It’s Sunday and I’m partially recovered from a short, fun day trip up to NYC with Stephanie, her mom, and her sister. I’m not sure how I survived, as I’ve spent the last week catching up on a semester project I had somewhat neglected in favor of other priorities. That’s OK, though, because it marks the end of the semester for me. I have a single course left before I’m eligible to get my Master’s at UMBC. Hooray!

On another related front: I took up a new position as a web designer at a local non-profit organization. It’s been great so far and their site does need a lot of help (lots of room and opportunities to prove myself). The people there are amiable and vibrant, probably thanks to the web team being nearly entirely new. Yes, that sounds like a bad omen, but I can see the situation being very stable. The new web developer came in after me, and he’s a bright guy. We’ll be collaborating some big projects to get the site into shape. I truly believe this was the move that I needed, even if I’m no longer at an office and have to sit in a cubicle-like station. I even got lots of compliments for the Christmas lights I set up around it. Fantastic!

Finally, it truly looks like Valve’s Steam (a downloadable games service) is going to be facing true competition. While Steam is, in my opinion, an amazing service with great deals, it can only be good for the consumer that things like Good Old Games, Direct2Drive, and now Impulse Driven are cropping up with competitive pricing. Impulse Driven comes from Stardock, who makes all kinds of games (Galactic Civilizations) and software (Object Desktop). I particularly like GOG, because not only are they updating classics to play on the latest operating systems (Windows XP, Vista), but they are cheap and DRM-Free. You hear that Ubisoft and EA? Follow these guys and stop blaming poor software sales on terrible games on piracy.

Sidenote about NYC: A great place to look for design inspiration, from the ads to the architecture to the subway signs.