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I went to N'Awlins yesterday. (New Orleans, for the rest of you.) No particular reason, just to shop, play some slots, eat a good meal. Vlad and Mike took the day off; Dave's off days are Thursday and Friday, so he was already available. Went over to Tower Records; I found some really obscure DVDs I've been looking for, like "The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao," one of my favorite movies from childhood, and "Lair of the White Worm," a campy horror film, one of Hugh Grant's earlier films. :) I also got a great book on Adobe Photoshop. I have half a dozen books on Photoshop, but I've yet to find the one that appeals to my style of learning, being very visual, very experiential. I think I found one, finally. I've really refined my knowledge just watching our graphic artists at work and asking questions during slack times. Todd was really nice when I asked what techniques he might use to make a photo look like a pencil sketch (and do a good job of it, that is--I know how to use filters, but I haven't known how to fine-tune the result), and I learned a tremendous amount in five minutes!

Anyway, so I was playing on my laptop on the trip up, working on a new look for my web page...for the first time in months, I was inspired, on fire! Of course, my battery died and we didn't bring the transformer so I could plug in! :) So when we got back from N'Awlins, I ended up staying up most of the night in a creative heat! I finished the opening page...lots of DHTML pyrotechnics behind the scenes, but the overall look is very clean, very spare.

I'm bursting with Christmas spirit. I can tell ya'll over here (because this isn't a very well-known link) that among other gifts, I got Mike and Vlad a scooter. It's actually kind of a group gift from me. Everyone wants to play with a scooter, but no one wants to cop to it. Of course, when we were at Sharper Image, Mike and Vlad were all over the scooters, and at Walmart the previous day, the guys found "light-up" replacement wheels for scooters...but no one will actually say, "I'd like a scooter for Christmas," Too dignified. ::grin::

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There isn't a "Live Journal" indicator for my mood at the moment: ::exasperated::

The project I've been working on has been...a moving target. The Big 3 auto maker hadn't nailed down specifications yet when this course was put on an accelerated schedule. Names of parts were still changing. Descriptions of how things work were being changed up to a week before we started final programming. The course looks great, but still need some major tweaks to make it technically correct according to the latest and greatest specs. The expert from the other office has an idea of how he wants the course to look, but isn't able to articulate it to us, and his vision differs sharply from what the reviewers want. It's like, "Make up your minds among yourselves first. Then just tell us what you want us to do. Tell us what specific changes we can perform to make things the way you want them to be."