Life is awesome.

I've been playing around on Flickr a lot lately, getting inspired, commenting on pictures, meeting other photographers and what not. So I had an image posted that's called an HDR image. To create these, I have to use a program that is not free, but the trial version with annoying watermarks is.

A guy who is part of a small group of us who own the same camera also makes a lot of these HDR images and commented on one of mine that he liked that it was a shame about the watermark. I agreed, but explained we be po' and there's no way I could ever justify paying $109 for what is essentially a toy (Food? Toy? Food? Toy?). So last night, I get an email from him saying "Happy Birthday," saying he had liked what I had done with the HDR so far and giving me a code to try! It worked! I have no idea if this sainted man bought it for me because he's a billionaire and likes to do nice things for strangers on the internet, or if he has some code that is floating around on the internet (I kind of hope it's this one, because that's a lot of money to spend on a complete stranger), but I don't care!

Random acts of kindness rock! I'm definitely going to pay this forward (in a very non-monetary sense). Any other cliches I could press into service?

In other awesome news, within the past week, I have had two sets of friends get engaged! I'm not going to post them here, since of the readers I know exist, half of you wouldn't know them and the other half should probably hear it from the horse's mouth, as it were. (One of them I'm still waiting on confirmation for. They emailed out a very, very suspicious picture and if they aren't actually engaged, I'm going to be very angry, then very sad. So it better be true!)

Hooray for good things!