I’m still setting up the site and unable to focus much time LightWave yet, so I thought I’d share a little more about myself.

You already have an idea where I live.  I also grew up in the suburbs, so I already knew what to expect after we moved.  I went to college at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign, where I majored in Computer Engineering.  I now work as a software engineer.  But, since I already spend a lot of my life focusing on software, I don’t plan on posting about programming on this site.

The best part of my current job is that I work from home every day.  I’m often asked how I stay focused enough to work from home successfully; my usual answer is, “Because I want to keep receiving a paycheck.”  A lot of my company’s employees work from home, and we are equipped well to perform our jobs regardless of our actual location.  Working from home gives me a lot of freedom in my personal life, because I can easily schedule small breaks into my work day for running errands and personal tasks.

Working from home also makes it easier to spend time with my wife.  She has a pretty demanding job, so it works out well for her and our relationship that I can take care of a lot of the little details in our household.  And since I have such a flexible schedule, it’s easier to spend time together despite her tough schedule.

After living in the heart of Chicago for over ten years, I recently moved out to the quiet suburbs. That move was a drastic change for me: Chicago has an amazing amount of things to do reachable by walking, public transportation, or cab. Every day, I walked around a beautiful part of the city, sometimes for mundane reasons like getting lunch, buying groceries, or running errands, but other times for comedy shows, concerts, or to hang out at one of the many bars.

Now that I’ve moved to the suburbs, it’s more difficult to fill my time with those same activities. I can’t just walk to a nearby comedy club or concert venue; I have to plan in advance for traffic and parking. Getting lunch no longer involves a nice walk to a neighborhood restaurant, I need to actually drive somewhere (probably to a fast food place), so I eat at home a lot more often. Meeting friends at a bar means making sure that no drivers drink too much before leaving. (Everything in the suburbs involves driving, something I rarely dealt with while living in Chicago).

On the bright side, I have more free time. But that means I need to find new interests to fill that time, because I don’t like being unproductive. So I have decided to pursue an old hobby of mine: 3D modeling and animation. I still own LightWave 9.6, a production-quality 3D animation software suite that I have used on-and-off for the past eight years. I intend to use LightWave to create 3D models, images, and animations for my own entertainment (and hopefully it manages to entertain other people, too).

My goals for creating this blog are primarily as a sounding board for some of my thoughts/ideas, a place to post my 3D creations, and as a way to hold myself accountable so I can stick with my newly rediscovered hobby. I expect I’ll also post works in progress, tutorials on different techniques I’ve tried, and random posts on completely unrelated topics. I’ve also been trying to come up with concrete goals, so once I nail those down I’ll share them here.