I guess I have a kinda abnormal upbringing, as it relates to money. My parents never made much money (my Dad is a pastor and a school bus driver, my mom is also a school bus driver). They never told me any real figures but I’d say that together, their annual salary is/was less than $30k/yr. I consider this to be a low salary for a family of 5. However, they managed to make things work.

I’m not saying that we were poor, just that we couldn’t do things like take a trip to Disney, DC, Vegas, or whatever whenever we wanted to. We usually had a small vacation every few years, and that was fine with me. I think I am not getting to my point….

My point is that my parents taught me how to be financially smart. For as long as I can remember, my parents have lived off of a budget. I don’t know the number offhand, but MOST of Americans live from paycheck-to-paycheck! I just cannot believe that, coming from a family that had a strict monthly budget. And when I say strict, I mean that they stuck to the budget.

Lately I have been noticing more and more people talking about money and financing stuff. I want you all to know YOU DON’T HAVE TO FINANCE THINGS! Personally, I have never had a loan in my life. I have no idea what my credit score is (nor do i care). I have figured out that I can live my life without ever owing anybody ANYTHING! Do you realize what that means? I will never pay interest for stuff that I don’t need.

Say I want a new MacBook Pro (and I do) because mine died recently. I’ve had a few people ask me why don’t I just get a credit card/get a loan/pay for it in payments. BECAUSE THAT’S NOT THE WAY THINGS SHOULD BE DONE! America would not be in the terrible financial shape it is if everyone would spend smartly! Sure there wouldn’t be huge financial businesses but those are the plague of this great nation anyway! blaaaaaaaaaaa my mind is going crazy and I don’t know what to type now.

If you have read this far, I commend you. I typically don’t write like this. I will leave you with this: an infographic showing some surprising figures on debt in America.

photo source

I was recently asked to shoot a wedding for a couple in my church. They didn’t have money for a nice wedding, much less for a photographer, and since I’m a noob anyway, I offered to do it for free. So here are a couple that turned out nicely, I think.

Also, shortly after the wedding my MacBook Pro decided to die. Instead of getting it fixed (which would’ve cost me $1k+) I decided to get a Dell (booooo). A buddy of mine offered to recover my data for me, though, so I’ll soon have the photos back. I used iPhoto to manage them, so they were sync’d to my iPod- that’s how I’m posting them

So anyway, peep the photos and let me know what you think!

Opening "Big" for the first time

RIP “Big,”age 1.5 years, beloved Macbook Pro.

Big passed on Christmas morning of natural causes- a logic board failure. He was prounounced dead today, December 28, 2009, at approximately 3pm by local physician Trey Torrence, employee at Mac Consulting Group.

Big will be remembered by those who knew him by his outstanding looks and the things that he produced. Big enjoyed working long hours in his Photoshop lab as an illustrator. He was also an avid dreamweaver. He didn’t much like working with windows as he preferred his own native workspace, known to him as “the Mac side.” However, it was sometimes necessary to work with windows, as his education required him to use AutoCAD. A few of the projects that Big worked on can be found here.

He was preceded in death by Acer, an older laptop. Big was survived by Phillip “Phil,” the iPod Touch.

Time to vent…today is November 30th. My last final before Christmas break is December 9th. Between now and then, my life will be nearly sleepless. Let me outline what is in store for me:

Today- history term paper due & studio deadline

Tuesday- structures homework “due”

Wednesday- Materials & Methods final exam, studio model “due”

Friday- presentation day for studio

Monday- Presentation of Ronchamp Model for Materials and Methods

Tuesday- 7:30 Architecture History Final Exam

Wednesday- Structures Final Exam

Oh yeah, and on top of that, BOTH of my versions of AutoCAD decided to quit working.

As you may have known, I’ve been really really busy lately. Last Monday, November 2nd, our O. J. Baker boards were due. This is what took a majority of my time. I think my board came out well. Here is a preview and a download (Warning: the download file is pretty big – 51.1mb. Only download it if you REALLY want to see my board at full scale).

Competition board (30"x80")

So, the boards were due Monday at 12:30 and immediately after that, we got started on our next project: a place for memory and loss. Sounds, funny, doesn’t it? The project is based in Cocodrie, LA, which is about as far south as you can get. Here’s a panoramic photo that I took of the site. It’s so beautiful!

Read more…

SUPER busy. We have a project due in less than a week. That means crunch time. I don’t time to write a full blog, but here’s a quickie…

I have a checklist of things that I need to do with my board (presentation board, 30″ tall, 80″ long). Here it is:

1. add shadow to drawings
2. label wall sections
3. draw new wall section (of picnic area)
4. add handrails to all drawings
5. make an actual roof plan (aerial view)
6. fix shingles & plywood in wall section
7. fix lineweight on site plans
8. finish long section
9. finish sketchup model & render
10. fis transverse section (man, window, hatch)
11. make leed boxes
12. correct roof thickness on all drawings
13. put north arrows on all plans
14. line weight on wall (window) section
15. get material swatch finished
16. label small site plan (woodlands, savanna, etc)
17. floorplan: fix doors, plumbing LW, handrails, counters in kitchen, shelves in library, section/elevation markers.

So yep, I have my work cut out for me. Here’s a preview of my board (zoomed way out).

presentation board preview