Thursday, November 06, 2014

Making Progress


I would definitely call this making progress – more or less keeping up on both NaBloPoMo and the black-and-white photo challenge! I’ll take what I can get, thank you.

BW3_Spiral
BW#3 - Spiral

Wednesday, November 05, 2014

Pass The Catch-Up, part 2 (Best-Laid Plans)


Hey, still with me? Cool. Now where was I?

So, I was laid off back in 2012, and have all this time on my hands. What to do, what to do…

My plan before shit went down was to work on my photography education part-time, and then after that find a job as a photographer someplace that I could work on the side while I continue doing the software engineering thing during the week. OK, so that didn’t quite go as planned.

The lay-off did give me the opportunity to go to photo school full-time, which I did. What an experience that was! The staff is all great there, and the 7 of us in the full-time program starting that January learned quite a bit and had a lot of fun in the process. I made some awesome friends there, and still keep in contact with a certain few of them. Some of our group has gone on to become outstanding photographers and artists.

As for me, I do have my own on-the-side photography biz, but no business or marketing savvy whatsoever (ugh!) And I learned that photography is not a bill-paying profession by any stretch.
So while I still struggle to make ends meet (and more often than not, the ends aren’t even in the same county) at least I now have a cool hobby-job on the side that will sometimes earn a little mad money for things.

Speaking of photography, here is the second installment of the black-and-white challenge. Meet Emma, the adorable (and often hellacious) kitty who resides with my niece Teri and her husband.

Meow
BW #2 - Meow

Tuesday, November 04, 2014

Tagged


BW #1
BW #1

We interrupt our regularly-scheduled blog post to bring you – The Black and White Challenge!

I was tagged the other day by my friend Carol (of Carol's Little World fame) to post five black-and-white images in five days. Today is the first day of my participation in said challenge, and so now here we go. I will intersperse these with my regular posts, if only to add some visual appeal to what is already awesomeness.

As part of this, I was supposedly going to tag a person each day to join in the challenge, but I am going to pass on that part. No reason, just going to skip that.

Call me a non-conformist.

Monday, November 03, 2014

Pass The Catch-Up, part 1 (“Dammit, I Really Needed That Money!”)

Day 2, biotches! Technically it’s day 3, but I’m hoping to post again tonight, so close enough and get over it!

I alluded to a number of changes that have taken place over the past couple of years, so I thought I would start by getting you up-to-speed as to what’s been going on. I could do this as a single, longer post, but instead I will give you a bit at a time. That way you don’t go into information overload, and I get to stretch things out a bit,and get more for my NaBloPoMo dollar.

In January, 2012 I was laid-off from my 18-year gig at Stratus Technologies. Apparently, my job function as a System Certification Engineer could be performed more cost-effectively if outsourced to another company, and all that blah, blah, blah. Honesty, I wasn’t too offended at the time because for one thing, I was definitely feeling burnt-out and wanted a change. For another, I had wanted to begin pursuing photography as more than just a hobby, and had enrolled as a part-time student at the Boston University Center for Digital Imaging Arts. As it turns out, the lay-off gave me the opportunity to attend full-time and would be able to complete my studies in only nine months, instead of eighteen. More on that in a later post.

While I felt I left Stratus on good terms, I have to admit that even now I harbor a small amount of resentment over the lay-off, because dammit – I needed that money, and still do! Yeah I know it can’t all be about the money, but try telling that to the mortgage company, the utility companies, and the lenders of your 20-year old student loans. And – as I have learned over the past two-and-a-half-years – the longer you are out of the computer industry, the harder it is to get back in because it is a constantly-changing, continually-moving target. Sure I wanted out of the industry, but I wanted a lot more say of when that took place, and a lot more control over the pacing of the transition.

But everything happens for a reason…

Saturday, November 01, 2014

And Here We Go Again

Well gang – another November, another NaBloPoMo. After the 1-day (cough) blogfest from 2012, I took last year off.

The past couple of years saw huge changes, so there will be plenty to write about over the coming days, but not tonight. I just got back from stuffing myself full of pasta at Pizzaland in Oneonta, NY (yes, New York – that is one of the changes). I’m full to bursting, and very tired at the moment, so tonight’s introductory post will be quite brief.

Happy November 1, Happy NaBloPoMo, and happy blogging!