BAMBOO! My New Toy, I mean, Wacom Tablet

I'm really excited about my new toy. You might wonder, how am I able to get such a new toy? Well, let's start at the beginning.

We bank with Chase. This is mostly because Washington Mutual folded and was swallowed by Chase, so we kept our accounts there for convenience, among other things. My husband has a reward card - so whenever we use his card, we get points. Normally I would think these things would only result in Skymall type purchases, but so far we've gotten a few fun things.

For example, we got an awesome water dispenser for our cat. Okay, this sounds like a skymall thing, but supposedly cats like running water more than water from a dish. It's also supposed to be healthier - or so they say. In any case, we thought we were getting a little one. We ended up getting the biggest water dispenser I've ever seen in my life for free. Normally it would be around $50, but again, we got it for free.

Well, it had been a while since we had taken advantage of our points. So Christian decided to check out what options we had as far as redemption. Turns out Chase had upgraded their rewards program, so now, you can go through a bunch of different vendors to get fun gadgets etc. Well, after browsing through the bagillion options, we decided to look at tablets.

It was something I had been wanting for some time because drawing with your finger on a touchpad just isn't the same as having a stylus in your hand. You don't have the same kind of control as you would if you had a stylus or a pencil. Being the artist I am, it was frustrating to try to make graphics without this.

Turned out, I could get a Bamboo using my reward points. So I ended up getting a pen/touch for free. The thing is the size of my netbook, which is kind of weird, but it is certainly big enough to get the job done, and small enough that I could take it with me if I wanted to. For the moment however, I am waiting. My current kernel of Ubuntu isn't working with the beautiful toy, though the later version that is on our media PC does. Just a little while longer and the new kernel comes out. When that happens, I'll update and start playing with my new toy. This will mean I will probably do a few comics (woohoo!) and will possibly do some graphics for shirts etc.

Of course, I'll also do some concept art for The Khloe Alwell Series....that goes without saying. :-)