Bring out the GIMP

I've been mocking up different site designs for a site I'm working on and I got very tired of doing it in HTML and CSS. I was spending quite a bit of time getting all the HTML quirks worked out, only to decide that it wasn't really the design I wanted. After trying a few things, I ended up settling on GIMP.

GIMP is an image manipulation program similar to Photoshop. Unlike Photoshop, GIMP is open-source and completely free. It has a huge number of features and is an incredible program for manipulating multi-layered images. Similarly to Photoshop, GIMP is not really built for the novice graphics designer. I've spent more time than I care to think about in the last week or two trying to figure out how to make it do what I want. Fortunately, the more I learn about it, the faster I pick up new techniques. I think I'm finally to the steep part of the learning curve and suddenly I'm loving the program. I created an entirely new site design in a couple hours while sitting in Beaners coffee shop (which is another story entirely).

For those interested in learning more about GIMP, you can head over to the site at http://www.gimp.org/. They have some very nice tutorials which will teach you some of what you want to know. My only complaint is that they don't do a great job of teaching some of the fundamental abstract concepts which would make understanding the system somewhat easier.

Vacation

In just under a week I leave for Florida to see Dave and Susan. I'll be spending a full week down there which marks the first time in recent history that I've take a full week of vacation from work and went somewhere fun. It's been awhile since I've spent significant time with Dave and Susan and I'm really looking forward to hanging out with them.

I'm planning a few tentative activities including spending a couple days in the Florida Keys. One of the nice things about a vacation with Dave & Susan is that they're not the "we have to be constantly moving and doing stuff" type of vacationers. There should be plenty of time for just chilling out (or perhaps sweating out given Florida weather). I'm definitely looking forward to it.

The really odd part for me is that I'm going to come back, work one week, and then move over to the new job. When I accepted the job a month seemed like a long time. Now that it's almost here, it seems time is accelerating. The only logical answer that I'm aware of is that I'm now moving at a slower speed in the physical plane (apparently the sum of your motion through space and your movement through time totals to the speed of light - so if everyone else is moving faster than I am, time is moving more quickly). On that random note, I'm off to the gym.

New Job

It's been an interesting couple weeks as I've been talking about and considering taking a new job. I'm staying with the same company but I'll be moving over to the corporate office (which is located a couple miles closer to my house). I accepted the job earlier this week and effective the middle of next month I'll be the IT Operations Manager at corporate.

There are some exciting things going on at corporate and I'm looking forward to the new gig. It's an excellent opportunity and I'm pretty excited but at the same time it's weird to be moving. I've been working in my current location, in one capacity or another, for a decade now. Even though I'm sticking with the same company, it's going to be a weird transition. On the plus side, I already know many of the people at the corporate office which should make the transition a bit easier.