Today is Labor Day, so it's only fitting that today should also be the first day of classes for my roommate – the beginning of a new enterprise, the start of a new massive project. (If Mother's Day celebrates mothers, and President's Day celebrates presidents, and Arbor Day celebrates trees, then Labor Day should celebrate working – right?)

My good man Talon is starting his Master's program. As expected, I'm totally jealous, and it's been acting as a major catalyst for getting my own butt in gear. To that end, I've been examining and revising the things I posted about earlier, in "Progress report, part 3." I have to finish learning some of these things that I've been kicking around for ages, like PHP/MySQL, ActionScript, and so on. What I'm hoping is, if I can echo Talon's schedule (a full schedule combining school and work), that I can plow through enough of my to-learn list to stand a decent shot at being accepted when I apply to grad school this winter. This is going to be tight – I have a lot to catch up on, a lot to refresh and a lot to just flat-out learn – but even if my bid for acceptance is unsuccessful, I'm hoping I'll have learned enough to enable further creative experiments, flesh out a more well-rounded portfolio, add some value to my consulting work and have a bunch of fun in the meantime. That's the plan, anyway.

Oh, and I also hope to make some things that I could submit to next year's SIGGRAPH and the Interactive Annuals for the different magazines. I've been reading the latest issues of Communication Arts, Step, How and I.D. and they're all filled with some really pretty uninspired work. There is clearly room for improvement here – I need to get to work, and now.