Yup... Even been allowed to drool a little now... Been allowed to touch the mouse, too... Other than that... Nothing lol. But, watching hubby install programs... WOW. She is FAST! The entire adobe creative suite 4 took only 7 minutes... On my old machine - 30! Don't get me started with how long on some other machines I've had to struggle to work with over the past year! We even discovered how to change all the wicked cool lighting effects - not just on the tower, but keyboard & mouse, too! Had a great 15 minutes just playing with that lol. But right now, hubby is using it to try to hunt up drivers to fix a dinosaur of a laptop that belongs to housemate's sister... Long story, but in trying to fix problems, he created more (housemate, not hubby). After over an hour of hubby getting frustrated by drivers not installing, he FINALLY tells me the name of the "missing" file... Microsoft.net. Yep... That lappy is one big headache. I had a computer I had to do a complete wipe of the HD before and had XP... I had problems with Microsoft.net file missing. In my case, once I fixed it, it just refused to work whenever I tried to install office. Dunno why... But I finally gave up, set office aside (and lost the $$ I spent on it cus the disc ended up damaged... Note to all of you... Do NOT set cd's, dvd's, or the like on top of a hot heater....). Anyways, letting hubby do his best to fix that stupid laptop... And trying NOT to shove him outta my chair so I can see how fast Vue flies!

The Alien has landed!!! She's making herself at home on my desk... Hubby finished hooking up cords (that was hilarious to watch) and is now putting all the things I need on it... AVG, Vue, Poser, Firefox, etc. No, I haven't gotten to touch her yet... At least hubby let me cut the tape to get her out of her "spaceship" lol. FedEx guy thought she was a new skateboard and couldn't figure out why she was so heavy lol! Soon, I will get to play! What's amazing is after the first reboot, the keyboard glow changed color from blue to red to match the glow on the tower! WOW! Yes, pics will be forthcoming, once I allow hubby to put iTunes on her and can get the pics off my phone! She's soooooo beautiful... In a strange way! Lol. She even came with her own alienhead mousepad! eyes huge. I was glad to see they even threw in the Win7 disk! Oops, he needs help again lol....

My wait will be over today!!! Or it better be, else heads will roll at fed ex, cus we scheduled the delivery for today ( it was supposed to arrive Tuesday, but we were 300+ miles away)... I'm now doing everything I can not to jump outta my skin with excitement! Cleaning house, unpacking and putting away the truck-load of stuff we had in storage at my parents...(amazing how much crap one can accumulate!)... bouncie bouncie BOUNCIE-THUD! .... Rubs top of head. Mmm, maybe shouldn't bouncie so much? Lol. Ok, enough fooling around.... Back to dealing with unpacking/cleaning while I wait (im)patiently!

chuckles lucky me... I have to wait another week for the computer that can run it! But yes, I'm lucky! I have to pay hubby back for the computer over time, though lol. But I'm soooo excited! I cant stop bouncing! Been running 7 infinite for soooo long and drooling over the new versions... And all that they can do :). I finally get to play with them! Yay!!!!!! And now i'll have a computer that can run vue without me ripping my hair out two minutes after the program FINALLY loads! Ahhhh, bliss :)

I'm so happy right now!!! No, computer hasn't arrived.... But vue 9.5 infinite just arrived!!!!!! Hubby tortured me for several looooong minutes, taking his time opening the box, then the case, reading EVERYTHING... And then sitting there with it in his lap before FINALLY handing the case over to me.... I can't stop hugging it! :)

giggles  Sounds like your wife is like my hubby, patient overall =D

OC tendencies... i'm that way without having been in the military (they told me i was TOO SHORT!)... but I am always cleaning the house - not from germ-phobias, but because I like things to be in their place. My craft area tends to be more of a mess than any other place, only because I always have a project or two on my work table!  But, the rest of the area - everything neat and tidy and in its place.

 Yards... agh, don't get me STARTED on that!  We're renting, and so we're only allowed to do soooo much... but trying to get the two men who live here to MOW!  yeesh. (to give them credit, though, the days they manage to have free it tends to rain...) Every time I walk the dog or step outside for anything, I'm pulling up some weed or another out of the few flower beds here.  

Unfortunately, that OC tendency doesn't always extend to finishing something in a timely manner... I've had to teach myself to let that one go, because my health is always fluctuating (bad days, good days, etc).  If I have an actual deadline, however, health be darned... I'm gonna finish it on time.  I'm also the one who ends up showing up for appointments up to an hour early.  (Dad was military, and boy howdy if us kids were late for ANYTHING)

Your yard sounds like its coming along beautifully, though... pics when its done?? =D

As for your daughter... mine is turning 14 this year... actually in less than a month, and according to my mom, has turned into the moodiest thing on the face of the planet.  You and your daughter may not get along very well right now... but keep trying.  Girls NEED their fathers even when they refuse to admit it.  My own teen years, I rejected my dad so often I'm pretty sure he was afraid he'd never be close to me again... but I settled down eventually, and he's still one of my favorite people on the planet - and he will never stop being my super-hero.  all i can say is... just keep reminding her no matter what's going on in her life, you love her no matter what and you'll always be there for her - and follow through with it. =D  it'll pay off in the long run.  Of my parents, my dad was always the one I could count on to keep an even head, no matter how angry he was at my actions.  my mom tended to turn into a banshee.. "you... WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?! HOW DARE YOU!" while my dad would (USUALLY) sigh, tell me he'd talk to me in a short while, go out and mow some grass or whatever else he could do to calm himself, and then he'd come back and sit and discuss what was going on.  Not to say he's perfect... he's as apt to roar as be calm over something... but he always TRIES, and now that I'm older, I have to appreciate that.  My mom & I are like oil & water - probably because we're so much alike that we dislike the same traits in each other!  (You're a BEECH!  no, YOU'RE the beech!  LOL)

I think (changing subject) one of the reasons I have fallen in love with this area is the fluctuating temps - you can have a few days of intense heat, and then it breaks, and like today, chilly enough I have the windows closed and am thinking of dragging out a pair of sweat pants!  At my mom's, its much like there in Atlanta... starting in early June, the heat rises and doesn't ever seem to go away... until the beginning of october!  Last summer was one of the most miserable heat-wise I have lived through... after having lived in Alaska for almost 6 years straight, stepping off the plane into a heat index of 115... i was ready to run back inside the terminal and HIDE.  WIthin the first few days at my parents, I had suffered severe heat exhaustion, not once, but several times.. and then came the sunburns.  And all that was WITH my parents have a pool, and me being in it ... a LOT.  We also had A/C on the school bus we were living on... in?  and it cracked me up how often people would "stop by" to "talk".  The main house didn't have A/C, but my parents & bro realized that it would take my husband a while to adapt (he's lived in Alaska all his life...) - but it wasn't HIM who needed the A/C... it was ME LOL.  That first week was sooooo horrible for me.  Recovering from a cold I caught the day before we left, coupled with a severe temperature difference (it was 60 degrees when we left alaska...), excitement from the move, spending time with not only my daughter, but our young cousin as well - and if 1 child has a ton of energy, two has two thousand time that... 

What's kind of ironic is I lived in Athens, GA, for a while in my early twenties.  The heat never fazed me... now, any time the temps soar above about 86 or 87, I have to be extremely careful, or I end up with heat exhaustion and sickness.  Hubby just goes "I'm thawing out still!"  

Evenings and early mornings are best for yard work on hot summer days ;)  Be careful and don't go all ninja on the yard! grins

Wow, that's quite a list! I'll have to check them out! As for having a knack.... I dunno about that. I'm just very VERY stubborn, and when I really want to do something, or learn something, I'm like a gator clamped down on it; I refuse to let it go! I feel that a day where I haven't learned SOMETHING new is a wasted day. My motto is, Life is growth, Learning is growth, without learning and growing there is no life. What I learn could be something as simple as a new technique to remove stains, or as complicated as, say, vectors in Photoshop lol. Sometimes, the new thing takes me by surprise - a reference said on a tv show that I look up, or an "old-timer" telling me some folk wisdom (like spring thunderstorms wake up the snakes - dunno how true that one is, but sounds good to me!). Other times I seek out the knowledge. My family calls me the queen of useless trivia... But they're quick to ask me questions on just about any subject matter. The problem for me is I cannot seem to stay focused on any one thing for long - the exception being computer graphics & art. I "hop" from one project or learning experience to the next, usually with little rhyme or reason behind it. It's frustrating at times, but on this path of self-learning, I've picked up quite a few "unusual" skills or bits of knowledge. I also have the tendency to take a kid, find out what they're interested in, and then we learn whatever it is together. Right now, my housemate's daughter visits twice a week, and we spend time exploring and learning local plants. I'm working on compiling a picture "book" for kids of local plants (with pics we take together) as we discover them and learn what they are. I've a feeling that even long after she's tired of this project, I'll continue on. I have a hundred different projects I work on at any given time, in various stages of completion. Again, that focus thing.... Lol. It used to drive hubby nuts, as he's one of those who starts & finishes something in somewhat of a timely manner, but he's learned - this is just the way I am, and no amount of complaining about it is going to change that fact! As of right now, I have 4 windchimes I'm in the process of making, two sets of "fairy wings", two bulletin board systems I'm decorating, a shadow box I need to paint & create artwork for, 4 picture frames I need to repaint & fill with my artwork, a bunch of dried herbs in paper bags I still have to put in glass jars (I make incenses and potpourris, too)... And that's just what i can think of off the top of my head. Yes, I am bipolar, with I believe a bit of ADD thrown in. Combine a manic episode with the ADD and I'm like a bee hopping from flower to flower.... Right now, as I type this, my mind is going over the next step in all those projects and then some, as well as staring out at the clouds, wondering how to recreate them in Vue, watching the birds flitting around, wishing I knew what kinds they were... And a bunch more. Any wonder I'm an insomniac? I can't get my mind to slow down... Lol! I had to be one of the most frustrating people to teach in school.... Unfortunately, darling daughter has inherited all of this; it's one reason she's homeschooled. The school system had no idea how to handle a kid with both brains & a high creativity quotient. Add in the fact that she's a kinetic learner, super-sensitive emotionally, and learns really fast - she'd end up bored to tears, and daydreamed so much she'd lose track of time & place. She does a full day's schoolwork now in two or three hours, tops - and makes straight A's. All because at home, we work WITH her "proclivities" instead of fighting them. Once I have custody of her again full-time (hopefully this fall, but my mom keeps fighting me on it with some lame excuse or another), I'm adding in another "class" - poser. :). I want her to learn anything and everything she needs to know, and things she WANTS to know. Erk, I'm rambling again lol. Sorry!!! Ok, maybe not terribly sorry... ;). But, will shush for now, and boot up lappy and go back to watching videos of Vue :). By the time it arrives and computer arrives, I want to be able to have at least a basic knowledge of what's changed between versions and how not only to access them, but USE them. I am so excited!!!!! And hubby has convinced me that when I'm able to, to post one of our wedding pics. He knows how I hate having my pic taken and viewed by others, but as he said, no matter what goes on that day, I will still be the most beautiful bride he's ever seen... Lol! I'm NOT all that! But, he does give me confidence.... And I love him, so I can get past my own self-image and let others see what the camera happens to capture.... Besides, it'll be one of the very few times I let a pic of myself be posted anywhere online! Ok, off to watch vue videos and tutorials :). A million thanks to geek@play for their totally awesome video tuts! Right now, they're keeping me semi-sane while I wait....

grins I, too, but books more than anything else to expand my learning... The classes were "required" for voc rehab as part of my "plan". I think they really wanted to see what I actually knew how to do in Photoshop - and as they had bought the creative suite 4 for me, they wanted to make sure I could USE it lol. InDesign class (and the UVMapper 6 week course) were the only two where I didn't have much, if any, prior knowledge going in. In both the photoshop & InDesign classes, I ended up helping the professor with the students who were struggling. I still have trouble with vectors, but they no longer fill me with fear lol. After those classes, they purchased the entire series of Adobe's Classroom in a Book to match the software that came in the CS bundle. I've been slowly (very slowly) working my way through those. It didn't help that I accidentally left the entire series in storage at my parents this past summer... But, next weekend, we'll be getting them along with all the other stuff we had to leave there (my vue book, my poser book, books on lighting, etc lol). One of my favorite books I found just before we left alaska and bought - 100% Photoshop - ended up getting so damaged last summer I have to replace it :( - note to self, don't let daughter near my books when I'm working through them with a tall glass of grape juice.... I dunno how she did it, but 90% of the pages are stuck together or illegible. Quite depressing, but I will get it replaced lol. What's your current favorite (educational) book?

Lol. Only ended up with 4... I love to cook, so no big deal there. As long as others do the dishes! Hehehe. I actually got asked by security in walmart once what I was doing crouching down and taking pics of their floors and the metal on the shelves! I explained as best as I could, but he still went away with a perplexed look on his face! I've been told time and again I need to figure out a way to explain what I do in two or three short sentences, and in basic English lol. Yeah, like I can manage THAT! I will, one day, compile a newbies guide to the computer graphics and arts world, complete with a lexicon of the terms we use. Problem is, the more -I- learn, the more I realize how little I actually know. It took me months and switching case workers when I was working through vocational rehab to get them to understand. It finally involved my second case worker coming to my house and watching me work, asking questions along the way before she grasped it. After that, though, they stopped trying to "pigeon-hole" me, and created a whole new category for me. instead of me job-shadowing in places I had little interest in and trying to get me to sell my crafts at bazaars, they started steering me towards starting my own one-woman company. They had never come across someone like myself before - due to my particular "problems", I don't function well in public settings. But when they ran all kinds of tests on me, they were amazed at what all I could do skill-wise. What was so funny to me was the career aptitude test I took... I scored extremely high in everything from law to handyman stuff and then some. But my top two scores were in art and, strangely, botany & horticulture. That last one cracked me up, cus I tend to kill plants when I try to grow them! They were also amazed at what I could do even back then, with only a year of poser under my belt, and just having gotten vue 6 esprit.... And I was completely self-taught at that point! But thanks to them, I've had classes in Photoshop and indexing through the university, and some online classes with Peggy Walters to jumpstart me in Vue. I've also taken classes there at LVU(?) for other things - poser (basics), and one in UVMapper (didnt complete that one cus of issues going on, but I still have all the lessons saved, and intend to retake it and get my certificate lol). Ugggh, rambling... And sleep meds are kicking in, so maybe now I can fall asleep...

Lol! So true! It'll be kissmas in July! And also true about the loss of materials instead of vision... Many times this past year I had feared my "muse" had deserted me for greener pastures! The few times I managed to find that spark, I TRIED so hard to hold onto it, to push through the frustration of that (explosives deleted by me before posting) computer... And just couldn't manage. So, I sketched out my ideas and stuffed them into my idea folder. Mind you, my hand drawing skills aren't all that, so when I dig through that folder and try to decide what I want to tackle, it's the handwritten notes on the edges that tell me more than the sketch actually does most of the time lol. Ughh, back to cooking dinner for at least 3, possibly up to 5. I just love how I get promised I'll be told in reasonable time how many folks will be here to eat! Fiesta Mac is, thankfully, as easy to make for a small crowd as for a few, and freezes nicely, so I made enough to feed quite a few lol.

Lol, same here. Not hi res, although I've discovered this iPhone will do hires, though. Not a good setting when you're in motion, though... (I ended up with "ghost" effects hehehe). I have a folder on my external crammed full of nothing but "texture" photos... Walls, floors, dirt, bark, leaves... You name it, it's probably in there! Between all the pics I've taken and stored on there and all my zipped poser stuff, it takes up about 1.5 TB of storage! Photos (including the non-"texture" ones) take about 25 to 50 GB... If not more lol. I get the strangest looks when i'm walking around and suddenly stop, crouch down, shift around to keep my shadow out of it, and then take pictures of say... Walmart's floor, or a parking lot... Hehehe. I don't care! Hubby used to get frustrated at me, and I bet a little embarrassed by my actions until he saw me put some of my "texture" photos to use one time. Now, he helps me seek out things like that - peeling paint, bricks, rocks, etc. Now I'm educating our housemate - HE still scratches his head at his "sister" (me). He's patient with my actions, even though I'm pretty sure he's gone from "suspecting" I'm nuts to being sure I am lol. But, along with hubby and housemate's family - not a single one doubts my abilities to create beautiful pieces of artwork! (I doubt myself - a lot. I think it's part and parcel of being artistic - you tend to be your own worst critic!). Housemate has begged me for the last year to make a few pics for him - I just wish he'd quit changing his mind on what he actually wants lol. Hubby was so proud of the "gone fishin'" pic I did that got entered into a gallery in Alaska (back when I only had Vue 6 ... Not esprit... Crud, brain not working - it wasn't esprit, and wasn't infinite or xstream... Complete? Grrrrr lol)... I still look at it and see the flaws (boulders that appear to be barely hanging on to the side of a mountain for instance)... But knowing what I know now... I am very proud of that image as well. You see, I did something very complicated (to me lol) to create it... I had to create my height map by hand, and then my materials distribution map by hand - two things I had never attempted before. I also pushed myself by creating mixed & layered materials. I'd attempted them a few times while in Peggy's LVS classes, but nothing nearly as complicated as this thing was! If I recall, I ended up with over 20 different material zones just on the foreground landscape lol. But, hubby took that framed image and it's hanging over the fireplace in the "place of honor". "mom" - (housemate's mom, but his family has "adopted" us)... She's been showing the images i've made & posted on facebook to people she knows around here... She told me almost all of the gallery owners around here keep asking her when I'm coming in with some of my work for them to display & sell! She also told me the ones not asking are those she hasn't run into when out & about chuckles. For the past year, I've been very artistically frustrated. A fine art painter with ideas, and no canvas, paints, or brushes.... The past few months with the computer I returned - was the worst. A painter with finger paints and butcher paper as an example. VERY frustrating! Now, I will have to relearn Vue... Quite a few things changed from 7 inf to 9.5 inf! I think I'm gonna bite back my irritation at the abysmally slow laptop and boot it up and read & re-read vue 9.5's info again and again... Hehehe. Then, I'm gonna see how well it handles Geek @ play's awesome video tutorials and attempt to figure out all these great new features :). I'm terribly excited about being able to "sculpt" caves and overhangs, etc. Maybe by the time my new "baby" arrives, I'll at least have some idea of what's new and how to at least start accessing and using these cool things! Ok, enough of a tome for now... Gonna go boot up "lappy" and try not to rip my hair out hehehe.

Lol! I love taking pictures, but my old digital camera died... Think I dropped it once too often (oops). I'm planning on creating some packs for the free section of pictures of this area for references or just for folks to play with. Most of what I take picture-wise is just for reference photos... Something catches my eye and I literally itch to try to recreate it. I'm always taking pictures of things like rocks, moss, sand, dirt, trees, or individual plants... And then I'll also do scenery photos, or pics of old cool buildings... The older it is the more I want to capture it. I just wish hubby would drive a bit slower sometimes.... Lol! Most of the pics I take while we're driving around are for reference, and 90% of those end up "trashed" because it ends up way too blurry. But, I have fun with it :) I'd love to see some of your photos :)

Lol, thanks :). We picked the spot finally, a beautiful place across a swinging bridge and down some rocks onto this little rocky area with the river... Stream? Running so close you can feel a bit of the spray as it tumbles over the rocks. As for alienware/Dell... No experience here, but the guy said it could ship as early as next Wednesday or as late as the 1st... So Nooooo idea. Am hoping I'll be pleasantly surprised :) I am sooooooo excited! And yep... The past year has been full of changes... We've been out of alaska a year as of this past Tuesday :). even more change is in store... But I'm facing it head-on .... And trying not to flinch lol. Can't wait til I can post pics again... Not just of the computer, but of the beauty around here. I might even be persuaded to post a wedding pic. I don't photograph well, so I rarely show my actual self anywhere... But for this I MAY make an exception :) ~meli

He is my hero :). I used to call him my knight in rusty and dented armor, but now I call him my knight in shiny but well-used armor :). I doubt the computer will arrive on the 1st; Dell told us the earliest it would be shipped was next Wednesday, the latest would be on the 1st... and I have to wait on fed ex or ups after that lol. But, even the waiting isn't bothering me - what's a few weeks when I've waited over 10 years to get an alienware? Lol. When I first started looking at alienware systems, every time I "built" one, it ended up costing more than $20,000! I never thought I'd be able to get one! (compared to 20K, 3K is a heck of a deal lol) What's gonna "kill" me is having the Vue DVD and NOT being able to play with it!

It's, in my not so humble opinion, one of the most beautiful places on Earth! There is so much diversity here with plants and wildlife, not a day goes by that I'm not amazed at SOMETHING! Lol. Computer has been ordered, and I'm now waiting rather impatiently for it to arrive! Could arrive as early as the week following the 1st, as late as the 8th lol. I also got to order vue 9.5, and hubby insisted I order it on the DVD instead of the download; it should arrive next Wednesday. I can't blame him on the DVD; I dunno how many times in the past year I've had to re-download Vue 7 because of external hard drive issues. He had to listen to my fussing about it lol. I have a new external HD now, but he wants me to have an "official" hard copy of the program. As for the computer, we did end up going a little over budget, but HE was the one who added the 140$ mouse/keyboard bundle - he liked the look of them (rolls eyes). We couldn't find a comparable monitor to the one I really liked at Dell around here, so we ended up getting the one at Dell. He also insisted I go ahead and get the 16gb of memory from the start so I wouldn't have to deal with it later. I explained to him what you all taught me about the video card, so we DID go with the beautiful 3gb GTX 590 card. Now, I just have to be patient until my preciouses come in... Boy this is gonna be a looooooong few weeks! On top of waiting for this, on the 1st, hubby and I get to sign the paperwork making our marriage of the heart actually legal; we leave the next morning to go visit my parents a few days and pick up the rest of our things out of storage there... Not looking forward to the travel time, but I do miss my family, so it'll be worth it :) Anyways, that's the update!!!! Can't wait to play in Vue 9.5 :) :) :). I took a BUNCH of pics last Tuesday on our way to fish (and while fishing) - mostly for reference photos so I can try to recreate some of the natural beauty of this area. :). ~meli