Everything seems to be finally in place now. I have just a few more tweaks left to do, mostly browser specific adjustments.
I really don’t have much to report on from over the Summer. I have begun work on another children’s book, which I am hoping to have done by Christmas. I plan to use some of my vacation days to work on it in the near future. I’m also in the market for a new camera; my current one took an unexpected ride in the washing machine today. At least it wasn’t an expensive camera. 
I haven’t actually posted anything on here all summer, but I plan to try and post more often.
I’ve been making some changes lately. I just switched my hosting to something a little simpler and less expensive, and I’ve also ditched my own custom content management system for Wordpress. I figured it just wasn’t worth while continuing work on my own custom CMS when there are plenty better and free alternatives out there. And I figured I may as well join the crowd.
This new site is still a work in progress, so there are a few rough spots left for me to fill in. I got bored of the simplistic white version of my old site fairly quickly, so I dabbled around with several designs until I came to what you see. I would like to rotate the backgound theme with a day/night and seasonal cycle as well. Also, I moved all of my works to several other sites, such as Vimeo and Picasa.
By in large I have nothing really new to report in my life. I’ve regularly been uploading photos from my various activities to my Picasa Web Album and some videos of my niece to Vimeo as well. As for Mistletoe’s Night, it’s now available in its entirety for free as an ebook on Scribd and you can now purchase the paperback of it through Amazon.com, even though it’s still cheaper to buy it straight through Lulu.
In the meantime, I plan to do one more illustrated book about a teddy bear before I take a crack at a writing a graphic novel. But, this time I plan to do the illustrations more traditionally than the 3D rendered look of Mistletoe’s Night.
I finally received my first royalty check from Lulu. It’s not a lot of money, especially considering more than half of it was from direct family members (Mom). But, it certainly helps when you don’t have much to begin with. It will probably cover half my license plate renewal that’s due next month.
Also I recently made an e-book version of Mistletoe’s Night as well. I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do with it though. I’ll probably put it online at some point.
I finally bought myself a decent digital camera. I was getting tired of borrowing my parents camera, which wasn’t a very good camera to begin with. Anyway, its a Canon PowerShot A590 that I got on sale from Newegg.com. It’s not the greatest camera ever made (there is a reason they make thousand dollar cameras), but it seems to have pretty good low-light quality, which is something I have been lacking for a while. Hopefully when it warms up outside I can get out take some pictures soon.
I dumped a few of my scenic photos on Panoramio. Which should be viewable on Google Earth and Google Maps. The photos are mainly from around Wisconsin, with a couple from Chelsea, MI and Schenectady, NY.
I just finished the winter version of my iGoogle Houses Theme. I tried to make it relatively generic in avoiding anything directly related to the holidays, since this theme is supposed to last through February. I’ll need to come up with a Spring theme next and after that I don’t know. I still need to make a theme based off the illustrations from my book.
Later this week I’m going on a ride along with an ambulance service. To date, I’ve never set foot in an ambulance one way or the other. So this should be an eye opening experience for me. I’m still unsure if I want to do this for a living though. Even after two full months of class, I don’t know if I’m going to like this line of work. At the very least I’ve learned a lot.
I had my first EMT-Basic class this evening. This is certainly going to be an interesting experience. The ride along portion of the course alone should be eye opening enough. I never been inside an ambulance one way or an other. But, I am still unsure if I want to do that for a living. At the very least I may learn something new that could come in handy down the road. A little variety in life never hurt.
I went to Gen Con every year through the 90’s up until it was moved out of Milwaukee. I miss it even though I admittedly never took part in the actual gaming that went on there. I did, however, enjoy exploring the exhibit hall and gazing at all the hard-to-find stuff that you couldn’t get anywhere else. I especially liked witnessing some of the upcoming computer games, with some becoming vaporware never to be anything more than a presentation reel. Oh, and the free stuff! I still have a bunch of old FASA posters and trinkets from Gen Con’s of yore.
That was before the Internet came around. Now with video games being announced a year or two in advance accompanied by a website with screen shots and video; seeing these same things live just doesn’t do anything for me anymore. And with the plethora of online stores and eBay, hard-to-find stuff is somewhat less difficult.
If Gen Con can stays afloat, it will be because of the people who go to game with other like minded individuals.
To me, it was a great way to kill a Saturday afternoon. 
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