3 posts tagged “work”

As I am often reminded, I am, to be redundant, once again reminded of how hard it is to be a freelance graphic artist, and to expect to keep up in the software needed to do what I do.

I'm trying to figure out how to afford a license for Photoshop CS2, but it runs upwards of $600 or so.  Even the student additions, which I hear have a one year limit or some sort of crippling factor, are about $300, which is still a hefty chunk of change when there's really no guarantee that I'm going to make even half of that investment back.

In fact, since most of my graphic work is considered 'voluntary', there's pretty muchly no chance that I'm going to be able to recoup the costs.

I guess I'm just stuck with my copy of Photoshop 7 for now...  It does what I need, but I'm starting to actually have issues in importing projects from higher versions, and, a lot of the things I read and use, the groups, tutorials, and ideas, are starting to look too foreign for the interface.

And with my mad scientist-like skills, I will bring this blog to life with a telling of events occurring yesterday at my place of business. [mad cackle here, plz]

I manage a restaurant in the Silicon Valley.  It's a little diner and caters to nobody in particular, but mostly teens, mall rats, and soccer moms.  And at lunch time, we deal with a lot of well dressed business clientele.

During the slow times, to no surprise, my employees and I like to chat about the things that all bored people chat about at work-  Television, computers, sports, pirates versus ninjas, the traffic and/or heat of the Bay Area, and of course, the ever popular hypothetical question.

Yesterday's question was 'If you had one superpower of your choosing, what would it be'.

It's taken me twenty years to come up with this, but I've decided:  If I had one superpower, it'd be to force everyone around me to suddenly and spontaneously burst out into synchronized, choreographed dance.  Moonwalker eat your heart out.

So here's where the story gets interesting - We have regulars, and of course, during the slow times, we also talk boredly with them.  One of which happened to mention that he thinks we should dance along to one of the 70's tracks playing through our overhead speakers, to which I promptly informed him of the irony and timing of my own previous conversation.

"Hey, I have a friend who is a lead writer for City of Villians/City of Heros, do you mind if I pitch that to him, he'd get a kick out of it," he said.
"Sure," I replied with some amusement, already expecting never to hear of this again, "Lemme know how that turns out next time you stop by."
"Oh, I'll tell you right now."

The next thing I know, he's whipped out his cell and is on the phone with the aforementioned lead writer, pitching my idea of a superpower of synchronized dance.  Worse still, he suddenly hands me the phone, and I'm rather unexpectedly talking to one of the more powerful people of one of the most popular MMOs.  It was both very exciting, and very flustering.

Of course, the lead mostly chatted about how it'd be hard to implement, because whoever didn't get the power would complain of nerfing and stat balancing, and all the things that the MMOkids like to forum about.  But I didn't care; the fact I was on the phone with such a figure still had me plenty excited.

My only regret is that I forgot to jot down the fellow's name, leaving him only as 'a lead writer for CoV/CoH'.

I'll ask my regular next time he stops by.