Some things that I am grateful for:
Atlanta
I love this city. I first moved here in 2003 from the somewhat small city of Columbus, Ohio. While Columbus holds a place in my heart, Atlanta has without a doubt become the place I will always call “home”. Our weather is amazing, and I would say that 300 days out of the year you get sunshine and blue skies, which is a radical departure from the overcast Ohio days. It’s warm even in winter months. The culture in this city is so diverse, and the people are extremely nice. There are so many different types of food, and places to go. We also have a lot of stores that you can only find in larger cities like NYC and LA, but on a much more accessible scale.
iMac
Since the tender age of 8 I can remember interacting with Apple computers. We had a IIe in school that I used for Oregon Trail and Print Shop. Later in high school I was part of a program where we did all of our school work on computers (huge deal in 1995) and I got to take home my very own Mac Plus! I loved it in all of it’s beige glory, with the giant brick of a mouse and black & white screen. I would spend hours in MacPaint and Hypercard. I would write stories, and just create. In 2005, Anne and I bought an an iMac G5 to replace our aging iBook G4. I LOVED that machine so much, the all-in-one design, massive screen, and powerful chipset made Photoshop scream. Since then I’ve graduated to the newest series of iMac and I can say I’ve never owned a better computer. The aluminum + glass design, the new keyboard, the silent operation… I just can’t stress enough how much I love this machine. It totally makes my work and play life more fun and easy. All these years later I can spend hours on my iMac, just creating and never get sick of it.
Google Reader
Let’s face it, there are a lot of great sites and blogs out there and I always struggled to keep up with them. I follow tech sites, movie sites, architecture sites, gaming sites, and a dozen others. I would spend several hours a day visiting each site manually, until I discovered RSS and Google Reader. Reader lets me subscribe to all 54 of my favorite sites so that I can just digest each bit of content one at a time and only when there is something new to read. I can also just skip an entire day and it keeps track of what I haven’t read for me. I can also share stuff I find interesting (and I often do) with all of my friends and vice versa, so you I can stay on top of what they think is cool. If you’re still doing it the old fashioned way and manually visiting sites by typing in web addresses in the browser, do yourself a huge favor and jump into Google Reader.
Adobe Photoshop
If there is one single thing on this planet that I feel I understand backwards and forwards it is this program. I eat, sleep and breath Photoshop. If you know me at all, then you know I heavily preach that you can use Photoshop to do anything you can imagine and more. This is a program so powerful that even folks like myself who have been using it for over 10 years still learn new things about it every day. Posters, business cards, website graphics, layouts, renderings, mockups, product designs, labels, t-shirts… you name it, I’ve made it in Photoshop. We’ve had times when we were literally broke and knowing Photoshop enabled me to do freelance work that paid our bills and got us through the tough spots. There are literally thousands of dollars to be spent on software for creating, but Photoshop is the only one-stop shop for anyone in the design & photography field. You can totally brand and market yourself with this one program and instead of spending $3000 or more you can spend $650 (or less if you’re a student). Everything that you will ever see me do has, and will be, done in Photoshop.
Adium
I’m a chat-junkie. Way back when AOL first popularized the instant-message I was totally hooked. I used it to talk to my friends and even make some new ones. In fact, instant messaging played a huge role in how I met my wife! Anyways, over the years I accumulated a chat account on every possible service, AIM, Yahoo, MSN, etc. so it became a pretty daunting task to try and keep up with all of my friends. Now, with Adium, you can bring in all of your chat accounts into a single buddy list, and even some non-standard chats protocols like Facebook and MySpace. You get infinite customization of the entire app by chaging the look, feel, sound and away message settings. Custom plugins, themes and add-ons further enhance the experience. If you do any level of chatting, give Adium a try!
