I have a week off work, a hubby out of the country, and nothing to do but immerse myself in Poser and Vue goodness.  I had a pile of tutorials set aside to work on, a friend I was going to jump onto Teamspeak with to tutor in Poser, and I was going to spruce up my resume and fire it out to a few places.  I was all set for my "me" week.

And of course, my computer blows up half-way into it.

/sigh

So instead of finally learning how to model clothing, I'll just be washing it.  I guess the house needed a good spring cleaning anyway.  Hopefully whatever blew up at least leads to a nice upgrade for my computer when hubby's home again to fix it.

Seeing as tomorrow is May, I should probably change my front page journal post from saying Happy Holidays.

I don't really have much of note or interest to add here, just a long ramble since I've been feeling pretty bummed out.  Life has been pretty stressful lately, and my job has been affecting my health.  The chest pains and dizzy spells are starting to scare me with their recent severity.  Even though the pressure of March government year end is off, April is my company's year end, and I've been pulling triple duty most of the month.

The most frustrating part is that I was hired on as an admin, and I'm now carrying the workload and responsibility of a senior buyer.  And I'm still on my admin salary and contract that expired in December.  But my repeated requests for a review and raise have fallen on "too busy" ears.  I would look for a new job, but it seems I just float from one unhappy experience to another.  And the one job I was actually somewhat happy at a few years ago, I was laid off from in corporate cutbacks.

I turned 39 this month, and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up.  I'd go back to school, but I don't even know what to take that I could make into a career and enjoy.  So I sit here at my desk wondering how I'm going to survive our corporate year end covering three jobs on what pretty much amounts to a part-time salary.

But on a happier note for anyone still interested in Fallen Earth RP updates, Vorela and Robert Angus had a baby boy on April 7.  Arwin (pronounced Arron) MacAngus came into the world with his mom's blue hair.  My V is a mommy, and it suits her so very well.

I want to wish all of you a wonderful holiday season and a very merry Christmas!  Thank you for being the fantastic people you are!  I hope 2012 is a great year for each and every one of you!

For those of you no longer playing Fallen Earth but still wondering, Zero Chance and Hekate Jones finally had their baby!  December 11 saw the birth of their beautiful, healthy son, Jericho Chance.  Mom and baby are doing well, despite losing their home a week before in the razing of Hope Springs.  And Dad is working hard to rebuild the town and their home after resuming the mantle of Mayor of Hope Springs.

This Fall saw big changes for Vorela as well, including patching to the Iron Sights Motorcycle Club and getting engaged to the club's president, Robert Angus.  But in even bigger news, Rob and V finally announced their big secret to the ISMC and friends last night.  They're expecting a baby as well!  Now they really need to start planning their handfasting for early in the new year.

In all of my years of roleplaying, I've never RP'd pregancies and babies, though I've RP'd characters who were hoping for that miracle as part of their stories.  I only had one character who had a young child, and the child was never RP'd other than in passing conversation.  Heck, during my earliest RP years I used to even roll my eyes at others who were RPing it, thinking it was lame.  So to me it was kind of funny that for a few weeks I had both of my girls expecting at the same time.  It wasn't really planned to be that way, just how the dice landed on a casual toss for Vorela (the first and only time I've ever rolled 100/100, too).  But that's kind of how life is.  Unexpected.

I can only imagine that if Rob and V have a son as well, he and Jericho will be the biggest troublesome twosome the Fallen Earth province has ever seen. hehe

My artwork has been stolen and put up on a wallpaper download site.  It's a few of my older pieces from a couple of years ago, but it's still mine, and it's of my original SWG and CO characters.  And my images were altered to cut off my title bar at the bottom.  I'm just fortunate that I'm not one of the artists who had an entire folder dedicated to their stolen artwork.

Read more here:

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for pointing this out to me.

I just noticed this morning that I'd jumped past 10,000 page views since the last I looked.

All I can say is "woooot!" and thanks! I'm actually quite floored to have reached and exceeded that number.

I've put it off almost as long as I can, but I finally need to make a decision.  I bought a groupon for a wrapped canvas image, so that I could actually hang one of my renders on the wall, but I'm having a heck of a time deciding which one is good enough or would make a nice piece of wall art.

I think I've almost decided on Loneliness, but then I start to second guess myself.  

Does anyone have any other suggestions of which one I should do?

Two years and one hundred deviations submitted.  It's hard to believe I've come up with that many images already when my crazy muse likes to keep disappearing on me for weeks at a time.

I just wanted to give a big thank you to everyone for the help, support and critiques along the way.  You've really helped me turn a hobby into a passion.

Just a little note of little consequence to update my page, seeing as I still have my Christmas journal entry from December 22 up. hehe

My muse has taken a brief vacation again, but hopefully I can wrangle her down soon.  I've also been following up on my promise to myself to spend some time learning Vue, and I've been working my way through several tutorials.  I'm even starting to get a handle on importing Poser figures into Vue.  The challenge is quite enjoyable, and hopefully I'll have something worthy of posting soon.

Still no employment prospects on the horizon, but it's definitely past time to start looking in earnest.  Thank god for an understanding hubby.

Just a quick wish to everyone for the best of the holiday season and a very merry Christmas.

This is the first of a new tradition for my family, with my brother hosting, and it being my niece's first Christmas.  Her first birthday is also just afterwards, so it's going to be a very festive couple of days with lots of food.  And a new diet starting in the new year.

Have a great holiday, and drink responsibly!

There's been one new show that I've been waiting on pins and needles to start this fall, and it's Stargate Universe.  Tonight is the pilot!  Wooooo!

I admit, I'm a Stargate geek.  I recently re-watched all 10 seasons of SG:1 back to back, piling Stargate Atlantis on top of it.  I was sad to see Atlantis cancelled, as I really loved the cast of that show in particular, but I'm anxious to see what the new series holds.

There's been a lot of semi-negative talk about how it's riding on the success of Battlestar Galactica and going for that grittier edge.  I loved BSG as well, so I'm interested to see how it compares.  Will it be the SG feeling we love, an obvious copy of BSG's successful formula, or an interesting blend of it's own.

Being that Stargate is filmed here where I live (and for 15 years now!), our local news was broadcasting live on site from the set, interviewing the cast, etc.  It's really got me pumped and excited, as you can tell.   Good news is they've been filming since February and are currently working on episode 18.  So we'll have a full season of Stargate goodness to look forward to.

I lost my job today.  I knew it was coming, I'd hoped the numbers would pick up, but they didn't.  Getting my paystub yesterday with an extra two-weeks pay on it was kind of a big clue that today would suck hard.  I even had a dream last night that I had gotten laid off.

If anyone in the Coquitlam area of Vancouver is looking for an experienced admin and/or purchaser, I'm available immediately.

I guess on the bright side, I get to spend a lot more time playing in Poser and learning Vue.

Getting a pile of render ideas lined up and hopefully ready to start working on soon.  Just need to finish fleshing out some concepts first.  I should probably write them down before I start forgetting what I wanted to do. hehe  Now if only it wasn't too hot to be upstairs on my computer.

But the plus side of hiding in the basement watching TV to escape the heat is I get to catch up on all the shows and movies I've been meaning to watch.  Think it's time to start a Dr. Who marathon.

Well, my muse has sort of come back.  She's a little hesitant still, but her influence is being felt again.  I'm getting the old creative juices flowing once more, re-inventing old characters for new worlds, and searching my soul for fresh ideas.

Definitely feeling happier again.

Not to mention, she ran off without saying goodbye...  Again...

Sometimes I have so many image ideas in my head, there's not enough time in the world to get them all done (especially considering how slow I am at putting them together).  Then I hit a dry spot where for weeks I can't come up with an idea for the life of me.  And my determination to resume my writing has resulted in a net gain of about two pages to one of my stories.

Time to track down my muse and drag her back kicking and screaming if I have to.  She's not getting away with abandoning me like this!!  *Shake fist*

(And the journal page is bugged so I can't change my artistic mood.  Too funny. )

It's been a little over a year now since I first dove into Poser and began this addiction.  Without a doubt, my work has improved in the time since, and I've learned so much.  But I still look at the work of most every other digital artist and think... holy crap, I really wish I could do that.  The amount of realism and/or beauty some people are able to obtain is stunning, and I haven't a clue how to even think of achieving it.

Obviously the fact that I've never taken an art course in my life doesn't help.  It's just me and my untrained eye for what might look nice when I'm putting it together.  And then there's the hubby's opinion, but "it looks nice" isn't the best constructive criticism.  (Though he has helped make a couple of renders go from okay to so much better. )

I've thought about importing my work into a higher level program to play with better lighting and render engines to achieve the realism I seek, but I keep reading that it's not necessary if you can really get into the Poser lighting and shaders.  It's just that looking at the advanced materials tab makes my eyes cross in immediate confusion and frustration.

But I am setting myself a goal that I will and shall conquer at least the basic A-B-C's of shaders and nodes and getting more out of the inherent tools available in Poser.  And also work on setting up much more artistically interesting camera angles and shots.

And then next year I will worry about Photoshop and postwork, because that is a whole new level of hair-pulling frustration.

I'm writing this at work because I'm bored.  Again.  Always.  I think I'm down to one productive hour of work per day now.  And I'm not the only one trying to fill time, which is even scarier.  Seems sales are just enough to keep everyone in their jobs (after the layoffs earlier in the year), but how long will that last?

Even with taking over duties from two people who were laid off, there's just not enough to do in a day.  I should probably be thankful I'm being paid to sit here and surf the net all day every day, yet I also feel horribly guilty.

In an effort to curb my dependency on the internet to keep me sane every day, I'm going to pull out my old stories and focus on my writing again.  I really loved writing character journals and the distraction they were to my day, and I miss it.  I may or may not post excerpts here, I haven't really decided what I'll do with it all.  And I'm definitely under no illusion that my writing is any good, but I enjoy it very much so who cares if it sucks.

I just have to decide where to start again.