OK, I shouldn’t have said ANYTHING. They want their loaner laptop back. I knew it wasn’t good to gloat, but Jen and I got some really good use out of that machine, and it came at exactly the right time. Now Jen has a new machine, which I’ll be hooking up this weekend, and she’s not dependent on that laptop. It will be sad to see it go, though. Supa hardcore gangsta props to Andy, for being so damn cool to trust me with a $3,000 laptop for 6 months after I left the company.

They’re selling off a bunch of old machines. They’re getting rid of original generation iBooks, which I wouldn’t touch (or be caught dead with) with a wet salami; gateway Solo laptops, which were bricks when I used them, and Toshiba laptops, which were a measure or two cooler.

Depending how much they want for some of the PC hardware, I might go after a cheapo laptop and set it up at work to check pages and run HomeSite. I asked about old workstations and other Mac hardware- we’ll see how much they want for some of that stuff. By my calculations, 200 employees X 1 year = about 150 laptops; it’s all at least a year old now, and been sitting for 6 months.

At first I was really captivated by the blog crowd, and their obsessive writing and detailing of information on their sites. Now I’m looking at a lot of different sites and seeing just how navel-gazing some of them are. Some are designed very well, some are funny, and some are truly inspiring, from the content to the material reviewed, to the ideas behind the design. I wonder how different my stuff is; it’s very self-serving; it’s interesting to nobody, really; the stuff I write about is basically just a brain dump of what I’m thinking about that day, and contains no profound message, grand conclusion, or sweeping thesis. Maybe I should do like they do in corporations and have a big important ‘Mission Statement’ that outlines some grand design for the future.

Here we are in May already, and I don’t have one single site to put up as something I did at Supon. I’m a little annoyed at that; the exhausted feeling I have these days is not made better by the thought that my portfolio is just getting older. Mackenzie Real Estate, a site I did about 3 years ago, has been redesigned. Granted, it wasn’t a gorgeous site, but it was mine. I’m realizing that I’m paddling furiously to get some good design work under my belt, and this economic mess we’re all caught in has put most projects on hold.

I think what it is for me is a need to get something accomplished. I’d like to be able to point to something right now and say, “this is what I’ve been killing myself for.” I was hoping the basement would be that thing, but it keeps dragging along slowly. I can’t get any extended progress made, and now it’s already May. I was hoping to have the major dusty work done by now.

Having been a goals-oriented person for most of my adult life, I’m currently finding it hard to sit back and enjoy what I have: a fantastic girlfriend, a house, healthy, happy family, and a great career with a solid design firm. I know I have a great life, and I’m not forgetting that fact. What I need is to feel good about my own ability to create and solve problems.

I guess what I’m trying to do is find something to be proud of in myself. I don’t want to buy anything to make that happiness- that is fleeting and eventually depressing. I’d like to be able to walk into the basement, or call up a webpage built on the fly with a script, or add a new site to my portfolio and feel good about what I’m doing right now, how hard I’m working, and how much I’m sacrificing to do it.

I found out a few weeks ago that I made it on to Shepard Fairey’s Giant pages; Not directly, but indirectly, when he blew through here a few years ago with Logan, they hit the city with some Giant paraphernalia. Pictures were taken, and the gear I did for Logan is seen alongside Andre. Yep; there’s my 15 minutes of fame.