TGIF!

I am on medical leave unitl after Christmas. I saw my doctor yesterday and she has referred me to an orthopedist. The earliest appointment I could get with that department is on January 4th.

As I’ve said, I’m a creature of habits. I get up and go to bed at the same time every day except Sunday. I fit my life around my work schedule. I try to schedule appointments and big errands on my days off. Not going to work feels weird. Not going to work when my station is short staffed during the busiest time of the year feels wrong. As I sit here typing my leg has no complaints. But it has complained plenty when I’ve tried sleeping. It will complain when I stand up to make breakfast. It will keep complaining until I sit down again. I don’t like missing work. I don’t like having to have someone else delivre my route. But, if I want to keep delivering my route in the long term, the leg has to heal and get strong again.

So I’m home and trying not to feel too weird about it.

While here I’m trying to teach myself an alternate graphics program than Photoshop. I’ve been having problems with Photoshop CS6 for a while now. At first I thought the problem was the monitor. It had started going into sleep mode at what seemed liked random intervals but always when I was working on Photoshop. This seemed to have happened after one of Windows’ automatic updates. I tried various means of troubleshooting the monitor but the problem persisted. For a while I tries working around the problem. I thought maybe the crashing was happening because I was listening to YouTube or Pandora at the same time I used Photoshop. I tried running only Photopshop. The monitor still went into sleep mode.

It finally occurred to me that the problem wasn’t Photoshop and other programs. The problem was Photoshop. After some googling I found out that Adobe is no longer supporting CreativeSuite 6. CS6 is the last version of the programs that a person could own. Adobe’s current business model is to rent online access to their programs. Too bad if someone owns an old physical copy. Adobe says “Screw you”. Microsoft, makers of Windows, also say “Screw you.” According to what I read CS6 doesn’t play well with Windows and neither company intends to correct that. Based on my experience I get about ten minutes of use out of Photoshop before the monitor goes to sleep.

I’ve used GIMP in the past and it worked okay. That version was on an old laptop so I  downloaded the latest onto my desktop. In hopes of finding an easier alternative I posted about my problems on Facebook. Three people suggest Affinity Photo. AF has a free trial period so I downloaded a copy. One person suggested Photopea. Photopea runs online. It’s … a lower featured version of Photoshop. Of the three programs Photopea was the easisst to use. No learning curve. After the first few uses, however, I stopped being able to save my work. My google fu hasn’t been powerful enough to figure out why yet. So I’m playing around with GIMP and AF trying to get used to them. When I get tired of that I open Photoshop and use it for a few minutes.

Learning new skills is a good thing. So I’m told.

I’ve got a number of new illustrations in progress. You’ll see them in the New Year.

This is my penultimate post for 2021. Thank you reading. I hope the holiday season is treeating you well. See you next week!

The above image is available on schtuff in my Redbubble store.

The Might Nizz 2022 Calendar can be ordered from my Zazzle store. If you order now you’ll hopefully get your copy in the second week of January.

Cheers!