Category: Personal

Couldn’t have been a better time

Personal

Well, the interview I had on Monday went spectacular, and of course means I am now officially employed again. Although I still retain the label “freelance designer” I am no longer of the “unemployed” group. I was originally scheduled to start work on Monday the 29th, but the guy putting together my [webdesign] work got sick with strep. Now I’ll start on Thursday May 1st. Not bad at all.

Although this job came at a perfect time. I’ve got a hefty bill that I have to have paid by May 31st. I think it’s a bunch of bullshit, but it’s of my own accord, so I’m dealing with it. My 2 year old cell phone finally took a shit on me. It’s a Samsung D807, and somehow the inner LCD cracked and leaked. I’m not sure how it happened because it didn’t drop once during the day it happened. As such, I ventured out to eBay for a new phone. I was 6 seconds away from winning a Blackberry Pearl for $80, but some little nasty bugger decided to snipe me.

That’s okay because I ended up winning a perfect Blackjack with extra accessories for about $130 (including shipping.) I was skeptical to spend that much on a phone, but with my new job, it’s a necessity. I need to be able to access emails on the go, sync up, and of course, have a phone I can *use.*

Other than that I’ve been trying out for a Halo 3 clan through Army of the Republic. Yes, you read it right. I’m still a fanatic for Halo, and it won’t ever stop. Outside of actually having fun with the game, I’ve met so many awesome people through it, that it’s the one reason why I enjoy it the most. Of course, some of the other websites I’ve come across, like halo3.junk.ws, have also been reasons why I play this game over anything else.

Since I’ve got a few more days until i won’t have much time for myself, I figured I’d spend my hours trying to come up with some decent WordPress themes. I don’t know if I’ll actually create them for free or as premium, but I’m sure something will happen. Oh, and maybe a new design for here.. 😛 Yeah, we’ll see!

Taking a plunge into the deep end

Personal

Tomorrow I have an interview for a web design job for a company downtown [Chicago.] I haven’t been actively pursuing a job, but I happened to stumble across this company when I was browsing Craigslist. Normally I’m very skeptical of my own skills/talent, so I was hesitant to send them an email with my portfolio and resume.

Pushing aside my insecurities, I went ahead and sent out an email and heard back after the weekend. Needless to say, I had a call on Friday to set up my interview for Monday. I’m nervous for the fact that I really want this job. It’s going to be my highest paying one yet (between $25-27 an hour) and it’d be in a lovely location downtown.

I’m going to try to remain optimistic, but even if I don’t get the job for some odd reason, at least I can say I tried.

7 years and counting

Personal

For almost seven years I’ve been writing in my Livejournal account. A couple of nights ago I decided to venture through it when a friend of mine had asked what Harry Potter movie we had seen together. I knew I would’ve blogged about it, so I went through the month I figured it’d be in, and voila. I read about what we did that day, the night before, the night after.. etc.

It was sort of melancholy rereading my own private thoughts. Some of it was a bit depressing to read (see: breakups) but majority of it made me miss being 18-20. I wasn’t really careless or anything, but I definitely was more confident with myself, and happy with my life and where it was going. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to imply my life isn’t what I want it to be right now, but it does have a few negatives that I’d like to work out.

I’m also going to start job hunting again. Though I’m still really unsure about that. I love being a freelance webdesigner. It’s an awesome feeling that I can bring in all of this income on my own, and that I am my own boss. But it’s not a reliable source of income that I can get back out on my own, to pay all the bills and rent. Right now I just pay rent, and the rest of my money goes towards whatever I feel like buying.

My other goal is to start keeping up with this website more. I’ve got a new design that I purchased from Jacky because it was ridiculously cute, so whenever I can get around to tweaking it, that’ll replace this garbage. Hopefully a new design can inspire me to blog more too. I’m thinking that I’ll stray from the usual personal entries, and post more about projects, tutorials, and other useless shit I find on the internet.

Oh Hai Guise

Personal

It’s rather apparent that I don’t care as much about this website as I used to. I just don’t have the urge to blog, and ultimately that’s probably going to be this site’s downfall. I’ve been debating on whether or not to keep this site up, but I’m sure I’ll stick with the latter. I suppose I just need to take a breath from everything else I’ve been working on, so I can spend some time on this site.

In other news over the past few weeks I’ve managed to build a new computer for myself, settle off some debt (I owed my dad $400), and of course gain some more clients and other work for a new project I’ve got up. There are a few blog entries in my drafts that I had started to talk about my new project, but I just never followed through with them. I think I’m just going to wait until I have the site up and running before I even worry about blogging about it.

Aside from freelance work, I’m still hopelessly a fan of Halo 3. I’ve even gone as far as contemplating joining a clan for it. Talk about geeky. 🙂

Yeah Yeah, I’m a horrible blogger.

Personal

I don’t blog enough anymore. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, but I don’t know what to blog about. Writing about my personal life is out of the question because I really don’t like to divulge that information publicly. If I were to write a tutorial, it’s not going to be anything creative, or new. You’ll have read it somewhere else.

So my options are slim! Which eventually leads to a complete disinterest in this website altogether. I’ve opened WordPress so many times to start new entries (I have three drafts with maybe 1-2 sentences) but yet I can’t muster up the brain power to go ahead and update. But I think I’ll try to update now.

Holdfire Network‘s design has been up since June of 2007, and it’s become quite an eyesore to me. I’m sure I’m not the only person that visits her own website on a daily basis, as if she’s never seen it before. Kind of like when you rummage around the kitchen for food. You’ll look in the fridge, walk away, then open it back up again as if food has magically appeared since you closed it a few seconds ago.

Anyway, what has bothered me the most about the current design is that I have a lot of issues with the markup, and it’s just really messy. It also lacks a CMS. I’ve had a bunch of people ask what CMS I use for it, but I actually don’t. Just some includes, and .htaccess to rewrite the URLs. So along with a new design, I’ll be integrating it into a CMS. What that will be, I have no idea. I’m debating WordPress since I’m already knowledgable of the system and how template works, but I don’t really need anything surpassing storing of pages, and a template system.

So far I’ve got the initial design down; I’ll I’m doing now is just proofing through copyright, reworking what might be outdated, and of course adding in new features. Okay, maybe not features perse, but more or less just updating the pricing for things, and other items.

Well, there you have it. You get a little sneak peak at what I’ve been working on, aside from another new project that I’ll be announcing here shortly. I’d supply you with a larger preview, but for now this is what you’ll have to deal with. Though if you’re that curious, I just might let you know 😉

Holdfire Network Design Preview 2008