This and That

iPhone mania is coming Friday. People are posting on Craig’s List hoping to hire someone to stand in line for them (lines have already started at one New York store.) I smell a career opportunity here. Find a wealthy businessman and offer to stand in line for him at the post office, the grocery store, the DMV…yessir, big money!

Last week I finally bought the new Adobe CS3 suite. Kinda buggy, but overall I really like the new look and feel of the applications. The new menus and palettes are a bit disorienting at first but I’ll adjust soon. So far my only complaints are that merging layers in Photoshop feels clumsy, Bridge keeps crashing, and Paris Hilton is still in the news.

Today I went to the book store and bought some new software reference books for CS3. I also bought Designing a Digital Portfolio by Cynthia Baron. I’ve been wanting to re-design my website for a while now. This book, combined with a workshop I attended at Flashbelt, has me convinced that my site doesn’t just need a fresh look, it needs a major overhaul. I enjoy tinkering around in Dreamweaver, I may even try using CSS in the new design. If I can find the time (which will be tough if this standing-in-line thing works out.)

My sleep schedule has been off lately, thanks to insomnia and converging deadlines. When I was single I would often stay up all night working on freelance projects. One of the perks of working at home and living alone was that I could work, eat, and sleep whenever I felt like it. For several years I went through a strange cycle where I couldn’t sleep until I had been awake for at least 20 hours, causing my waking hours to gradually shift around the clock from nights to days over about a 3 or 4 week period. Now that I’ve got a wife and baby that’s not working out so well. I’m trying to get my body to adjust to a normal schedule, but every couple of weeks I still get attacked by insomnia. I wonder if being a night owl is something innate, like being left-handed, or if its something that can be unlearned?

Have you seen the new Geico commercials? (“There are better ways to spend 15 minutes on the internet”). The caveman thing was funny but is getting stale. It’s great to see them trying something new. You’ve got to hand it to the Geico ad folks, their campaigns have consistently stood out amidst the cluttered advertising landscape. Not an easy feat.

Finally, my wife and I have joined Blockbuster Total Access. Not that we watch that many movies, but we have a Blockbuster just down the street so it will be nice to exchange movies immediately instead of waiting for tomorrow’s mail. The no late fees thing will also be nice since movies sometimes sit on our shelf for quite a while before we finally get around to watching them. We rented “Pursuit of Happyness” twice and still haven’t seen it. We’re trying the cheapest Blockbuster plan (2 movies a month for 6 bucks) so we’ll see how it goes. We’re going to start with the classics we’ve never seen. Cassablanca is first, then it’s Bonnie and Clyde, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and eventually Little House on the Prairie season 3.