Jordan Riane

When I landed a job as a web designer for a local consulting firm, I’ve had nothing but code running through my veins. I can’t get enough of it, and honestly, I don’t think I could live without it. I’ve been looking at making extra cash for awhile now, but haven’t had any luck. For awhile there I was browsing Craigslist.com to pick up some of the extra gigs for website designs, but I rarely received any communication back. Or if someone was interested, they’d fall off the deep end (which is also why it’s a good thing to charge a 50% deposit up front–don’t want to get screwed out of work you do…)

Now before you think this is some god awful sponsored review, well, you’re wrong. I can’t remember how I found this exactly but I believe I was searching through Google for “freelance websites,” and other variations of it. I ended up stumbling across elance.com and immediately was interested in it. Before I joined up I browsed around some of the companies that are listed on there, and then some of the projects that are listed as well.

The system is divided in half. You have one section that’s dedicated to finding professionals and another part of the site that’s dedicated towards finding work. There are eight categories each of the two are divided into which range from Web Programming to SEO & SEM. Since I’m only interested in finding work in the web programming area, I ended up just browsing around some of the listings and was just a bit confused on the setup.

It’s not like a standard listing where you contact them, and if they’re interested, they’ll go with your services. Each listing is actually similar to an auction. They state how long the bidding will last for, what their budget is, how you’ll get paid, and then they have the option to list the details of the project that needs to be done, or what they can do for you.

Once you’re logged into your account (and you’ve completed the criteria necessary to actually bid [membership fee of $9.95/month, an Elance test to “certify” your account]), you’ll see a special section next to the bid where you can submit any questions to the user about their product/services, and then you’re able to type in your proposal to them. You can attach files to give them a better idea of what you can do for them. Once you’ve got that down you can then submit the price you’d want to be paid for the project, and how long it’ll take to deliver it.

Then it’s a waiting game to see if your bid will get accepted. I’ve noticed that majority of the users that are using the Find Work section of the website are from India, and other countries in Europe. I’ve also seen a few from the states but like I said, majority from India. I’m not sure what my point is in mentioning that, but it was just something I noticed. Most of the bids I’ve set for projects have ranged from $150 for a small 5 page hosting company design, to $500 for a WordPress powered blog with a custom design and other plugins implemented within the design.

I’ve yet to receive a project yet as one of them I bid on has just ended today, and some of the others are set to end in a few hours or in a week or so. But I’m kind of hoping that this will help to bring in extra work my way so that I can just get some rainy day cash flow started, and hopefully appeal to my need to waste my money on electronics, plane tickets, and well, you know, pizza and beer.

Regardless of the fact that I’ve yet to make any money of it, judging by some of the stats I’ve seen from other users (in each bid it shows their feedback given by the bid starters, as well as how much money they’ve made on Elance), it’s definitely a great way to earn money. One person/company from India had over $100,000+ in profit from bids they’ve won on Elance. Now I’m not sure if it was all design based, or if it included various other gigs. Either way, I’m hoping that my profit will get to at least 1/10th of that!

Other resources about Elance:

• How To Make Money With Elance
• Digg.com created for only $200.00 [On Elance.com]
• Hacking IT: eLance

Saturday morning I received horrible news that my best friend of 17 years had lost her father. Since early October he had been extremely ill due to the malfunction of his liver. He had been in and out of the hospital for months, and went back into ICU care the week of Christmas. There were hopes that he could make it. We finally found out that he was going to be put onto a transplant list, and that provided his health got better, he might actually make it.

I’ve never truly known what all entails of a liver transplant, or hell, any transplant. Amy told me the details that they put into consideration his physical health–whether or not he could survive the transplant AND recovery. Even with that into consideration, there were other things like mental health of him and his immediate family. The procedure that he would’ve gone through would have had part of his family member’s (whomever matched blood type, liver size, et. al.) liver grafted to his own liver to let it regenerate.

But he took a turn for the worse not even a week after finding out that he could go on the transplant list. On Christmas Day, as I was driving home from my grandparent’s house, Amy called me to tell me that they were taking him off of dialysis, the transplant list, and essentially let him die peacefully. It was just shocking to hear this, because I mean, it’s her Dad, and even though you know people eventually die, you just still think they’re going to live to be old and grouchy.

Saturday morning he passed away at 7:30 in the morning from his severe liver failure. I still can’t fathom that he’s not here anymore. It’s just the most surreal and intense feeling, knowing that someone has moved on in life… That they’re no longer there. I can’t even begin to fathom the emotions that Amy and her mom are going through, and hell, their family. The wake is going to be on Wednesday, and the funeral on Thursday. It’s going to be hard to get through those two days, because I’m already emotional over it. To see their grief, pain, sadness is going to tear me apart.

It’s just hard because you don’t know what to say, or do.. You can just be there and hope that it’ll provide some sort of comfort for them. Even if it’s just for a few minutes.

Today is Christmas Eve and it still has not sunk in that tomorrow is Christmas Day. I don’t know if it’s because I’m older or because our family traditions have changed, but I don’t even care anymore. I’m not going to wake up at 7am, and run out to the tree to see what Santa left for me. Eventually I’ll end up rolling out of bed at 11am only because I have to be ready by 12:30pm to leave for my Grandparent’s house.

Long gone are the days when I would leave milk and cookies out and night, and have a hard time falling asleep knowing that Santa would be coming down our chimney sometime during the night. I think the first year I stopped believing in Santa was around the time I was maybe 12 or so. My bedroom was next to my parents room, and I was sleeping in my top bunk. I could hear them wrapping presents in their room, and not only that but I remembered that the wrapping paper I found in their room was the same kind that Santa used that year. After that it was pretty much up to me not to tell my younger sister that Santa didn’t exist (which said sister ended up telling our youngest sister around the age of 4/5 that Santa was fake, and our parents picked our gifts.)

That on Christmas Eve, the jolly old fellow that rang our front door, was actually my dad. Which explained a lot to me years later, because I would try to find my dad to tell him that “Holy Shit! Santa is HERE! AT OUR HOUSE!” he was always conveniently missing. One year he was in the bathroom, and upon my banging on the locked door, he didn’t answer. One year it was a beer run to the garage. I specifically remember the beer run, because when he came back into the house after Santa was gone, he told me how he got to see the reindeer on the roof and saw Santa fly off.

If they need to blame anyone for my pathological lying to them, it’s their own damn fault! Regardless, we used to have huge family Christmas Eve dinners. Then my Aunt/Cousins moved to Florida, which left just my grandparents. Then Christmas Eve turned into Christmas Day dinner, and it’s been that way for well over a decade now. Long gone are the times when my family would actually put effort into buying a gift. Now it’s either cash, or a gift card… Moreso for me than anyone else. I mean, sure they can buy me some videogames and whatnot. But that would actually require me telling them what I want for Christmas.

This year I didn’t ask for a damn thing. I’m not sure if my parents will still give me something (though I’d rather have cash; Got a ticket to buy), and I’m sure I’m going to get my ass ripped by my grandma. I told her I’d give her a list of things I wanted, and guess what, I didn’t. So she’ll either give me nothing to spite me, or a card with cash. Regardless, I know she’ll bitch 🙁

So I guess instead of looking forward to Christmas Day and being young again, I’m totally avoiding it. Not only that but what kind of asshole calls you at asscrackdawn on Christmas Eve? Credit Collectors. To remind you that you’re a pile of shit that can’t afford Christmas. I can only hope they don’t call tomorrow. Credit Collectors have no heart, so they’ll work on Christmas Day shattering hearts everywhere that the Christmas present you bought, just put you in debt. Thanks guys.

As if we didn’t already have to deal with a previous snowstorm a couple weeks ago (and two different ice storms) we got hit hard again yesterday throughout the day and into the early morning. So for the fourth time I’ve had to cancel plans and call it a night due to crappy weather. I don’t mind snow, it’s pretty to look at, but when I’ve got about 9″ of snow to clear off of my car, shovel around my car, AND various other parts outside (garage area, front walkway, back walkway and patio), then I hate it.

Aside from bitching about snow I managed to finish up my first semester back to college, and managed to do decent. I could have done better, but I’ll just try to be satisfied with what I’ve got under my plate right now. I’m still rather iffy on whether or not I’m going to register for classes next week, but we’ll see. Once school was done, I pretty much had a lot of free time and despite the fact that I made a to-do list, nothing on it was completed at all. Save for actually creating a new design for my website.

Tomorrow I’ll be spending a few hours backing up files from a laptop HDD and onto a new Seagate FreeAgent external HDD. Once I’ve got that done I get to go through the fantastic process of reformatting it with Windows XP, and quite possibly tossing on Open Suse if I feel like partitioning it. Geekiness aside, that’s really I’ve got planned this week, and hell for the rest of this month, excluding New Year’s Eve.

The 2nd week of January I’m going to be making a trip out to Kansas to go out and see my boyfriend Travis. If you’re wondering how the hell I know someone in Kansas while I live in Chicago, you can assume correctly. I ended up meeting him online (though if you really want to get technical, Halo 3!) and instantly hit it off, and what do you know, decided to start dating. I’ll probably be flying out on the 7th or 8th depending on what the airfare is between the two dates (because one or the other can make a huge difference in price) and staying there for a week or more. Regardless of how we met, I couldn’t really care what other people thought of it. I’ve donee it several times for relationships, friendships, you name it. It’s gone well, and I don’t see this being any different–especially when Travis is almost like my coveted soul mate.

And on that note, time to go start backing up the HDD.