Hello again! Its been a busy week, and I'm glad to say that I have officially graduated from college! Whoo! Can't believe I'm completely done with school... I celebrated my Saturday morning graduation by driving home to make it to my high school sister's grad party... apparently high school graduation still trumps college :) I'm back home now awaiting news from Nike on when I'll be trekking out to Oregon for good.  So what do i do to fill my time in on these long days when I'm home alone... well I'm not really sure how i've been passing the time but its a lot of very unproductive things which is great! Today I was going through pictures on my home computer and came across my photoshop stash... I love to photoshop stuff. I make a point to use photoshop as much as possible.  So here are some of the projects I've made in the past. Some were for classes, some were by request, and some are just plain ridiculous and pointless. Anyway here they are :)

This was an ad I made for a class assignment on a GPS system called North Star

I made this because Nike is bomb and I love Hayward Field

Needed a new background last winter so I made one for the Olympics

How could I not add Lady Gaga into this? She fits so well.

One of my favorites :) I put me and my sisters on Avatar bodies

Another ad I had to make for class... got to chose the company this time

My Christmas card to my roomie haha she loved Committed almost as much as I loved the BackBeats and OTR.

My sister Kelsey and I used to play this all the time... I'd obviously be Mario and she'd be my sidekick star... out motto "Beatin Galaxies Collectin Stars" Personally I love my nose on this one

Bum Bum Bum Bum Might As Well Jump

Used a picture from vacation in California and added in some La Push folk to make it better. This was clearly one of the pointless photoshop excursions I've gone on. 

Another ad.... just gotta change that jersey now.

My all time favorite..... I think i did this before the season finale one year and I obviously spent much more time making myself a convincing Kate than i did on anyone else, but i think it looks pretty great if i do say so myself :)

Empire Avenue

Okay, so as promised I'm writing today to tell you about the new game/social media site that I'm spending way too much time on these days.  Empire Avenue launched less than a year ago, but it seems to be starting to pick up some steam.  Basically its a social media stock market where you can buy and sell shares of friends and companies, and in return people buy and sell shares of you (but its completely free).

When you first log on you can create your stock symbol and the index you want to be in... theres everything from Aboriginal Peoples to Entrepreneurship to Photography and even Zombie Hunting. When picking an index the ultimate goal is raise your share price above everyone else in that index and become CEO of the index.





So this is what the site looks like.  When you sign up you start at a $10 share price and you increase your price by being active on social media accounts you link up such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, LinkedIn, or Blogs or by having other people buy your stock with their Eaves (the virtual currency used on Empire Ave.)

It's fun to buy shares of you facebook and twitter friends, but its also interesting to meet people on the site who are entrepreneurs, celebrities, musicians etc. and buy shares in them.  As you go along you unlock achievements that give you rewards and you can get all the financial statistics on your portfolio just like the real stock market.  Its feels like a game,  but there are plenty of nerdy pieces you can get into if you like that sort of thing.
techy

So you should join especially if....
1. you are always tweeting, posting/commenting on FB, using LinkedIn etc. you'll have a head start right away and have way more fun with the site in general.
2. you miss the days when FB was a smaller, exclusive college site.  Empire Avenue is still a fairly small community which means you actually get to communicate and get to know interesting people, a lot of whom are celebs on Twitter or FB.  And they might just buy you back and increase your price when you invest in them.
3. Its a great way to increase followers or friends on other networks especially if you are trying to promote yourself as a potential employee, entrepreneur, performer, or just your personal "brand" online.  Companies are actually looking into checking EA share prices of potential employees (especially marketing, tech, and advertising careers) in the near future because its a true picture of how good someone is at social networking.
4. Its summer now so you know you need a useless way to spend your long days :) Its the new Farmville people.
5.  If nothing else its a great way to keep up with whats happening on all your other social media sites all in one place. EA has a running feed of everything you are doing on all your linked accounts.

So you should check out the site and at least take one minute and sign up for free.  I guarantee you'll be hooked after you first share purchase :)  AND most importantly search for LAURALYN (thats me) and buy some shares, recommend me, endorse my blog :), and leave a shout out... you know I'll buy you right back! ha.  Okay so use this link http://empireavenue.com/?t=4auo1uhi
to check it out and sign up!


One last thing.... I created a storify page about EA to give you more information on what exactly this is and what people are saying about it.  Check it out here... http://storify.com/laurarneson/empire-avenue



And while you're there mess around in storify.... its a cool new site I just heard about where you can take any piece of social media (tweets, pictures, videos, blogs, etc.) and drag them to a page, reorder them, and make a story out of the best content online.  Kind of hard to describe, but it just launched and its a very cool new tool for both professional and personal use. 




Okay I'm done. Sorry for the nerdy, techyness that just floated onto this blog :)  I need to go watch some trashy TV to get this out of my system..... moral of the story check out Storify and learn more about Empire Avenue and the new Storify site... then go to EA and get account and buy my stock :) Okay, deal! 



Peace, Love, and Eaves

5 Things You Probably Didn't Know About....

So its been a while since the last blog... It's been a busy few weeks as I am wrapping up the tail end of college.  Can't believe I'll never have to take another class (unless of  course grad school happens) but i'm not thinking about that anytime soon :)  I wish I could say that I've been busy studying and writing papers, but that hasn't really been the case.  There's been a fair amount of work, but most of my time has been spent distracting myself from actually working on things.  I would also guess that a large % of you reading this are in fact using my blog as a distraction from that killer final tomorrow.... I welcome and thank you for choosing me over your future :) So i'll try to keep it short, but this is a topic I thought about doing a while ago, but never got around to..... without further ado I give you

5 Things You Probably Don't (and in some cases shouldn't) Know About Me


1. I have owned more Puma shoes than any other brand of shoe in my life.  I know what your thinking.... and if this was based on recent history or current shoes than yes Nike would be the clear frontrunner and probably will be for many years to come, but over my lifetime I've had a lot of Puma shoes.  I think I still have a stash somewhere, but they've been tossed aside until Puma offers me a job.  Very comfortable shoes though!


2. The first job I ever had was in elementary school when I had a paper route.  I would get the papers every Monday and have to add all the ad inserts into them and stuff them in the plastic bags.  Then on Tuesdays I would ride my bike all around the neighborhood delivering them.  I think I made like 50 bucks a month and I thought it was THE COOLEST thing ever... until I wanted to play outside instead of delivering papers.  So it turned into my mom driving me around to the houses, but that wasn't fast enough.  So I recruited my little sisters who were like 5 and 7 years old and convinced them it was fun to run around delivering papers for me. Then they realized that it kind of sucked and stopped helping, so i quit my first job.  I was basically a real winner right from the start. Anyways, the memory and thought of having a paper route is much more attractive than actually having one, so if you were thinking about it.... don't do it, and if you too had a paper route when you were little you know that feeling when no matter how much you lick your fingers before you stuff the paper, handling that much newspaper each day just rubs your fingers raw.... I feel your pain.


3. I've never caught a fish.  This is a big regret in my life.... I realize that most people probably don't see why I care so much, but most people have probably caught at least something in their life.  I guess I attribute this to not really ever going fishing.  I remember going when I was like 5, but obviously I wasn't going to catch anything then.  Since then I have had a handful of fishing experiences with really crappy lures and little patience, but I don't think I've ever even had a bite.  The only reason I share this is in the hopes that someone reading this is an avid fisherman and will be willing to take me out to a lake and help me fulfill this lifelong dream :)


4. I can juggle and solve a rubix cube in < 2 minutes... but not at the same time.  Awesome right! Well not really.  Turns out these skills aren't high in demand unless you intend on becoming a clown or are a supernerd, its kind of lame.  However, one summer I just decided that I wanted to learn to juggle and taught myself some supafly juggling tricks.  Summers in Iowa can be kind of boring.  As far as the rubix cube goes, my friend got me one for my birthday (probably as a joke) and I got into it and learned the algorithms for it. God that sounds nerdy! Anyways, I often sit around juggling or solving the rubix cube (not really) wondering why I didn't use my time to learn something profitable like counting cards in Blackjack.  Maybe that will be next on my list.


5.  I actually think gas station coffee is just as good, and sometimes better than Starbucks coffee.  As anyone who knows me can attest to, I'm such a Starbucks snob, I buy into the whole atmosphere and go there to chat, people watch, pretend to study, and blog multiple times a week.  Its getting ridiculously expensive, and I wonder why I don't save 4 bucks and just hit up QuikTrip instead. I guess this is less of a thing you didn't know about me and more of a confession about my hipster behaviors, but I'm not gonna go back and rewrite it because I'm tired and I want to go watch Glee instead.

Anyway,  I hope you learned something completely irrelevant and random about me from this :) I'm pretty sure nobody knew all these things about me before, and I guess it'd be pretty weird/creepy if they did.  At the very least I hope I distracted you from studying or working for a few minutes :)

Stay tuned for my next blog which is going to be an attempt to get you to buy into my newest hobby... Empire Avenue.... you've been warned.