Welcome to Adobe, the product line with possibly some of the most confusing customer service representatives ever. O.o
Lately, there have been several new learning experiences that I’ve been looking to incorporate into my daily routine. As some of you know, I am (finally!) in possession of Adobe Creative Suite 4: Design Premium edition, after approximately two months of debating with Adobe Customer Service. Yes, my Adobe CS4 is a legitimate, legal, monetarily purchased software product. :-P However, I hadn’t foreseen the substantial amount of time it takes to actually activate an Adobe Product, and get it to comfortably coexist with all of your other installed software. I must have gone through a dozen different foreign Adobe customer service representatives, most of which straight-out told me that I would get better results if I submitted an email (which I did several times). :( Oh well, that’s over now! I finally have my fully downloaded, activated and updated Adobe CS4 to play with! :D I’m currently searching for a good resource for training tutorials/lessons that will help me learn Photoshop first, after which I’ll be expanding into Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Illustrator, etc. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to post them in the comments section! <3
So far, the Rosetta Stone language program seems to be fairly useful. I kind of wish there was a more traditional "lesson mode", though I shouldn't be too picky. :-P
In addition to this, I’ve also started with the Rosetta Stone Japanese language learning program. I hope to incorporate at least 1-2 hours of language training per day (realistically, probably one hour xD). This will undoubtedly take me awhile to complete, especially if I hope to learn hiragana, katakana and Kanji! I also have “My Japanese Coach”, a DS game that seems to be fairly useful for learning kana, it has a great writing system that uses the touch-pad and stylus. With a combination of both of these, I hope to be at least semi-fluent within about a year. ^.^
I’ve also acquired a huge backlog of books, novels, essays and publications that I want to read. I’ve found that extensive reading is the absolute best way for me to continue to maintain a good writing style. However, I have to be careful with reading right before I do a writing project, as I can sometimes catch myself emulating the writing style without noticing. :-P (Imagine a technical article about media file formats… written in the style of J.K. Rowling. Yes, it happened.) Anyway, I recently re-read one of my personal favorite novels, Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game”, which always seems to send me off into a writing frenzy about sociological, perception and reality definition essays. Btw, yes, I have read Twilight. It would have been ignorant of me to ignore a bestselling novel simply because it’s accompanied by a sub-culture of teenage girls wishing they could have a vampire boyfriend. I’ll reserve my comments on Stephanie Myer’s writing style for another post. :p
This is, of course, in combination with my super-aggressive motivated goal of doing an hour of intense cardio every morning. Fortunately, I’m able to accomplish this in a medium that I’m already comfortable with… Dance Dance Revolution! Yes, I can probably guess what you’re thinking. The DDR genre of games is total old news, have ridiculously remixed japanese pop songs, and last-gen graphic animations. However, as a workout tool, being able to survive a song on ‘Heavy’ or ‘Challenge’ mode is more satisfying than the aching pain after an hour of running on a treadmill. DDR is great agility training as well, probably also improving your visual processing (stepping on the arrows at the right moment to score a “PERFECT!” or “MARVELOUS!”). Well… I doubt there is any scientific evidence to back that up. :p Anyway, I’m now playing DDR on a semi-daily basis, for about an hour each day. Cardio ftw! If I lose any weight doing this, it’ll definitely be a bonus. :) If I score a spot in a DDR tournament… even better! xD
This is, of course, in combination with my daily writing work. Anyway, to summarize, my current goals are:
- Become an epic user of Photoshop.
- Learn Japanese from the Rosetta Stone program.
- Read more books. Write about books. :-P
- Daily DDR Cardio!
… I guess it doesn’t seem like a whole lot, if I have it in “list” format like that.
LIFE UPDATES
Life is generally still pretty awesome here in Raleigh, even though the weather is getting a bit chilly. I find that I’m welcoming the change, as fall is a season full of hooded sweatshirts, hot tea, falling leaves and yummy spiced baked goods. I didn’t resent the summer heat here in the south, as some people had suggested I might. I’m still sharing an apartment with my boyfriend, Patrick, we’ve recently been having weekly anime nights with the release of new episodes of “Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood” ! I never thought I’d find someone that I could watch anime, trade pokemon, play with in TF2, and who could tolerate my experimental cooking. I’m very lucky to have found him, he’s definitely my definition of perfect. <3
As kind of a side-project, I’ve been occasionally researching the prices of travel packages to places like Italy, Japan, Ireland and England. I know it’s probably something we won’t be able to afford anytime soon, but I guess it’s kind of nice to have a goal in mind. :-P I’m aware that it’s really cliche and idealistic of me, but I would love to “see the world” sometime in the future. Experiencing different environments, cultures, cuisine and social structures is always something I’ve found appealing, I would love to apply these interests to traveling.
I happened to find some of my old writing while cleaning up backup files from previous computers, which was really interesting to read. I would absolutely love to keep writing at least one of my novels, even though I admit picking up a previous story is a slightly difficult to do. I know it’s not a very realistic goal to become a successful published novelist, but I’d still love to at least have suitable material that I could work on getting published as a novel. I’ve heard from other writers that it’s a very long, arduous process that requires both patience and persistence.
Anyway, other than that, there really isn’t much to report on life-related things. Though I’m not currently on an exciting trip to the Bahamas, Seattle, Las Vegas, Cranberry, Myrtle Beach, Los Angeles or Florida (which are a few of the places I’ve been fortunate enough to visit this year!), spending time at home is definitely relaxing and satisfying. I’m comfortable here, surrounded by plenty of anime, games, manga, reading and a wonderful boyfriend who is happy to share my interests. <3 Until the next adventure, I’ll be focusing on my “to do” list of things to accomplish. :)
