing tennis in shoes that were too tight.
2. I'm working every Wednesday night at Church of the Highlands ONE series.
3. I'm going to the beach for a week in March! Hurray!
4. Conflict in a relationship is fine, as long as someone can be right. And that person can't be me :( (lol!)
   
5. I have almost finished my company website. My company is called Huebris. I already have business cards, and contracts, etc.
6. I'm back to sleeping less than 8 hours a night again. Sudoku helps put me to sleep. I'm getting pretty good.
7. I've become my girlfriends very own Morgan Freeman, and get to drive Miss Daisy to school on Wednesdays and Thursdays. It's fun, because I'm slowly converting her tom my musical taste...bwah hah ha!
8. I'm eating home cooked meals for a change, thanks to Steph's mom.
   
9. Coming off the fast has swung full pendulum. Now I need some balance; home cooked meals are helping :)
10. I'm wanting a pet hedgehog, and I want to name him Matlock. Oh, and I'm no longer allergic to cats.
    

Suspended Animation

"You've achieved success in your field when you don't know whether what you're doing is work or play."

~ Warren Beatty

That having been said, I'm ready for success! I already love what I do. I could work 12 hour work days, six days a week, and you would never hear the hint of a complaint. Computer animation and, really, any computer related art is the most rewarding way to spend my day. I can lose all track of time while enthralled in a project. There have been times where I'd stop for a lunch break, only to realize that the sun had set a couple hours ago. Now I just need a place to work.

Waiting for the perfect job is like being grounded from something I love. Since work for me is like playtime, not having the opportunity to exercise my skills irks me. I am irked! Much to my consternation, I have found that my dream job might not exist yet in Birmingham, Alabama. Still, I know this is the place I'm meant to be, and so I'm working to bring new opportunities to this city. Moving away, would be leaving my calling for this time. I'm in limbo, waiting for the tea kettle to whistle, and let me know new opportunities are on the horizon.

While I'm waiting, I'm opening my own business so that I can work in my industry. There are several advantages for trying this now. The state of the economy has left a lot of room for competition. Businesses are afraid to hire new employees, and so they can't grow and take on extra projects. That means business for me! My line of work can be done with minimal overhead too, so that is a great advantage in spite of the country's lackluster economic status. Also, I can work with clients all over the country, not just here in Birmingham.

Whatever happens over the next few months, the one thing I have decided is that I refuse to get caught in a state of suspended animation. Forgive the pun, but I am an animation artist. I will work on projects, even if they are only for myself. Art is like the "red queen" game. Not sure how many Lewis Carroll fans are out there, but there's a part where Alice is presented with this statement by the Red Queen:

"It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place."

I can't afford to remain stagnant. Like so many things in life, if you aren't growing, then you are dying. Lucky for me, I love what I do. It's the thing I'd do for free, even without a paycheck. And right now, I'm proving that. Ha! Let's just hope that paycheck kicks in soon so I'm not a complete derelict.

Pirate Bay in Uncharted Waters

The Pirate Bay is going to court for assisting in copyright infringement. For everyone who doesn't know how this works, the Pirate Bay supplied torrents to users. Think of a torrent as a beacon for users to find a file and download it. So, it's kind of like a modern Napster, except it cuts out the gnutella network, and you can't just search from within a software program. Users have to get on the net to find good torrents.

Pirate Bay supplies these torrents from their website. They show a torrents strength, how many people are sharing the file, and how many people are downloading it. Users can comment on files to ensure that the files work properly and are clean of viruses. These kind of features have grown the site to 22 million active users. The owners of the site advertise to Pirate Bay users, and have made a killing in the process.

We all know from Napster's court case that companies which help people download illegal material are shut down. So how can Pirate Bay exist? Simple. It's set up outside the United States, in a very neutral Sweden. This has allowed them free reign until now. We'll see if they survive this court case held in Stockholm. Pirate Bay has made many enemies, mostly American entertainment studios. Dreamworks, Warner Brothers, Microsoft, and Apple are just a few names of the giants ready to watch this ship capsize.

The real question for these companies though, is if they win, we'll this mean an end to illegal downloads? The quick and dirty answer is "no". Right now they are attacking the head of the beast to end the problem, but this beast has several heads. There are still dozens of other sites that aid in supplying torrents (mininova.com, bitjunkie.com, torrents.to). I'm sure that a win against Pirate Bay would cause a domino effect that will eventually sink these other sites with it, but that takes time. And as soon as torrents are solved, something new will just slide into place. Even if the tides turn on Pirate Bay, the illegal downloading maelstrom is far from dying.

Tennis

Monday nights are going to be tennis nights for the next three months. Tennis is a great game, and I've loved it since I started. The group I'm playing with has been meeting at 7pm at Samford every Monday. Thank you Church of the Highlands for making small groups that appeal to me! Anyone who wants to join in on the fun should come. It doesn't matter if you don't have a racket; you can borrow mine. Although, I might want to fix my handle before anyone else uses it. Prince makes a great tennis racket, but I put this silly grip on it, and now it's falling apart. Skill level also doesn't matter. None of the players here are Pete Sampras, or the Williams sisters if you are a girl. You could definitely find someone on your level, even if you are just a beginner. Come join in on the fun, and see how fast you can become enthralled with tennis!

New Things

Anyone who has ever read even the smallest bit about birth order knows what to expect from the first born. Here are some highlights though:

• Use to being the center of attention.
• Belief that you must be better than others.
• Must be the person in control.
• Must be right.
• Always aims to please.

I've taken quite a few personality tests over the years. Isn't it curious that before I ever filled in the first bubble on one of them, the rest of the world already had me figured out. So you can put whatever label you want on it--I could be an ENFP according to Myers-Briggs type indicator, or I could be a Chlor-San if we're going off the four temperaments--I'm still a first born child.

The fact that something as simple as birth order can accurately assess my personality is very frustrating. Doesn't it speak volumes on how easily we are molded by our environment? I hate that. I want to believe that I impact change on my environment, and not that my environment dictates to me the person I will be.

My environment brought loads of change growing up. My parents divorced when I was 10, and both remarried within a year. I moved houses 3 times over the next 3 years. Then another divorce, and marriage followed. A added stepsisters, and lost stepsisters. Things were continually shifting around in my younger years.

So there was change. I eventually figured out that change was inevitable; that it would happen whether I wanted it or not. There are some things you have no control over, and they will affect you.

The good news is that not all change is external. Some change is self-initiated. My way of balancing things out is that for every change that happens in my life that I can't control, I create a positive new change on my own. This is my philosophy, and it has worked for me so far. Maybe it all comes back to birth order, and this is just my way of feeling like I'm in control, but it's necessary. Your environment will shape you to a certain degree. You don't have a choice in the matter. But you can change your environment; transform it into the place you want to have influence over you. Big or small, instigate some good change in your life!

Right now I'm full of change. Here are some of the new things in my life:

• New church. Church of the Highlands is officially my home church.
• New city. Birmingham isn't new to me, but it is a change from living 600 miles away in Orlando. I'm going to be staying here for a long time now that I'm back.
• A girlfriend, Stephanie. And with this change comes a new family with whom to hang out. She's quite the amazing girlfriend too.
  
• New friends. I'm making new friends through church and through Stephanie. I've met some amazing new people. Michael, Brad, Justin...you guys are awesome.
• New career life. This one isn't really a choice. I just graduated college, and so now I must work...ha. I am taking control by starting my own company though. Exciting!

Hope you guys will initiate some positive change in your own lives! Let me know how it works out.

A Well Polished Cog

When did you figure out what you really wanted to be in life? Did your dreams change over the years? Often our dreams are traded for the tangible, the practical, even the unforeseeable. In the days of instant gratification, dreams are a luxury people can't afford to follow. Passions are forsaken for security. Impossible odds weed us out to the roads travel laden. A death, a new life, an addiction. A dream is not a rare thing, but a protected dream that stands the test of time is quite the collectible.

At age five I knew my dream. Most boys that age wanted to be firemen or policemen. I decided I wanted to make video games. The hardest part of parenting for my dad revolved around getting me away from the TV, and getting the controller out of my hands. I told my parents what I planned to do when I grew up, and they did what any good mentor would do--they infantilized me. "Of course you will be. You can be whatever you want when you grow up". They never believed for an instant that I would see my five year old resolution to its end. And they were almost right.

When I graduated high school everything ramped up. The stakes were higher, as after four years of labor we were all born into the big machine. The competition was real, and only those with a little postpartum aggression would survive. Questions that had waited silently on the sidelines were now vivid, and the only things worth talking about. In the whirlwind query that followed I slipped away from my dream. Real world practicalities slammed down on me, and the riptide was so disorienting that I didn't even realize I had a dream in the first place. I took a scholarship to become a computer and electrical engineer. It was a full ride, with a work-study setup with Bellsouth. It was free. It was safe. It was practical. It was wrong.

A childhood friend took me back to my roots. Over the years, my dream became his dream as well. Justin Woodard loved computer graphics as much as I did, and when I failed to act on my passions, his success in following them jarred me back on the straight and narrow. After he announced his intentions to attend the Art Institute of Atlanta for computer animation, I realized that I had betrayed a very important part of my existence. I had sold out so quickly, that I now realize that I hadn't even weighed my options for pursuing my life long endeavors. He gave me the push I needed. I dropped out of college that semester to reevaluate what was important to me. It wasn't an easy decision, nor was it well received by my family. It cut me off from my father's good graces. I had to prove myself alone, but since I was following my passion, everything came naturally.

I was the star student of Virginia College in Birmingham. It was typical of today's trade school's, but I was learning exactly what I loved. I stayed at the school 40 plus hours, Monday through Thursday, and I was having the time of my life. Unfortunately, the path to success is not a straightforward one. Two years into the program, the computer animation degree (a new one at the college) dissolved. I had half of a bachelor's degree, and needed to act fast if I wanted to get the rest. Fortunately, my dad witnessed my growth as I proved myself in my endeavors at VC. When things ended there, he helped me move to another avenue of higher learning.

Full Sail University strives to build a name for itself as the "Harvard of Media Arts Colleges", and I believe it will succeed. I chose to continue my education in Orlando, Florida at this school for the simple reason that it hosted a four year degree that you complete on an accelerated course of 21 months. I was ready to build things for the real world. I didn't want to see another project graded and forgotten. It was time for my work to hit the masses. What they didn't mention was that the 21 months would be some of the hardest I would ever encounter. In four days I spent over 80 hours on campus working on my finals. Labs were scheduled at one and five in the morning. Classes lasted a month, and you had the weekend to get ready for the next set. There were times that I hated it. There were times that I loved it. At the end, I was just happy to leave it. The ends to my dreams justified the arduous journey to reach them. I'm glad that I went to Full Sail, and nothing can take away what I earned there.

Now that college is over, I'm ready to take the next steps in following my dream. I'm eager to achieve my goals, and I find they are changing, evolving and growing on a daily basis. I'm glad you have chosen to join me as I follow them to completion, and would like to thank you for reading about my journey to date. If you want to see the fruits of my college labors, check out my portfolio site as well as my flickr account.

My Portfolio Site (Check out the art section)

My flickr Account