Mark Bult Design: San Francisco, CA, Established 1988

What I've been doing

You may envy me that I don't have a job these days, but I'm certainly occupying my days (and nights) with plenty of stuff, and not all of it is necessarily fun stuff. Here's what I've been up to (in no particular order) since my last list on February 13.

• Broke my shoulder.
• Finally filed for unemployment, at Anne's insistance.
• Updated my résumé for the first time in several years.
• Compiled receipts, 1040s, etc. for our 2007 taxes.
• Washed the cat, with Velma's help.
• Went to numerous Kaiser appointments with physician's assistants, physical therapists, and doctors.
• Helped Velma in the garden, cleaning up after her planting frenzy, cutting some ivy and weeds, planting some wildflower seeds.
• Did some laundry.
• Swept the driveway and pulled some weeds in front of the flat.
• Organized one of the shelf racks in the garage.
• Washed a lot of dishes.
• Called the IRS. Fun ensued.
• Stayed up really late, got up really late.
• Did a lot of miniscule but time-consuming paperwork.
• Read the meter.
• Swept the kitchen a bunch.
• Paid bills.
• Went to our storage facility, broke off the lock we lost the key to, went and bought a new lock, gathered a box of stuff I wanted and a toboggan Velma wanted.
• Went to Wondercon, with a broken shoulder, without Yennej.
• Dropped in on the Peninsula Conservation Center to visit with some of the people I used to work with.
• Read a lot of stuff on Wikipedia, including the entries on Nikola Tesla, Ruđer Bošković, the 2004 Beslan massacre, Living Loud, Bob Daisley, Ozzy Osbourne, and Randy Rhoads.
• Updated Wikipedia's pages on Adam Werbach and Bob Daisley.
• Met with Phu and her mentee to tell her about the business of being a graphic designer.
• Resized an ad for the Jefferson City Irregulars.
• Wrote reviews of several DVDs (to be posted later).
• Made a list of all the books that have been published about Ozzy Osbourne, with notes on the ones I own (to be posted later).
• Bought a few valuable bootlegs.
• Bought some very old and hard-to-find tour programs.
• Bought some out-of-print vinyl.
• Tried to find pictures of keyboardist Lindsay Bridgewater (to no avail).
• Researched photographer Fin Costello.
• Organized our stamps (I know that sounds lame, but we have a lot of random 3¢, 10¢, 50¢, and 78¢ stamps, so it took 30 minutes!).
• Read a lot of newspaper reports and blog commentary about the Pacific Lumber Company bankruptcy case.
• Bought some boxes to organize one of my CD collections.
• Started organizing my Ozzy collection (books, records, CDs, DVDs, article clippings, etc.).
• Further organized and annotated my Heinlein collection.
• Started re-reading The Moon is a Harsh Mistress which I haven't read since I was about 18.
• Opened an Amazon Seller account and listed some books, magazines, and DVDs I don't want anymore.
• Listed most of my design library on Shelfari and invited some friends to try out the site.
• Reorganized some bookshelves.
• Backed up Velma's computer and upgraded the OS to Leopard.
• Ripped a few CDs to our iTunes master library.
• Attended Adam Werbach's speech at the Commonwealth Club.
• Attended Save the Redwood League's 90th birthday event at the San Francisco Botanical Garden.
• Surprised Velma and my mom by taking them to Cirque du Soleil.
• Got fairly feathered at the SF Pillow Fight Club on V-Day.
• Went to a party with old middle school chums.
• Further updated my master password list of all my online accounts.
• Went shopping for flea remedies (see "Washed the cat," above).
• Listened to KQED a lot, but not enough.
• Performed proscribed physical therapy shoulder exercises once or twice a day.
• Watched a lot of Ozzy and Randy Rhoads videos on YouTube.
• Discovered and downloaded a bunch of Ozzy and Randy Rhoads bootlegs.
• Designed several iterations of a Product Detail Page for the secret project.
• Performed competitive analysis for the secret project.
• Continued to consolidate data from three computers on one.
• Installed another HD in my computer that I'd had lying around for two months (had to wait until I needed to restart).
• Tried out Firefox 3 Beta.
• Met with some former colleagues at CNET Networks.
• Tried to figure out why one of my two Dell monitors died suddenly.
• Continued research on a very long article I've been writing for over five years.
• Made some design tweaks to a booklet I made last year for the Save the Redwoods League titled "The Redwood Highway: Sights & Experiences Between Southern Humboldt & Crescent City."
• Took photos on several Photo Days around various parts of the City.
• Organized some of my digital assets.
• Downloaded some software to try.
• Continued to lose the war on fight spam.
• Ate a lot of cookies.
• Organized and consolidated all my computer/electronics hardware (misc. parts, cables, cards, HDs, etc.) and got rid of a bunch (donating them to Goodwill or recycling them via Green Citizen).
• Finally figured out a way to run multiple copies of the same version of Firefox.
• Wrote a a how-to article about the above Firefox problem/solution.
• Went to three different stores trying to buy CleanWell natural antibacterial hand soap.
• Did some digital imaging pre-visualizations for an animation sequence for my friend Holly's latest documentary, about the use Agent Orange in Vietnam.
• Read more of the magazines that have been piling up for 9 months.
• Read a lot of design blogs.

Labels: misc. personal

Posted by espd at 4:25 PM | 
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