The other day I was bored. What does one do when bored? Well, generally it’s a good idea to install some variant of Linux. Why? Because Linux is supposed to be hard to install. You’re supposed to struggle in order to get it running smoothly on your machine. It should take hours. It’s supposed to earn you some mad geek cred.

Am I right? Well, let me tell you about my recent experience with Ubuntu (9.04 Jaunty Jackalope). The computer I installed it on is an older Dell laptop (Inspiron 6400). It’s roughly four or so years old, so not exactly new, but not quite ancient yet. It can run all of my utilities just fine as well as World of Warcraft, so it’s still a fairly decent machine.

Yesterday I went to the Calgary Stampede, aka The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth. For those not in the know, the Stampede is pretty much a glorified rodeo, fair, fireworks display, and late night infomercial channel all rolled into one. With food. Lots of food. Food that you really shouldn’t be eating, but do anyway. After all, it’s a once a year sort of thing, right?

Despite having lived in Calgary for the past four years while obtaining my degree, I had never gone to the Stampede before. Either I was working at the time, or no one wanted to go with me (or they forgot I wanted to go and went without me…). I would like to say that first and foremost that the Stampede was absolutely everything I expected it to be. With ah, a few shirtless, well-sculpted men thrown in for good measure. I’m certainly not complaining.

Welcome to Calgary, a place where it snows in June. We sure have been having some odd weather. At least it’s green outside now. :)

As you may, or may not have noticed, I’ve changed up Shriker.ca a little bit. It’s still going to be undergoing a few more visual tweaks (namely with the navigation), bit I’m rather content with the direction it’s going at the moment. My gallery is also temporarily offline as I’m putting together hopefully a better solution to showcase my current and past projects in a more organized portfolio.

The ACAD portfolio show went really well and I made quite a number of contacts (if you’re reading this – hello!). Although everything has sort of left me wondering: just where did the past four years go? ACAD, in retrospect, has been a boon. There were times of course when I wanted to pull out my hair and even implode due to the stress levels. However, in the end what I came out with were necessary skills: namely, extreme time management (among many others!).

As the college year comes to a close, I’m among a different group this year: the graduating class. I’m not really sure where the past four years went. Please be sure to come by the Nexen Tower Garden Courtyard this Thursday in order to see myself and the rest of the 2009 Visual Communications Design graduating class. 70 graduating students from ACAD’s Design and Photography programs will be showcasing their work, so you know you don’t want to miss out.