I'll generally listen to some form of fairly epic sounding metal. That means anything like Lacuna Coil or Epica, Insomnium or Enslaved, etc. Sometimes I'll change things up and listen to something else like CHVRCHES or Radiohead or Chelsea Wolfe, but typically if I'm listening to music, it's usually metal.

And I always listen to a full album. I can't do playlists of various songs. If I start track 1 of an album, I need to listen to it straight through to the end.

I largely use music for focus, drowning out the usual office conversations from people in the nearby cubicles, allowing me to zero in on what I'm working on. I know a lot of people use instrumental music as lyrics can be distracting, but, personally, lyrics don't distract me most of the time (unless it's a song I really like).

For work, I've got a Logitech M510 that I carry in my bag with me and plug into my machine at work. It was inexpensive but gets the job done nicely. I like this mouse a lot.

For gaming I've got a Logitech G700S and a G600 (for MMOs). I almost considered using my G700S for work but wanted something smaller and more easily portable and the M510 hit that for me.

Pilot Precise V5 or V7 is my pen of choice and has been for years and years. Cheap, easy to find at any office store or grocery store or Target or Amazon or wherever and I somehow manage to make them last forever.

Maybe it's too small? I don't know. It's also not a backpack but a messenger bag. But this is what I use every day. I drive to work then have about a half-mile walk from my parking garage to work itself. And when I go out of town this comes with me - it's made it easily through three days at PAX last year.

http://www.timbuk2.com/dashboard-laptop-messenger-bag/143.html?dwvar_143_size=8&dwvar_143_color=4090

I can carry my macbook air and an ipad (but it'd fit a MBP no problem). I have a mouse in there, pens, notebooks, small portable battery pack for my phone and ipad, umbrella, my nice office shoes, some stuff for headaches, lunch (which isn't in a lunch tote, just a plastic grocery bag) and a water bottle. And I could probably stuff some other things like a 3DS, Kindle, etc. in there if I wanted to.

And you can get this pretty cheap on amazon.

Almost all of my goals as a designer are completely unrelated to design as I don't do much, if any, design work outside of my day to day UX/web design job (I don't freelance or whatever).

So, realistically:

• I plan to dig back into writing a novel.
• Move to Austin, assuming I can find a job there.
• Hang out with my friends a little more often.
• Play more games of the board and console/PC variety.
• I might redesign my portfolio at some point.

Rey did show herself to be adept with melee weapons toward the beginning of the film and in both Rey and Finn's defense, Kylo Ren was injured during that fight from being shot by Chewie just before. If that helps make that fight easier to accept?

For me, making sure the hardware and software I need to use is more or less ready to go is kind of the big thing. I realize that there's still likely a little setup on my end (choosing passwords, setting up voicemail, etc.) but having the important things set up and ready to go is a big deal.

My current experience is at a very large company but, at my current job I spent about a week and a half unable to work substantially on the projects my team wanted me to work on simply because I had to put in a request to have Photoshop and Illustrator installed - a request which took nearly a week and a half to be fulfilled. Thankfully, I could attend some meetings and do some lofi work with pen and paper sketches while I waited. But many of those early issues would've been more easily resolved had everything been set up in advance.

It almost felt like they had no idea how to handle a new designer joining the team.

I was so ready for more Persona 5 news when I saw this.

Usually either Progressive Metal or Pop.

At the moment I'm between Ayreon/The Gentle Storm and Carly Rae Jepsen/CHVRCHES

Mostly from scratch. HTML/CSS/JS all built on top of Foundation's grid.