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Obsidian ShardsMay 01 WSU to cut athleticsI was quite surprised to see this in a message WSU President Elson S. Floyd sent out to WSU alumni today. I had to check my calendar to make sure it wasn't April 1st.
(snip)
"In keeping with our strategic approach to making vertical cuts, preliminary budget reductions range from zero to $3.3 million for departments across the WSU system. I am also cutting the Athletics Department even though it does not receive state funding."
(/snip)
Yes, straight from the university president, WSU is *cutting* the Athletics Department.
I can only assume he means "making cuts in", and not cutting the entire department. But I guess we'll see. As much as I don't like it, college athletics are pretty much the primary way to advertise an institution these days. If WSU doesn't have an athletics department, how can they continue to have college football, basketball, etc? This HAS to be a mistype, or I'm misreading it. March 17 Technology is dumbWhy is it that so often the seemingly simple things you want to do are very complicated? I wanted to send the RSS feed of this blog to Facebook. Good luck searching in the help for how to do that. Luckily I just happened to notice the "Import a blog" link on the right side after I went to the Notes app. Even then, the only thing you are presented with is an entry box to give the RSS URL. Next, you are shown a "preview" of what the blog will look like. OK, no problem. Except that when they say "import", they truly mean IMPORT.
Like, the entire blog, even entries 2 or more years old. Sigh. Tedium followed as I deleted all of my old obsolete blogs out of Facebook. I just wanted the feed for new blog posts (like this one, we'll see how well it works... it would be nice to not have it post the entire blog, and to apply the formatting I have too). I didn't want all of my old stuff too.
At this point, Facebook is a nice idea but is seriously user UNFRIENDLY. I find myself frustrated with it and/or the apps it hosts on a daily basis.
Of course, I could say that about almost all the technology I use, from my Mac, my PC, my iPod, my TV. The only solution would be for others to simply create the UI based on my expectations of how it should work. After all, doesn't the universe revolve around me? March 11 Time Stand StillSigh, once again I lag behind on blogging. Most of my random thoughts are going up on Facebook now. I guess I just don't have the knack to share online (although I tend to talk alot in person, so not sure what the issue here is). Over the last few months a lot has happened, I just haven't blogged much about it. Maybe it's the economy that makes me feel I don't have time to blog, or it's the other million things I enjoy doing in a day more than posting to a blog. :)
I've been listening to a lot of Rush lately (as evidenced by the title of this blog). Rush is probably one of the top 10 bands of all time. Their musical abilities are just sick (in a good way). Has there ever been a better drummer than Neil Peart?
I've also been moving from various games off and on. Played Spore on my PC for a while. Played Fable on my XBox for a while. Played Endless Oceans on my Wii for a while. Played various games on my iPod (still, usually while waiting for the bus). Currently am playing Harvest Moon on my daughter's DS.
Anyway, a few weeks ago we re-arranged the guestroom/study to open it up a little, and I decided my graphics tablet had really been neglected. So I set it up as my main mouse, and of course after about a week of staring at it and the pen so achingly close, I gave into temptation and began drawing again. It's the first time in about six months or so that I've done any serious drawing work, and I could tell I was REALLY rusty by the fact I had trouble drawing straight lines. I really need to draw regularly to see some improvement, but for the first time I tried out some highlighting effects. In some places it worked out, in others places not so much.
One thing I definitely noticed is that I'm using too thick of a pen for my line drawing. The lines are just a bit too heavy and it is distracting. The proportions all seem to be ok, but I realized I have never really studied the human ear seriously, so I wasn't really sure what one looks like. The result is garbage.
I also noticed in my first drawing that the body positioning is slightly off. The hand on the hip is supposed to be supporting weight, so Rin should be leaning back a bit more than she is. Although if you imagine she had been leaning back, and someone just said something shocking that made her lean forward a bit, it *could* work. But not really.
Anyway, the character is Rin from the anime Fate/Stay Night. I've added the images to the blog, hope the one or two people who still visit this blog like them. December 05 The Art Attax Story Occasionally, something comes along that exceeds all awesomeness. This is one of those times. Without further ado, I present.... The Art Attax Story December 01 December already? This year has flown by fairly quickly. I can't believe we are already in December. I still have a ton of things to do before Christmas rolls around, but luckily I did get one thing off my list prior to Thanksgiving - I put up my lights on my house the weekend prior. Of course, my neighbors had friendly jabs about not waiting until after Thanksgiving and making them look bad for not doing it too, but the day was sunny (and the roof was dry), and I wasn't going to be around this last weekend to do it. And since last year I wound up doing it on a *snow* covered roof in December, I wanted to get up there without having to fear (too much) for my life. And really there was only a single time my heart really started beating at a heavier rate - when I had to reach down head first for the very corner of the upper roof, some 30 feet or so off the ground, with nothing between the edge but empty space to the concrete below. But otherwise I felt very comfortable and wasn't nervous up there at all, a welcome relief from last year. I was greeted upon my arrival back at my house last night to the whole neighborhood lit up... those who didn't travel for the Thanksgiving weekend had spent their time decorating their houses, and it was a sight to behold. Now I just need to finish my job outside (some of the non-roof decorations were put on hold until after Thanksgiving), as well as go get our tree at some point, do some shopping and wrapping, and decide if we are going to travel to see family again for Christmas or stay home. And that's besides the other things I have been itching to do lately, such as learn to speak Japanese, learn to play piano and/or guitar, finish some of those games I mentioned in my last post (my kids just bought an XBox arcade game called "Kingdom for Keiflings" which is kind of similar to a real time strategy game (RTS) but without any fighting... and it's kind of addicting in its simplicity... then again, I've always loved the building aspects of RTS games and board games like Catan), get my garage cleaned out and set up a train table I got from my neighbor (I've devised a pulley system that will likely never actually bear fruit), read the dozens of books still in my "to read" pile, finish the games I've been developing (both computer and board), etc etc etc. And then I have to set aside family time too (although some of these things I can integrate into time with my kids, such as playing/developing games and the garage work). Guess what the top thing on my Christmas list is? Something no one can get for me - more time. |
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