2 posts tagged “cafepress”

Tonight will be a shorter post.  I'm pretty tired and feel like I might be getting a cold or something.  Feel like a family of badgers moved into my stomach and are fighting for superiority using grenades and other small explosives.  First time in a long while I actually took a nap, something I've maybe done a handful of times in the last few years.  Seems my quasi-ADD doesn't really allow naps all that much.  At any rate, random YouTube post here but there's a lot of commercials using this song and after some nostalgia digging, Nicole remembered where why it was so familiar. 

Activities

Decided that tonight, I would put some much needed attention to my t-shirt shop I made on Cafepress.com.  It's nothing spectacular and the shirt designs are very limited so far, as I spent more time just learning the shop setup and how things worked so far rather than uploading new designs.  I changed the name, to BrigandTall (re: BigAndTall).  I'm pretty proud of the play on words but I'm a total freaking dork.  Now that I think of it, having a word depicting bandits in a shop title might be a bit edgy.  Hmmm.

http://www.cafepress.com/brigandtall 
(it's a bit messy right now, my apologies, I'll clean it up more throughout the week but the admin tool is slow tonight)

The site's going through some maintenance which was annoying as tonight went a lot slower than it should have with all the timeouts I experienced.  Good thing is they're adding some new functionality and options, which should be cool. 

Now that I upgraded it, I have a lot more selection and flexibility with how I can lay out designs, the store, etc so I'll be adding more things to it than is up there currently.  I don't have any limitations on how many shirts I can sell at one time which is cool as now, I can go ape and just start uploading every design I come up with without fear of using up a certain alloted amount of t-shirt styles. 

Of course, I didn't upgrade the store until after my good bud Lee bought a few shirts, so dammit.  Might have to make him a special shirt and send it his way for being the first person to buy a shirt, let alone three,  off my my site. Maybe some funky shirt with the Redskins starting line-up, a picture of Jennifer Love Hewitt doing Tae-Kwon-do with Jackie Chan and the Cowboy's logo exploding.  Figure I could get just about all of his interests in one shirt that way.  I'd make some cheesy shirt with his picture on it but he has a rare disorder where whenever a camera focuses on his person, his head automatically turns into a large, open hand.  Seriously, the bastard's freaking quick on the photo-block. 

Quick Facts

• Weight: 247
• So, yeah, I'm really failing at this weight thing.  I'm not overweight by any means but I've definitely got a protective barrier residing over my abdomen in case anyone would try to dent my steel-abs if you know what I mean.  Wonder why I'm not losing any weight?
  
• Diet: Oh, yeah, here's why.  I ate: 3 bagels, 1 banana, hot dog, fries, Frosted Shredded Wheat, candy. 2 glasses of water, 1 glass of milk, 1 glass of OJ. 
  
• Need to kick my lame ass out of this bad eating habit.  My family has a long history of diabetes and unless I want to be another Hess on the Insulin-Train, I need to start remembering what vegetables look like.
  
• TV:
• I actually fell asleep on the couch for a while today, maybe watched about a half-hour of TV altogether.  I'm prepping for dropping off the cable box this weekend, trying to ween ourselves off of it.  No more DVR might be a damn good thing as it makes TV an even lazier activity.
  

   

Day Four- Daily Record of Information:

• Weight: 247.50 (pounds)
  
  
• Looking back at yesterday, Mexican cuisine makes me gain weight and lose weight at almost the same time.  An interesting mix.  Finally though, tonight I'm back on the downward spiral.  Might have to start eating, well, swallowing without chewing some vegetables and rice-cakes to get my 10lbs lost.  10lbs from my first day's weight might I add.
  
• What I did today:
  
• First and foremost, I decided to change around the format a bit.  Feel like I was putting the more interesting stuff at the bottom, forcing everyone to read through my diet habits first and thats just no fun. I've put that at the bottom, as well as added a TV section too.
  
  
• Nicole had me take what is called an Optimism Test from a book she is reading.  48 questions later, I'm a qualified man of Average Optimism.  Truth is, I have a rather random fascination with psychology and similar insights in the the workings of the human personality.  I answered a few key questions in a way that appears to have shown that I have a somewhat low-self esteem, which counts against optimism per the book Nicole is reading.  I guess I've never tied the two traits together, self-esteem and optimism.  The test, a 2-answer multiple choice test, gave some interesting choices in answers, a problem I've often voiced when asked what I think about personality tests.  While I understand there's a weight attached to each answer, I feel that there's a lack of flexibility in the questions and more importantly the answers.  The questions I answered in a non-optimistic way were mostly those in line with the following example:
  
  "Your boss has given you a raise based on the success of a project you managed.  Was the project a success because, A.) You're an excellent manager or B.) You and your team were efficient?
  
  I would have answered B.  Now, looking back, realizing that answers like that were counted as negative towards my level of self-esteem and showed a certain amount of pessimism, it makes me think that my answering in the way I did was more an example of my modesty and more importantly a pet-peeve I have with people taking full credit for things that was clearly a team-effort.  I'm not saying I think the gentleman that wrote this test and that has 30 years experience in the field is wrong, I'm just saying that I think there's a difference between being optimistic and being a conceited egomaniac and I'm glad both myself and Nicole scored as average on his test in a way.
  
  
• After my test, I decided to put some work towards my t-shirt designing.  The process requires a good amount of Photoshop time and experimenting, which is something I've always been addicted too.  I'd say Photoshop and me get along rather well, I'd even say I'm wildly proficient with it (take that self-esteem).  I had promised my good friend Snellopy that I would add some t-shirt designs to my Cafepress T-shirt site (www.cafepress.com/hugenjapan).  After tweaking and re-tweaking my files in Photoshop, I realized that the process only starts in Photoshop.  The vast majority of time I spent tonight was experimenting with the Cafepress site and it's upload/layout options once you have a design you want to put on a t-shirt.  As well, I've come to fully understand the limitations that the free store account comes with.  I've already used up the best men's t-shirts as the free store account only allows you to use one shirt type once, which means, my new designs are either going to have to be only available on baby-t-shirts, sleeveless shirts, women's spaghetti strapped belly-shirts or coffee mugs and I have to admit, most of those don't reach my target demographic.
  
  Right there provides reason enough for me to pay the $5 monthly fee for the unlimited shop, where I could have 1,000 black t-shirts with 1,000 different designs instead of only having access to one black tshirt as I do now.  So, if you're considering buying one of the very few designs I have up there right now, I'd suggest whole-heartedly that you wait until I have the unlimited shop set up so that you can have some choice and selection in your t-shirt purchasing.  The two designs I did find a shirt to land on with what I have available currently though, are below:
  
  
  
  The one on the left is a Ninja Star shirt.  Now, I know there's not much out there right now about Ninjas but I'm what is called a die-hard Ninja fan.  I stick around when times are rough and when this whole Ninja thing hits big, I'll be the fan that was there during the dry-times.  The design needs a stronger font in my eyes but I still think it looks good and maybe once I find a good oriental font-face, I might redo it. 
  
  The one of the right, has my Father's unique name as the integral design part of it. Currently, my parents are being hit with really rough times right now.  My father lost his last job almost eight months ago and is still unemployed and has depleted the little amount of savings that they had set aside for retirement.    I thought that in the rare event that someone does happen across my little store on cafepress, that the small amount of profit I'll mark up some of the shirts, would all be donated to my parents.  Once I upgrade the store, the shirts will at least be better quality so I won't feel so bad if someone buys them.  Right now, I'm just testing out the store's functions and a lot of what has designs on them aren't exactly the shirt styles I'd prefer.  When I get the store up and running on the upgraded account, I figure even if I only make a little bit of money, it still helps out for the time being and it's a good way to both get myself experience in making t-shirts and puts any small amount of profits I make go to a good end.. 
  
  
• I've been spending a good amount of time sketching as well and have been happy with how my hand has been becoming more and more steady when drawing complicated designs.  This is a great deal of good news as I've been working on several designs for Chris's and my Game project and soon I'll be converting these sketches into actual graphics using my Wacom Graphire stylus tablet and that takes a very decent amount of steady hand-eye coordination as you have to keep your eye on the screen while you draw with your hand.  If you knew how shady and unscrupulous my drawing hand can be, you'd realize the trust this requires. 
  
• What I ate: 1.5 cinnamon raisin bagels with low-fat cream cheese, 2 cups of coffee, Salad with chicken and ranch dressing, dinner roll, half-bottle of Pepsi, cup of mixed-fruit, cup of chicken and vegetables, 1 almond sugar cookie, 1 chocolate chip cookie, a bite of a iced sugar cookie (I might need to quit sweets next month, I'm eating like I'm pregnant), bacon-swiss quiche, granola cereal.
  
  
• So, yeah, it's fairly obvious looking back at the last four days that I have what some would say random and sporadic eating habits.  Part of it I can medically blame on my large size requiring more energy and food but that's maybe 1/10th of the reason to be fair.  The other 9/10ths are built on my adoration of food and that I've never been a big fan of tofu and wheat-grass shots or whatever it is that Boulder Colorado is the #1 exporter of.
• TV Watched : Watched 2 episodes of The Simpsons. 
  
• Total TV Watched: 1hour.
• So, I think I lied.  I like watching Lost, Family Guy, South Park and The Simpsons. Somehow haven't really connected until today that my after-work ritual is to watch the 1 hour run of the The Simpsons almost every single week-day.  Odd how my girlfriend Nicole hasn't gone insane yet from it.  I even notice that they play the same 10 or 20 episodes over and over again...and Istill watch them.