Month: November 2022

  • Thanksgiving

    Made it to another Thanksgiving – yay me!

    Dinner tonight was a Prime Rib done sous vide, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, fresh dinner rolls, and a chocolate silk pie.

    The prime rib itself was a 5-pounder, so I have plenty left over for dinner tomorrow and some sandwiches over the weekend. 🙂

    Listening to "A Thousand Lives" by At 1980
  • Photoshop

    I bought my first copy of Photoshop about thirty years ago this month… Which seems like an insanely long time ago.

    Photoshop 2.5.1 from 1992… Was about $500 back then.

    I ran Photoshop 2.5 on my Powerbook 165C back in the day. It was remarkably similar to Deluxe Paint IV, which I ran on my Amiga during the same time period, so for me it was just learning the tools of the trade on a different hardware platform.

    For the most part my early Photoshop expenses were just ‘the cost of doing business’; I needed to learn the software, and the software was expensive… I wouldn’t really make any money off of Photoshop until 1996, and Photoshop 4.0, where I started making spare cash designing web sites and UIs for various software projects.

    Photoshop 4.0.1 from 1996… This was also about $500.

    The above screen shot is from the installed version of 4.0.1 on my Powerbook G3 Pismo, which dual-boots MacOS 9.2.2 and OSX public beta.

    By the time Y2K rolled around I started running Photoshop on PC hardware, so most of the newer versions in my collection are for Windows…

    Photoshop 6 was 2000, Photoshop 7 was 2002, and CS3 was 2007…

    I used PS7 for like five years before moving to CS3, and then used CS3 up until CS6 in 2012 – which is when Adobe went to the subscription model. I have a license for CS6, which was the last non-subscription version to be offered, but for the most part I’ve been on the yearly plan since CC (Creative Cloud) in 2013.

    Another long, strange trip I guess. 🙂

    Listening to "Secrets of Hiroshi" by Futurecop!
  • Government efficiency

    Back on July 4th I sent off a request to the SSA for an itemized list of where I’ve worked and when – mostly just to keep the dates and places in my memoirs straight.

    Today they got around to charging me the $92 fee for the service, so I may have a mere 120 more days to wait for this information.

    Again, dealing with the government is good for you – it asks you to slow down and take it easy, because getting uptight over it taking a year to do something that should take ten minutes won’t change anything but your heart-rate. 🙂

    Listening to "Innocence" by Morgan Willis
  • Feeling better – mostly

    So, here I am a bit over a week from when I came down with the 2022 model year of the flu – and I’m pretty much over it I think.

    This year’s iteration of the flu was definitely something special, and this was the sickest I think I’ve ever been with it… Luckily it kinda bounced between my sinuses and my throat and never really got into my lungs, so the coughing has been merely annoying.

    My treatment regimen was the usual; sleep, hot showers, orange juice, Theraflu, cream of chicken soup, and any time I felt up to it – something cataclysmically spicy. And I worked from home through the whole ordeal, so I didn’t miss any work and nothing fell too far behind.

    I did manage to score the bonus sinus infection, so I’m on a week-long course of Doxycycline to clear that up.

    I’m pondering taking a few sick days though simply to rest a bit. That and the Doxycycline makes me a bit sick to my stomach…

    Listening to "86'" by Kalax
  • Ill

    It’s been a while, February 2021 in fact, since my last tussle with a yearly flu bug. But yesterday I finally got my ticket punched by this year’s variant.

    Yesterday by lunchtime it was a scratchy throat and a slight fever, today it’s an epic sinus headache, shallow cough, fever, chills, muscle aches – the works.

    I’m pushing Theraflu and liquids, downing lots of V8, and enjoying the occasional hot shower with one of those Vicks “VapoShower” tablets which makes my shower into a eucalyptus sauna. I’ve been napping a lot as well, which always helps.

    I tend to eat a lot of epically hot / spicy food when I’m ill, and today for lunch I had a Wendy’s chili with extra hot sauce and a few of their spicy chicken nuggets with their delicious Ghost Pepper Ranch sauce…

    En garde flu bug!

    Outside of that though, my breathing is fine and my blood/oxygen is fine, so I doubt it’s the mysterious virus of unknown origin and is probably just a run of the mill flu bug.

    I’ll be over it soon enough, and once again earn my immunity to the yearly creepy crawly.

    Listening to "Neon Blood" by Kalax