Think about signing up for a National Association of Photoshop Professionals membership.

Their site offers lots of tutorials, tricks, tips, etc. Plus they have DVDs and books to buy at discount. You can download brushes and presets and stuff, and there’s even a help desk where you can ask how to do something if you can’t remember or figure it out. It’s a nice community of professional Photoshop users.

Your $99 annual membership comes with a subscription to Photoshop User magazine. I was a member for two years, then I lapsed for a year and I just renewed. If you do sign up, use this link and I’ll get credit…

I have wracked my brain for hours–both before and after the holiday weekend–and still can’t figure out how to install the GD library into PHP5 on my Mac running OSX 10.5. I have tried about fourteen tutorials, pounding God-knows-what into the Terminal (perhaps part of the problem, you might say) and still NO GD SUPPORT. Things like ProjectPier won’t run properly without the GD library (PP won’t even install without it).

The only solutions I can find so far are to either stop using Apple’s built-in PHP5 and compile and install some package like MAMP, (which isn’t ideal for me–and also didn’t even work for me); or set the computer on fire and see if it works after it melts into a soggy mess on the floor.

I don’t understand why this has to be so hard. I even tried the step-by-step instructions at this wacky-looking pink and purple blog written by a toucan sitting under a rainbow. I got no errors and everything seemed fine, but PHP still reported no GD library and ProjectPier is still telling me I’m really, really lame.

Tangent: I’ve visited every forum on the Internet at least twice now, and I’ve noticed that a lot of people lack the common courtesy to return to a given forum after the information there has helped them. You see a lot of seemingly open-ended discussions, but the truth must be that most of those issues have been resolved, or else there would still be someone there asking for help, right? Unless those people have all set their machines on fire and found that to really be the answer after all…

I’ll try it on my laptop first.

My neighbor, whom I suspect is operating a small porn operation out of his house, plays Queen’s “We are the Champions” very loudly every morning at 7:00. Perhaps that’s a contributing factor to his success in life.

I say he might be operating a porn ring because sometimes weird people mistakenly come to my house looking for him, and I sometimes get the impression they’re perverts. The numbers on our houses are screwy, and it appears that his is mine and mine is his. Last week someone rang my bell and stood at my door with a huge stack of raunchy VHS tape boxes. Our conversation went like this:

Me: Hey. What’s up?
Perv: Here. Jason wants the whole order by midnight.
Me: Uh, you’re at the wrong place.
Perv: Stop screwing around.
Me: No, seriously. You want the house next door, I think.
Perv: This box is frickin’ heavy, bean*. Jason already told me not to take any shit from you.
Me: No, he didn’t. He told you not to take any shit from my neighbor. (closing the door)
Perv: Dude, come on. I have tacos in the car and they’re getting cold…

* I think bean is what he said.

My neighbor came over to apologize for this incident the next morning — after We are the Champions. I was like, “it’s cool.”

I got into an argument with some jerk at my local Air Force finance office today. This guy was telling me something I thought was really stupid, so I asked for a supervisor–I wanted to talk to someone else. Apparently he hates when that happens. He got stupid mad at me. He was mumbling about not having time for this crap, which is odd since I was trying to get him to turn me and my issue over to someone else. Seems like if he was really pressed for time he would have enjoyed that idea. Anyway, he was exceptionally rude and unprofessional. I never have a good time in that office. I try to stay away, but for some things I just have to go over there. It’s like hell or something. Everyone is unhappy there, most of all me. The person he passed me off to backed him up on his stupid policy, so I had to go back to my office, call some people, wait for a fax and redo some papers, but I still think they’re doing it wrong. And besides, that’s not the point. This guy is in a customer service job, for Pete’s sake. He lacked courtesy, for sure. I hope he’s better with numbers than he is with people. Somehow I doubt it.

That’s all for now. Only a few hours until Queen starts blasting…