My name is Stan Hines, 46 years old and I live in Ankeny, Iowa, United States of America with my wife of 12 years, Debbie. We have a 31 year old son, Eli and his spouse, Anna, and 4 grandchildren, Tristin, Alexis, Monte, and Ashlyn.
After more than 4 years of living disabled due to chronic illness, I researched the engraving industry and began my own custom engraving business. Photo and image editing and manipulation has been a hobby of mine since getting aquainted with PCs in 1997, and I have been involved with creating art in one form or another since 2nd grade and becoming fascinated with poetry and the power of words to evoke emotioin.
Due to having a very limited amount of energy to work with most days, I have not done too well at keeping up friendships or beginning any new involvements over the last 1 1/2 to 2 years because if I want this business to have any hope of succeeding, it will take all of my limited energy (and does!) to get it established sufficiently enough to hire help and hopefully create a bit of free time to enjoy family and friends, as well as my intended goal of earning my own income and replacing my disability insurance income completely.
As I mention in my brief profile, I am a grateful follower of Jesus Christ and though I will never push my beliefs in any way at another person (I believe God clearly states that as His job, not mine!
, I do enjoy the opportunity to engage in disussion and prayer centered on Jesus at any time! I also greatly enjoy being creative and the privilege of seeing and experiencing the creativity of others. Then there are motorcycles! I've been riding off and on since my teen years, street motorcycles that is. My wife currently rides a 2005 Harley Davidson Sportster 1200 custom with a lot of extra performance and cosmetic goodies added to it. I ride a 2007 Kawasaki Vulcan Classic 1500 with high performance air intake, exhaust, and fuel modifications. Although we love to go riding, my new business and the health issues each of us deal with have limited our riding the last 2 summers WAY too much! I can't believe I wrote so much here, my gosh! Hopefully I haven't worn out my welcome already, lol. I wanted to make sure and post to activate and keep my membership here and after reading many of your introductions it's like I almost began to feel at home here. I am impressed by what a genuine and open group of people are here and from such varied locations and backgrounds!
Until my business stabalizes a bit and begins to have a more stable monthly income, I may not be able to make a great deal of time to participate like I would want to here, but I can use the resource very much and hope that over time I will have opportunity to be helpful to others as well. Thanks for having me here!
Oh yeah! I use Coreldraw x3 for the majority of my work, but I also use PhotoImpact x3 a GREAT deal and have been using it off and on for 10 years now. I use Xnview and Irfanview for some batch processing and other minor adjustments, and I use Photoshop Elements for some things too. The more I learn each of them the more it becomes clear that using a combination of software saves me a great deal of time in that one program will do one or two things FAR better than the others and as I learn which one does what best, my work improves dramatically as well as shortening the time it takes to get my work done.
ok, yikes this is a book! Peace to each of you,
Stan (A.K.A. natsnot)