Category: Personal

This past week has been a complete struggle for me. No, scratch that, this entire month has. I’ve become such a hermit crab it’s disgusting. But I’ve decided that this is just hurting me too much, and that nothing is going to change. Why should I wait around for someone that doesn’t give a shit about me anymore, or rather that’s the impression that he gives me. I know it sucks, it really does, but this is my life, and I want to be happy.

So this weekend was pretty painful, more emotional than anything else, but just realizing the decision I was going to make. Tomorrow my classes start, and from Monday thru Thursday I’ll be trying to focus a lot of my attention on that.

I just hope that I can really stick to my guns and try to stay strong. I really just want to find someone to hang out with, make me happy again. I don’t care if it’s just a friend, that’s all I want right now.

Much intense attention to finishing and getting up the new design for Holdfire Network has surely paid off. I spent almost all of today fixing up last minute items with the website, testing it out to make sure it works, and then of course uploading it and setting it up for actual production. I had a few issues with .htaccess (namely 301 Redirects) and ended up changing the scheme so I’ll end up losing some PR for the pages, but quite frankly, PR isn’t going to do much with the site when it’s not like I’m doing this for SEO or advertisements based off of PR.

Anyway, feel free to check out the design and let me know what you think. Right now there ARE a few issues I have to resolve (when you’re viewing the dropdown menu, the bottom border does not go across 100%; dropdown menu doesn’t work in IE6, and the dropdown is off by some pixels in IE7) but if you do spot any errors whether it’s XHTML that I borked, spelling, grammar, broken links, or just something I should change… TELL ME!

I also finally added the affiliates program to the site as well. Each sale earns an affiliate 25% commission, and payment is through PayPal when their balance hits $25. I’m seriously excited for the new additions and the design. I truly hope that this will help to encourage new clients, because honestly, this is something I love doing and I really want this to get bigger.

Holdfire Billing is the only thing slightly out of whack at the moment. WHMCS is based entirely off of tables, so I’ve been trying to do some quick XHTML/CSS integration with it, and there are some things that are screwed up. Which explains why I’m still up at 3:30AM. I just want to get a few more things done, and then I am just going to pass out and sleep late.

Today I started a new project with a pretty big client. I’m going to be redesigning their entire site, and just adding my own ideas and flare into it. I had to meet up with the client at the North side of Chicago, but it wasn’t too bad. It’s actually a couple blocks north of where Mark works, so I was familiar with the route to take up there. Rush hour traffic was decent, though I hit a few snags where the highway was merging with other traffic. All in all the drive was close to an hour long.

The meeting with the client was well. We went over what the website is for, and also just discussed my ideas for the website. I’ve got a pretty decent idea of how I want it to look so I’m going to be putting together a skeleton for it right now. It’s going to be based off of Ruby on Rails. I kind of wish I kept up with RoR when I started playing around with it a few months ago. But it should be pretty easy, because I’ve been using CakePHP with the firm I work for, so I shouldn’t have too many problems.

Aside from the project, I haven’t been doing too much work other than my redesign for Holdfire–which happens to be going quite well. I really want to try to get it done before the client wants their site started which could either be tomorrow or Monday. I’d like to get started ASAP, but if they’ll need to wait until Monday, I’m not going to mind too much.

Anyway, that’s pretty much what I’ve been up to. I did get to see Mark over the weekend, and that was definitely uplifting for me. It’s just a little sad because he ended up moving on Saturday night and instead of being 30 minutes away, he’s now an hour away. I guess it’s something I’ll eventually get used to. It’ll just suck because I won’t get to see him as much as before, since my fall semester classes start next week. They’re all night classes on Monday-Thursday. As far as things go between he and I, things look good, but it’s honestly hard to tell. I’m not going to press him anymore until he’s ready to say it to me on his own, but obviously I’d like for things to be the same as they were before he broke up with me. Regardless, hanging out with Sunday was just really nice. We watched movies, and laid around all day. I definitely hope for more days like that.

Earlier last month I ended up landing a job with a consulting firm in a city next to mine, and have been working for them as a contracted web designer. Needless to say, I’ve been in love with this job. For the first time in my life, I’m actually doing something that I love and actually want to do.

I’m not standing around helping customers with what computer best suits their needs, or selling them Geek Squad services. I’m not wasting my knowledge by ringing up mindless customers with their large Mocha with skim, lite whip, extra chocolate shavings. I am designing websites for businesses. And it feels fantastic.

Right now I’m just putting some last minute touches on my first solo design project for them. Just cleaning up some minor issues, and changing a few things to include some new additions that I got this morning. And you know where I’m doing this? All from home. I haven’t worked from home most of the days–there were some days that I went into the office and worked there. It’s nice because I’ll bring my laptop to the office, and it’s been nice and quiet, cool and dark in there. Perfect for getting a lot of work done.

I’m going up there later on to get my first paycheck, and it’ll be a nice one since I also got a bonus for being the sole designer for the site. Pretty fantastic, that’s for damned sure. Needless to say, I’ve been hit with more creativity because of this, so much that I’ve been working on new designs for Holdfire Network, MyWHMCS, and a quick one I put up for Project Cloverfield.com.

Enough chattering away, time to get finished on this site!

Well, the past couple of days have been hard to deal with. Friday I spent the better half of the day lounging around the pool with my friend Amy.

Unfortunately for me, I forgot to wear suntan lotion. The end result was me looking like a fresh and ripe tomato. Though the first night was the worst night. My legs were so burnt that when I put on my pants, you could feel the heat radiating off of them. My upper chest and shoulders were also pretty bad, but my legs have been the most sensitive. I’ve ended up with a nice tan, but next time I’ll stick to wearing some suntan lotion instead.

Saturday was probably the worst day thus far. I managed to break down over a cheeseburger, in the shower, watching My Super Ex-Girlfriend, and listening to Rise Against. All within before 7pm. I finally got an email from Mark, and I couldn’t believe how much it calmed me down and helped me. I was able to concentrate on something more than 10 minutes without worrying what was going on with my life and him.

Today has been okay so far. I really want to talk to Mark, but I’m just scared to call him. I sent him a couple of emails just randomly chattering to him, and then asking to talk to him. I hate that I keep pestering him, but I just honestly miss him. It’s been a week since I last saw him, and despite what went down the other night, I do want to see him.

To bide the time today, I started working on a redesign for Holdfire Network. It’s looking pretty good so far, and definitely a step up from the current design. I’m also adding in a few extra features to it, so hopefully that will bring in some extra clients.

Back to working… and hoping I’ll get to see him tonight.