SilverWordz

Arms up or arms down?

noreply@blogger.com (Silver) — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 16:09:00 +0000

For life's roller coaster.

Its been a decent week. As for the goals, I haven't exercised every day but I did make it to the gym three times this week, which is great because I've been a huge slacker and haven't gone in a couple months. Getting in the grove again. It felt good.

Been trying to be strict with myself on the food I'm eating, and I think I did mostly good.

As for creative projects, I finished another digital painting earlier in the week. This one is of the calico twins taking a nap. I don't like it as much as the LK portrait from last week but its all practice anyway.

The anime goal: Finishing up Mushishi tonight. Actually finished yesterday but I dozed off during the last ep so need to re-watch it. But, watched about 12 eps this week. Anime goal, check. It's a great series too. Gotta figure out what to watch next. Read a few volumes of manga this week as well. Genshiken, which is fantastic geek related stuff. Highly recommended.

My laptops not working at the moment so that may slow the anime down a bit. And make me mad.

The abandoned mama cat, which my neighbors dumped on me was spayed earlier in the week, so the threat of more neighborhood kittens is a thing of the past. When I got home from the store today she was outside being super friendly and rolled over to show me her stitches. I got scared because she appears to have ripped them open a bit. She's now bandaged up in my bathroom again, waiting to go back to see the vet on Monday. Five days too early for stitches to come out.

Weekly blog, check.

~ja ne

Goals.

noreply@blogger.com (Silver) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 20:09:00 +0000

In an effort to get things done, here is my current list of life betterment and short term goals. They're in no particular order.

The first list are time related, I'd like to complete these by the end of the year.

Finish the current chapter of my comic.
Get the first chapter of Panda Panda ready to be published.
Lose 20 pounds via diet and exercise.
Manage to save $1500, which is a lot for me. :)

The rest are ongoing, things I'd like to make a habit of until it's a given.

Complete one creative project a week.
Try one new recipe every week.
Watch at least 5 episode of anime per week.
Complete one hour of exercise a day. Either by going to the gym or playing WiiFit.
Blog at least once a week.

I'll let you know how it goes. Feel free to kick me in the pants when I start to slack off.

~ja ne

Well look at that.

noreply@blogger.com (Silver) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:04:00 +0000

It's been almost a year since I updated here. Time sure does fly, or something. I will spare you the year in review. Rather than focusing on the past, lets just start fresh. And let's try the keep-it-simple-stupid approach as well.

There's a new block to the right above the Links. It's basically a mini blog. Twitter lets me "tweet" little updates on the fly from anywhere using my phone. You can also subscribe to my tweets through Twitter.com if you like and it'll even send my updates to your phone... and hell it can even be used to chat, if so inclined. It's neat, so check it out if you want.

~ja ne

Halloween fun!

noreply@blogger.com (Silver) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 03:46:00 +0000

So here it is, it's me in a panda costume! Look out. And there with me is Joe all dressed up as Mario. Sadly neither Joe or I won the contest at work, but no worries, the day itself was a ton of fun.

I'm also proud to say that my mouse cookies were a big hit. I realized after unveiling them that I never even tested them to see if they tasted good, but everyone said they loved them and I got lots of compliments on how cool looking they were.

If you'd like to see more pics of me and my co-workers all dressed up you can check them out here. The first place winner of the contest was one of our reporters, Gary, who dressed up as a red hatter, which was pretty funny. Gabe and Karen also won trophies for their costumes, which was awesome. Gabe came as the mayor and Karen was a letter from Wheel of Fortune!

Mice Cookies!

noreply@blogger.com (Silver) — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 03:43:00 +0000

Tomorrow is Halloween and we're celebrating at work with a costume contest and a big lunch! It's super exciting since we've not really done anything like this before and I'm excited to be dressing up as a..... you guessed it... a panda.... tune in tomorrow or the next day, and maybe... just maybe, I'll post pics of some Halloween costumes!

But anyway, I just got done making some silly cookies for the party...

.... yes they're mice!!! But they're cookies..... but they're mice....

Okay, I'm out for now, I've got to put some finishing touches on my costume. :)

Portfolio is live.

noreply@blogger.com (Silver) — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 21:37:00 +0000

So I kinda did this on the sly about two months ago, but it's finally complete, my portfolio is now online. You may or may not have noticed the link to the right. If you haven't, well, here's the link again. :)

What will you find there? Basically it's a collection of stuff I've done over the last few years. It's in no way everything I've done, cause that would be ridiculous, but there is a fair example of what I do or am capable of doing.

For the record, the last three years I've worked as an ad designer at a newspaper, so the majority of what's up there is examples of ad design. I'm more pleased with the collection of Special Section covers and some of the other random artwork stuff I've tried to do over the years.

There's also a copy of my resume up there and links to here and off to my webcomic, Panda panda!

Enjoy. :)

Work

noreply@blogger.com (Silver) — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 17:47:00 +0000

Okay here comes one of the promised updates.... sorry I wrote so much!

The year is winding down, which means work is picking up.

I live in an area of Florida which is heavily populated by snowbirds in the winter, and during the summer months some businesses in the area can seriously just grind to a halt.

What is a snowbird you ask?

For those of you lucky enough to not even know what a snowbird is I'll explain. A snowbird is a person whom migrates with the weather, much like birds who go north for the summer, and south for the winter, following the ideal weather. Most snowbirds tend to be elderly.

So these elderly folk live up north usually from April or May until October or November, when they literally flock back to Florida and stay through out the winter. This is not usually a gradual migration, you can pretty much tell the exact moment when they've all returned because the entire IQ of the driving population drops by about 100 points. Traffic becomes slow, and dangerous. And I could go on to many of the other side effects of snowbird season, but well... we don't have all day.

My friend Gabe did a great editorial cartoon for our paper which sums up the snowbird a bit. And yes we had angry snowbirds calling in to complain about the cartoon, because complaining is one of their many hobbies, along with bingo.

What does this have to do with my work? Well this town caters to these people, and they bring in a lot of business, so businesses like to advertise more, which means, since I work at a newspaper, as a graphic designer for advertising, we suddenly get flooded with more ads.

Throw in the holidays, and all the extra holiday sections our paper produces, and that ups the ad count even more.

And as an added bonus, this time of the year seems to be the best time for us to lose employees for one reason or another... so once again this year we are severely understaffed. So in order to get all the ads done, which absolutely has to be done since ads = income for a newspaper, the staff that is around ends up shouldering overtime. A LOT of overtime.

Last year around November, pretty much our entire staff worked 30 days straight with no time off, usually 12-16 hour days, not bothering to take any breaks during the day. It nearly killed us all! :P

Starting the middle of September, we've started to get into this overtime cycle. Most of us have already started giving up days off, and even then we've begun the process of skipping lunch breaks and tacking extra hours onto our day.

So this is one reason I've been too pre-occupied to update here. :)

A whole month.

noreply@blogger.com (Silver) — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 13:14:00 +0000

And then some, since I've updated. Sorry about that, I told you from the begining I was no good at this blogging stuff. And things have just been crazy busy.

So lets see what's been going on... posts to follow. :)

Inchworms... the return?

noreply@blogger.com (Silver) — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 21:17:00 +0000

Could it be the inchworms have returned... in moth form?

This fellow was found hanging out all day on the hallway wall. He was all alone though, perhaps he was the only one that didn't self distruct.

Panda Updates

noreply@blogger.com (Silver) — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 15:05:00 +0000

So holy cow, there's a lot of stuff going on in the world of pandas. And I've missed a lot of news updates. Let's see...

Bai Yun's 4th Cub Arrived

That's right Friday August 3rd Bai Yun gave birth to her fourth panda cub at San Diego Zoo. As of right now they're still not sure if the cub is a girl or a boy. Washington Post Article Here

In related San Diego panda news, Mei Sheng, is celebrating his 4th birthday today, and his little sister Su Lin celebrated her 2nd birthday on August 2nd! Their both Bai Yun's previous cubs.

Panda Poo Souvenirs

It's no joke, China's trying to come up with ways to cut costs and such when caring for pandas, and it turns out their poo can be recycled and made into paper and other materials which are being sold as souvenirs. Full Article Here

Now, I can back this up too. A while back we'd heard something about this and I went looking to see if any thing was available on ebay as a joke. Well we didn't find anything. But then... there we were at the San Diego Zoo... and holy cow... panda poo notebooks.

Panda Attack!

Yeah they're cute, they look cuddly, and overall they are a mild mannered species, but that doesn't change the fact that they are wild animals. A zoo keeper in China was tore up when a panda grabbed his arm which was sticking through the wire cage. The keeper required 100 stitches after the attack. Full article here.

A couple things to note, this young panda was already in a state of distress when the attack happened, he had, within the week, just moved to that location, hadn't been eating since he'd gotten there, and was not accustomed to the zoo keeper that was attacked.

Male panda gives birth to twins!

Poor Jinzhu. Mistaken at birth in 1996 as a male panda, this girl was sent off to Japan in 2000 to mate with another female panda there. After Jinzhu showed absolutely no interest in mating with the other female there, they went in to do artificial insemination and discovered.... Jinzhu was not a male panda either....

At which point specialists believed she was either hermaphroditic or just had under developed sexual organs. It wasn't until 2005, when she was 9 years old that they discovered in an examination that her ovaries were simply in the wrong place. After a two hour operation, and then another two years later, she proudly gave birth to twin girls just two weeks ago.

Poor girl.

And lastly...

Send Chuang Chuang home?

This story bothers me a little bit, and I feel so sorry for Chuang Chuang. The Thai have been trying so hard to get their pair of pandas to successfully mate and produce a cub. I think they've gone a bit to far here and there.

Chuang Chuang has made the news several times in the past on the issue of mating. First they believed he was too heavy to mate, making him lazy and that he would crush his partner. So they put him on a diet, and the whole world heard about it. Then they even staged a panda marriage ceremony.... for real...

And then again they tested out the "panda porn" theory on him, forcing him to watch videos of pandas mating, hoping he would learn a few things, or simply just "get in the mood".

All these attempts failed, and I mean, come on, pandas are known for not being great at mating. So they went with artificial insemination. Which I might add, is widely used at most zoos to help with panda breeding, so in no way should it be a slight to Chuang Chuang.

Apparently the pregnancy has ended as a pseudo pregnancy. So still they will have no baby panda this year. but now talks are going on to discuss whether or not they put Chuang Chuang on another diet, or give up on him completely and send him back to China and basically trade him in for a better model.

Poor Chuang Chuang, hasn't this panda been through enough? I mean, you can't seriously blame a pseudo pregnancy on him as well. For those who don't know, pseudo pregnancies are EXTREMELY common. Two out of the three expected panda births in the US this year ended in pseudos as well.

Come on... give the guy a break. Plus... isn't he married now... are you going to stage a divorce as well?

Full article here.

Inchworms. The end.

noreply@blogger.com (Silver) — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 04:23:00 +0000

Since Friday night, I've only had one or two inchworms show up in the house. Both those on Friday. Not a single one Saturday or Sunday.

As quickly as they came, they simply disappeared all over again. While scrubbing everything up on Saturday, I did find tons of little inchworm corpses, and I'm feeling a lot better without them coming in, and exploding all over the place.

I assume this means that they've all found a little corner of the world to cocoon themselves up in, and shortly we'll be seeing an increase in the moth population. While enjoying the day in my apartment with the windows shades open to let the sunlight in, I did see quite a few butterflies outside... are moths soon to follow?

Now they're gone though, my attention has been brought back to the original cockroach problem. I dunno if they were just afraid of the inchworms and didn't come out for that entire week or maybe I was just so distracted with exploding inchworms I didn't notice them, but they're back. I really can't stand them, but at least they're not falling on me from the ceiling and leaving goo puddles on the walls and floor.

And on that thought, goodnight, and sweet dreams. :)

Clean house and other stuff.

noreply@blogger.com (Silver) — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 15:27:00 +0000

I've been fairly inactive online and with certain creative outlets the last two days. But for good reason, I've been cleaning house. All day yesterday, top to bottom the house has been cleaned. Now I'm not a neat freak, as my mother will tell you, but there's nothing more motivating and good feeling than a nice clean and organized space to mess up all over again.

After the recent bug invasions I really needed to remove the carcasses, scrub the floors and vacuum and organize some spaces that have gotten out of control. And now things are good.

The only truly frustrating aspect of this weekend is coming to the realization that my iPod has definitely played it's last tune. It started acting up a couple weeks ago, and I kinda just let it sit cause I didn't really want to deal with it. Especially since the recommended option was to reformat it. That's such a pain having to reload 40gb of stuff onto it all over again, making sure files are named correctly and blah blah blah...

So I finally sat down and decided just to go ahead with it. Plugging it in, the computer and iTunes wouldn't even recognize it. After reading up on the support site I figured I'd have to force it into disc mode, which I was able to do after some battling, and the use the restore option. Essentially reformatting.

Well it had an error and as much as I've fought with it over the last two days I'm pretty sure its a hardware issue and the little sucker just needs to be lain to rest for all eternity. The other option is to smash it in a fit of rage but well...

Technology is a wonderful thing. And sadly it's still a pretty expensive thing. And even sadder still, with new technology coming out, and the lifespan of current technology.... you constantly have to replace and upgrade things in order to stay up to date. This iPod cost me $400 about 3 years ago. It's not even a video iPod, it's the old standard two tone display 40gb iPod. And it only lasted just under 3 years. That's around 35 cents a day... I guess that's not bad... but when you've not got a lot of money to begin with....

But now I'm looking at paying around $350 for a new fancy shmancy video iPod. I mean I don't have to... I could go iPod-less and probably be okay.... but technology also makes you dependent on it, and I need my tunes, all of them, available to me, at anytime, with just the touch of a button..... :)

Sunflowers.

noreply@blogger.com (Silver) — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 17:31:00 +0000

A while back I decided I was going to try growing some plants. I've never been very good with plants, but I thought why not. I planted basil, tomatoes, rosemary, and sunflowers.

Now the rosemary never even sprouted. The tomatoes came up real nice, then just... well held at where they still are, no where near growing any tomatoes. The basil kinda did the same thing.

Most of my original sunflower sprouts were eaten by something in the neighborhood. The second sprouting did well enough but most didn't get very big, some fell over and died, but one.... one lonely plant grew up. And it flowered the other day!

Inchworms continued....

noreply@blogger.com (Silver) — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 04:52:00 +0000

They're still coming in, and I swear they're getting bigger. See example on the right.

I'm pretty confident now that they're coming in right through the front door. This weekend's plans include fortifying the weather stripping to hopefully cause a cease in the invasion. I've researched into renters rights in Florida to see if I need to pay for the exterminator or if that's my landlords responsibility. Turns out, since I rent half a duplex and not an actual apartment, the bill is on me.

Considering the extremely low amount of money I have right now, I guess I have to live through it for the time being. It's certainly making for interesting stories though.

Like the other day, when I was sitting at the coffee table working on Panda panda and suddenly I feel something... a little tickle.... going across my lower back....

Yup, it was an inchworm...

And then an hour and a half later.... the same thing happened all over again.

Or my current personal favorite... tonight I was sitting on one couch, and Joe was sitting on the other across the room, when suddenly he freaks out and flicks one off his neck.... and it flies across the room before I even know what's going on and lands right on me. Or should I say it bounces off the side of my face and then lands in my lap. And don't worry, that little worm was just fine.

I on the other hand was less then calm.

Oh the memories. Like cleaning up all the self destructions. See example to the left.

RoboPanda has arrived!!

noreply@blogger.com (Silver) — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 02:35:00 +0000

So holy cow! Gabe text messaged me the other night with a picture he had taken at Walmart of the one, the only, RoboPanda. I couldn't believe it, but after a quick trip to confirm with my own eyes, there he was on the shelf, looking back at me... with those big, cute, glowing blue eyes.

Okay, so the eyes weren't glowing, but man was he awesome. And with an awesome price tag of $150, so for now, I had to leave him behind on the shelf. But I was amazed to see him there since the company website had said they weren't hitting shelves until October.

He's bigger than I had imagined he would be, but seeing him in person confirmed even more how much I really want to bring one home. And hey, feel free to paypal some money to silvrwrdz@aol.com if you want to help him come home that much sooner. ;)

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, see my previous blog post about him here.

Inchworms!!

noreply@blogger.com (Silver) — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 03:22:00 +0000

For those of you who read my delightful story earlier about cockroaches, let me inform you that not only do I currently still have the cockroach problem, but now I'm infested with inchworms.

Yes inchworms.

Over the course of the few days or so, I've removed countless inchworms from my ceiling and walls and relocated them back to the yard where they belong. But there seems to be no end to them, and I have never seen anything like this before. My brief research into the inchworm phenomenon tells me that it should be a temporary problem since they'll be shortly cocooning themselves and turning into moths.

At which point I'm sure I'll have a lovely moth problem on my hands.

I'd also like to add that the inchworms seem to have this annoying habit of self destructing. Yes occasionally one will self destruct into a spatter of brown red goo, either on the wall, or floor. I've never seen this happen but I've come across what was left behind a few times, and it's always a pleasure cleaning that up.

Still investigating the cost of an exterminator.
I may go insane before I'm able to get one in here though.

RoboPanda!

noreply@blogger.com (Silver) — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:28:00 +0000

Oh man, I am so excited. It's RoboPanda!

I read about this almost a year ago, but now he's actually coming. He'll be at Target and Best Buy in October for the low low price of $150.

Look at that adorable little robo face!

Pandas in Albuquerque?

noreply@blogger.com (Silver) — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 04:16:00 +0000

The mayor of Albuquerque is off to China to work out a deal to get them some pandas. A couple interesting points in this article.

1. They talk about the San Diego Zoo, and what it's plans may be once their panda contract is up next year.

And 2. The idea that they may not get a panda from China, but are working out a deal to take one of San Diego's cubs.

I'm quite curious about that actually. Which cub so they have their eyes on, they've currently got two, and another on the way. I would think that China would want the cubs back for breeding, but it's possible to breed them here too. Also, though panda adults mostly live solitary, most young adults outside of China are paired up for life with a mate of sorts. So will this panda remain by itself, or will it be getting a mate? We'll see, we'll see.

The count down is approximately one week until I get to lay my eyes on some pandas!

It's the rainy season.

noreply@blogger.com (Silver) — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 15:11:00 +0000

Florida summer has officially been underway, including daily thunderstorms, and sweltering heat. On some days I get into my car, which feels like an oven, and I remember why it is I don't like Florida. Winters are nice, but summer is hell.

Additionally, because of the heat, and excessive rain these last couple weeks the bugs are out in full force. Or should I say they're in. Cause they're all up in my house making my skin crawl. I'm getting so frustrated.

If you're bug squeamish I suggest you skip the rest of this entry.

First Joe and I noticed a cockroach or two, one night. So we nabbed and flushed them. Then there was a couple more... then a few more... then I got angry and got my insect spray out and sprayed all around the doors, windows, and edges of every room. Suddenly it was like an exodus.

In one night we must have flushed or killed 30 of the little bastards. The next morning I woke up to find 10 more corpses. And they've been steadily on the move since then. It's been two weeks and not a day goes by where I don't find at least 10 corpses, have at least one run across my foot, spot the cats trying to torture one to death, or have a couple run across the wall out from behind furniture.

Pest control is coming on Tuesday to give me an estimate on treating the entire house. Back in the day when I moved in, I had asked my landlord, who lives upstairs from me, if he takes care of pest control. His answer to me, was for me to just get a little boric acid and sprinkle it around behind the couches and stuff..... yeah... so I guess that means he's not going to take care of it himself. While the boric acid is a feasible solution, I'd rather not mess around with insecticides I don't understand.

He will however, be getting a bill.

Hua Mei is a mom again!

noreply@blogger.com (Silver) — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 15:44:00 +0000

This is really awesome news. If you don't know already, Hua Mei was the first panda since 1990 born in the Western Hemisphere (in San Diego, California) to survive past infancy. Her mother, Bai Yun was the first captive bred panda to survive in China, so this is a very special family line.

And Hua Mei just finished up her third successful pregnancy, giving birth to her third set of twins! What an amazing panda! :D

You can read the full story here.

Busy weekend.

noreply@blogger.com (Silver) — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 14:57:00 +0000

My iGoogle page tells me it's 9 days until we head out to San Diego, which means I have 9 days to get as many comic pages as I can done. My goal is to have enough pages to carry my through the vacation and at least a week beyond, so I don't have to immediately worry about building new stuff as soon as I get back. Yeah I could put the comic on hold for a few days while I'm gone, but if I can I'd like to not have to do that.

So the rush started this weekend. I was hoping to get 12 pages done, but I only managed 5. One of them took a bit more work than usual so I don't feel so bad. Not going to say anymore about it cause it's a surprise but if you're reading Panda panda, look forward to this Wednesday's page. It's extra special. :)

The turtle story is in the down swing of winding down. Including today's page there's 5 actual story pages, and then the final interlude. Though I didn't actually get started building next weeks pages, I did get started on my research and scripting for it. I'm gonna try and finalize the scripting today and possibly start building the actual pages tonight.

So that would take care of up to July 28th. I don't get back from San Diego until July 31st... so that's at least 2 more actual days and then a safe zone of possibly 3 more. Five extra days to fill in. I'm tossing around the idea of a behind the scenes thing. But it's really not that exciting. I could jump into the next story, but I haven't planned that out yet. I have ideas but nothing written down.

This weekend was rough but, next weekend I think is going to be really busy, with the comic and packing for the trip. Wish me luck. :)

Fun for work.

noreply@blogger.com (Silver) — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 18:27:00 +0000

Looking for something to kill a little time? Bored with work and need a tiny bit of amusement?

Try these: Destructobot - Roboticon

And yes, I actually built two.

They originally come from the San Jose Mercury News website. I wish I could sit around and create silly stuff like this all day.

Crushing defeat of Turtle.

noreply@blogger.com (Silver) — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 16:04:00 +0000

Today's comic update was the turning point in the story. Hyena drops a rock on unsuspecting turtle. I dreaded posting the page because of all the support the turtle was getting. In talking to friends about it, it feels like I'm killing the shepherdess all over again. Granted this is merely the way the story is supposed to go, there's good reasons for the actions, and in the end the turtle will be fine, but it still feels like I'm being cruel.

When the shepherdess was killed in the first story, I agonized over it too, almost wishing I could re-write it at the last minute and make the world all better again and to keep everyone happy. But though the death in the story makes me very sad as well, it makes the impact of everything that much more strong. The sacrifice she made to protect a friend. The first time I heard the legend it really hit home with me. I may have shed a tear or two, but I'm a sentimental fool. :)

So I hope the readers of Panda panda won't think to harshly of me. I love the turtle too!

Harry Potter 5.

noreply@blogger.com (Silver) — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 15:01:00 +0000

Went to see Harry Potter 5 last night. It was pretty damn cool. Some day I'll actually sit down and read the books. :P

I found it neat that they threw in flashbacks from previous movies, where it clearly shows how young the kids were. They've really grown. Just another reminder of the passing of time. The whole movie had a very dark cast to it, which is fitting considering how serious the story line has gotten. Again, I haven't read the books beyond 2 so, though I do know a few things coming up, for the most part I'm in the dark about what happens.

Well that's about it for now. :)

Soooo sleepy.

noreply@blogger.com (Silver) — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 13:23:00 +0000

So tired today. I meant to go to bed early but I got caught up working on getting the site linked properly and the splash page up so it's actually accessible. As usual I got caught up and didn't get to bed until around 2am. Shame on me.