Stouffville, Ontario Canada (647) 962-1997 gwstudios@rogers.com M-F 8:30am - 2:30pm & 8:00pm - 11:00pm

Tag: work

Looking at a long haul next week.

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I have an absolutely gigantic project coming my way this weekend that will need to be completed, reviewed & edited by Thursday of next week. It’s going to be a mad rush to get it all done. Assuming the overall length is similar to last years compare and contrast document of approximately 120 pages. I’ve sourced 50-60 images, have the colour palette ready to roll, and the early parameters of the document set up, but there is still an awful lot of tables and graphs to do once I get that information made available to me. Going to be a squeaker! Plus side is they like the charts and such 2 dimensional, so no added steps there. But what time I make up there, goes into all the additional tables, colour coding, and italicizing needed. No wonder my wrists burn after one of these behemoths. So that’s next week planned out from start to finish. Got a jump on a different large scale project, but technically that doesn’t begin until May 1st. So making headway where I can right now.

I do believe that today is Thursday. Got some grocery shopping out of the way this morning, then paid my Visa bill. Yikes! Groceries and gas and my generator purchase put my bill WAY up. Gotta bring that back down. Have taxes to pay in the next week! Gotta stay on task. I tell you that tap, tap, tapping of the card will get you in the end. Whoo boy. Hot a little tap happy in April. Must have been all that warm weather! Yeah right.

Gotta eat, then get back to work. Ciao Bella.

Love what you’re doing, but I have a few notes…

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In regards to your performance recently… in that it sucks. When you work, it’s all great, but then you break down, clog, jam, hell we even lost an integral part of you recently in the u bend of a drain (more on that later). So yes, as a no name air brush, you do what it says on the tin, in brief spurts, and do fine work, but ultimately you are a major failing and we don’t want to work with you after you finish all seven parts of this major project. Oh ok? Hmm. Yes, no you can not leave early. We’re under staffed, and you’re the only equipment we have on hand. Budget constraints and all that jazz. Please and thank you. I’ll dock this meeting from your time sheet today. Bye-bye. But don’t leave. You’re not fired – yet. You are fired, but not until all seven items are finished ok? We clear? Great. Uh-huh. Toodles.

So yeah, the no name cheap air brush is solid when it works, but needs to be torn down and cleaned to the Nth degree after every single solitary brief use. The air brush cleaner, and hot water treatment don’t seem to cut it. And all I’m working on right now is priming stuff black. Haven’t done a zenithal high light on anything yet, nor have I laid on any actual colour. So maybe in the new year I will break down and purchase a higher quality air brush.

On the other hand, the caddy works great. The Vallejo ready out the bottle paint primer is fantastic. The iawata air brush cleaner feels like it should work. Smells nice. And my make shift card board box over spray protection booth, while lacklustre is perfectly fine. Can be set up in seconds, and torn down to store under my drafting table just as quickly. I do want to build a better one, but I need to know what I really, desperately need out of it first. Do I need extraction, filters, lights, a turn table or flat static bottom. Do I want to be able to tear it down, or is it a new permanent fixture in my office/studio from here on out. Do I need to build it to fit inside a closet? Or store it under a work table. I don’t know. I do know that eventually a box of more than 100 miniatures will come my way in mid 2023, and I want to hit the ground running when those finally arrive from a kickstarter I backed a while ago. I should have done the Reaper Bones kickstarter, but I opted for a less expensive one, and it might take me for the $100 bucks. Oh well. Nothing I can do about it now.

In other news, the U bend I busted yesterday has been fixed. I went to Schell Lumber and bought a suitable replacement. I put that back in place, and tested the taps. No leaks – as of yet. It threaded properly, and fit the current existing piping. So a win! Yeah. Also I stopped off for groceries and bought a present for the birthday party this weekend, so that’s taken care of too. Came in and worked on some sample labels, and sent them off too. Had a request for some French Language items and got that put together, and am waiting on any additional instructions. So Bully for me. Ciao Bella!

What is there to say…

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We’re here, the flotilla has jumped in to battle. I can’t hide from it, nor steer into a detour any longer. Well, I think I have one last point of view to check in on before the big to-do of it all. Plus having written another 3,000 words of short stories yesterday, i may not write again today. “Can’t brain today, has the dumb.” Is a quote that oft comes to mind. The second installment yesterday garnered almost zero response, and it took some doing on my part to get it written. But I did it, I like it, and I feel it’s a worthy entry in the series. One of the longer ones too, clocking in at just under 2,000 words itself. Plus the somewhat related prior entry that was around 1,200, I think it fills an interesting space with more POV’s.

Have been running full steam in the garage shop. Managed to completed the following: wheeled cart, tool cubby, router table for table saw gap, built a peg board panel, a router bit display block, a T handle hex key stand for my Imperial & Metric Hex Keys. That makes for a pretty good build week.

If I get the rigid router sled made, and two adjustable saw horses, and the oversized 12×12″ router cover panel made from clear acrylic, I’ll be finished with all shop centered projects and can begin a real wood working project again. Like the nagging screen door, or a new coffee table build.

Work is going ok, some previously quiet clients (due to Covid) have started to make their way back into spending marketing budgets again. Happy to be thought of for stuff like that. There was some potential for new clients on the horizon, but I’ll have to wait and see. I gave my presentation, and now I have to wait and see. The Joys of freelancing solo.

Bit of a late start today.

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Needed to get some Photoshop work done first thing, and then I started to build out a template for a new report that is coming at some point in the next week. Could be a long one, so best to get as much ready up front before the deadline begins to loom over me, and I feel the weight of it on my shoulders until I’m done my first full draft. Gathering photo materials is kind of a fun task at first, and then it can spiral out of control pretty quickly. Have to make a conscious effort not to pull photos from the wrong countries too. That is a sticking point I find later on, as I’m not always up to date on all of the products on offer by various brand names or multi national corporations. But they know, and they’ll tell me I’m sure.

Even when I worked at a major brewery, it was easy to forget which location had which sku’s associated with all of your brands and/or partner brands. If I recall I made myself a massive heart to keep track of it, but partners would come onboard or drop out so often that I had it covered with sticky notes until it was more of an eye sore than a helpful visual aid.

So Day 71 eh? Well now, look at you, reading along with me, awesome. My kids have hit school day number one hundred today, so there’s that. They did some fun stuff to commemorate that feat, or so I’ve been told. So more than halfway through the school year, which means that spring and summer are screaming towards us at a break neck pace. Yeah! I wonder if Covid will be beaten back enough for summer camps this year? I’d like to have some kid free time to work on stuff around the house. Hell, I’d like to have a kid free evening so my wife and I could go eat or hit the driving range by ourselves for an hour or two. Did I mention I bought a used set of clubs and bag for forty dollars the other day? Oh, I’m so excited! It had the few clubs I wanted and use most. Putter, drivers, a nine iron and a couple other clubs too. I’m like a par three course kind of golfer. Mainly because I only really play once every decade or so. Ha! But I’ll be sure to go to the driving range now! Or at least I’ll hope to go, whether I do or not remains to be seen.

I need to grab some water softener salt, so I’m going out into the cold again. TTYS

You want me to do WHAT? In this gig-economy!

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You’re off your tits mate. And other such fun snippets of dialogue I either overhear at the school drop off, or television, movies and think. Ha. That gives me an idea. But not so much today.

It’s Thursday, my dudes. Not quite the weekend but it can be seen and felt from here. Although with working from home, and for myself, it all rather feels the same. Well, maybe now that my wife and kids are back to school (for however long that manages to last) the weekends will feel a slight twinge of otherness to them, with the house full from sun up to sun down.

In other news Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, followed closely by a week or so is Family Day, then we have March break, and the slow drag into springtime! Yay! Which is a lovely thought, but we have six weeks of horrible sub zero temperatures, snow, ice, freezing rain and slush to wade through first. Can 8 just say this though. I’ve enjoyed all of the blue sky sunnies days we’ve been having. It’s really something wonderful to be cold and yet have that gorgeous open blue sky overhead. What little heat we can feel on our faces directly from the sun is welcomed with open arms.

Rather than doing a grocery pick up like usual, or a delivery; I actually went inside a store yesterday. For the first time in a number of weeks. Good and empty, given our current pickle (pandemic obvs’) to grab a bunch of ready made meals for my wife to have at work. When it’s quiet, and no one else is around and you forget you have a mask on, it can almost feel normal-ish. I can’t recall the last time I took my kids to wander around a mall to just look at what’s new, visit a play place, or have lunch out together. I think we’d have still been using a stroller and rear facing car seat for my youngest the last time I did that.

That’s what stings right now. I was looking forward to taking my kids out of school surreptitiously to go to the mall and have an afternoon together and do something fun. But I don’t want to add even a scintilla of additional exposure over and above what they all ready face. In the years to come, I hope to be able to resurrect that mental health day time together. I miss that time doing something fun one on one with either of my kids. Lego land, Square One, The Bass Pro Shop, a Massive Disney Store, or Toys R Us. I used to love just going for a walk around, while the weather outside was horrendously cold. Get some excercise, mock youth fashion trends, because I’m older now, and I’m keen on my late nineties/early two thousands fashion choices that I made that suited my body type and wallet.

Trust in me – just in me… where’s my copy of The Jungle Book!

Also – the gig economy sucks balls. I don’t want to HAVE to turn every hobby into cash flow, that’s just part time work, on top of your day job. That’s no way to live. I get the Type A’s who are physically incapable of resting might be drawn to that option, but you have to have down time to recharge. You’ll burn yourself out. For what an extra couple of bucks, but no time to read, draw, paint, sew, play an instrument or relax. I get that wages sort of suck, and have done for ages, but that type of self deprivation isn’t sustainable in the long term. I hope you can find a happy medium. Or strike it rich! Or discover a wealthy patron who will fund you in the event of their death.