Jordan Riane

I’m so tired of this design. I’m tired of seeing other sites that look like mine. So with that being said, I’ve got downtime tomorrow and will be trying to get a new design up. No more bright colors–I’m going for dark and dreary with a bit of bright. No more 100% width divs. I’m banning them -=|

There hasn’t been too much going on in my life that has warranted a blog entry. I doubt you’d want to read what time I woke up, went to the bathroom and wiped my ass, or how much I spent on beer on Sunday. I’ll spare you the mundane intricacies of my life!

Thursday nights are now officially Durbins nights (which is where I shall be tonight) since they have $1.25 domestic bottles, and $1.50 shots (Jager Bombs, and Vodka bombs.) Nothing else new has happened, though I did get another website through work, and managed to finish that over the weekend. Sunday my parents had a Labor Day party so most of my day was spent lounging around drinking beer, socializing, and eating cookies.

The only new thing in my life is that my best friend Amy and I have been actively looking at apartments/houses to rent. She really wants to get into her own place again, as do I, so the past few days have been spent discussing locations, as well as looking at the general price for a house over an apartment. So far we’ve found some really awesome places, that if we were to get 4-5 people altogether, we’d be looking at $375/month of rent per person, and utilities being divided up between everyone as well. It’s a gorgeous house, but it doesn’t allow pets. Which goes against us because she’d like to keep her cats.

Other than that I’ve been doing really good. I’ve got a few new things in my life (eg: video games, t-shirts), as well as new friends that have really helped the process of being satisfied that I’m a single female. All I know is that today is Thursday which means, DURBINS! tonight. Hopefully I can remember to take my camera with, so we can take awful photos.

It’s weird having something on my schedule from the morning until late in the evening. Last week I started working on the new client’s website, and then in the evenings I’ve had class to go to. Both have been pretty well although I’ve hit a bit of a snag with the client’s website. I’m not extremely fond of the design that their graphic designer came up with. I’ve found it really hard to code the website (although it is done now) because I just did not like what I saw. I’ve made suggestions for elements that really needed to be changed, and they were considered, although I felt extremely put off when I was told that it’s really what the client will agree with and whatnot. I understand that, but how can you be proud of the work you do, when you don’t like what you’re working with. I mean, isn’t it all about giving the client the best, and what will look the best? Regardless I did come up with a new concept, albeit it lacks any graphical inspiration for the soul fact that I am *not* a graphic designer. I’m hoping to present it to the client (since the graphic designer right now, is sort of AWOL but long story) and see if they like the new structure (rather than the design itself.)

All that aside, I have been asking myself why I have never gotten into watching Scrubs before. Throughout the week my friend Jeff and I have pretty much been distracting each other by talking about random crap, and of course exchanging YouTube videos. Earlier in the week he sent me a video of Turk dancing, and it was basically down hill from there. I guess it also doesn’t help that he’s been sending me a bunch of other clips from Scrubs to watch! Needless to say before I went out last night, I was able to catch two episodes on Comedy Central and pretty much kicked myself in the ass for never watching this show before. Time to start from the beginning! I really have to either blame or thank (or both!) Jeff for this. The plus is that I now have a new show to be excited to watch, but the downside is that I have seasons upon seasons to catch up on. Hopefully he can fulfill his duty of being a fellow nerd by compiling a list of episodes that I *must* watch, or even just a list of seasons that are better than others. We’ll see!

All that aside, this past week has been really great. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that school has started, and as I mentioned earlier I’m busy from the moment I wake up, up until I go to sleep. I love it! Hopefully a bunch of stuff will go on this week. Trying to make some plans for things; I know I have class on Thursday, but I might not go to that class as much. Besides, I’d rather go out with my friends to Durbin’s instead! Despite the fact that tomorrow is Monday, I hope that my SysWear order, Think Geek order and new Xbox video game (Star Wars: Battlefront; I loved it on the PS2) come in! Or my new debit card so that I can order a few t-shirts that (“NOOB, I am your father.,” “OMFG–The Gamer’s Prayer“) I really want to have, and because I really need to replenish my t-shirt collection. It’s very apparent which ones I wear the most–since they’re all black, and have been worn one day too many, they’re more of a dingy grey’ish black. -insert sad face emoticon-

And on that note, I am going to pass the fuck out.

Yesterday the Chicagoland area got buttraped with some massive storms. Around 3pm, I noticed that it was getting really dark out so I decided to keep my blinds open (my desk faces a window) to just watch. 2 minutes later the wind picks up out of nowhere and already tree branches are flying everywhere. So I called my sister and told her I was going to pick her up from her bus stop but her friend was already on her way here to drop her off. Shortly after that the tornado sirens went off, so I was talking to this guy Jeff online pretty much saying “oh noez.” So I got up to look out the patio window and it was just a huge clusterfuck of rain falling down. I couldn’t even see 10 feet past the window.

Naturally my mother instinct kicked in so I called my sister and told her to pull over somewhere or a friend’s house that was closer to wait until the storm was over. Turns out that the house they were going to stop at, noone was home so they got to our house fine, except soaked from just running 50 feet to the patio door.

The storm ended up lasting about 15 minutes or so, but damn it did major damage. Our patio chairs were in the lawn, huge branches were scattered across our front lawn, driveway, and street. Since it didn’t seem like power was going to come back on, I went ahead and used the last of the water up (we have filtered well water) to shower. Left my house around 5pm and drove around town; Nearly 75% of it was without power, and trees were down all over. The drive to school wasn’t too bad, since the storm had cleared and sun was trying to shine through.

Got to school about 1.25 hours early, so I headed to the lab to get some work done. Around 6:45pm, the school’s tornado sirens went off, so we all had to go downstairs. It was.. so… boring. But I had plenty of eyecandy to look at though I just ended up watching Family Guy on my iPod. Around 7:30 they let us go back to class. I should have just went home, but I wanted to see what the class was going to be about and who was going to be in there.

Yeah, big fat fucking joke. The class is shit I already know (we talked about lan/wan, tcp/ip, domain names, connection speeds.) I think I won’t be going in to many classes unless there’s a test I have to take there. I was *that* person. You know, the one that answers every question and gets it right. The one who corrects the teacher when he’s wrong, and the one who’s sitting in the back doodling up designs for a website instead of paying attention.

What would’ve been my favorite class, is now my least favorite.

After class got out (9:30pm), the previous storm had already passed, so I called my friend Amy to see what she was up to. Turns out her town was out of power as well, so we made plans to hang out for a bit and just do something until one of us was tired. Ended up just driving around talking about boys as usual! Finalized plans for tomorrow night to go to Kankakee to see her cousin’s band play =). I think we’re going to hang out with him later on too, so I’m sure that’ll be mucho fun.

Power went back on around 8am this morning, unfortunately Comcast (internet/phone/tv) is still down, so I got into the office at 9am. I think I’ll be here for most of the day because I have a website to finish for my client. *goes back to work*

Classes started yesterday, and it’s about time. It’s been way too long since I was really in school, so I’m excited to finally be going back (and full-time at that!) Yesterday I had my graphic design class, and already started an abstract project using only typography. The teacher seems okay, but he talks too fucking much. He kept talking to one of the girls that was sitting in my row, and it just annoyed the shit out of me. I suppose it had a lot to do with the fact that she was using some guy to design her website and wasn’t going to pay him for it. She was like “Well, I’m going out to dinner with him, but I really don’t want to…” I almost chimed in and told her to get over herself, and if she’s going to screw him over, she’ll get hers back eventually. But I held my tongue, though that didn’t stop me from muttering “shut the fuck up” and having the kid next to me agree 😛

Today was my Microsoft Office class. It’ll be easy as pie. Nothing too interesting there, but there were a couple of cute guys in the class. Not like I talked to them though, since I wasn’t anywhere near them. Tomorrow I’ve got GD again, so hopefully it’ll be somewhat interesting. Then my favorite (hopefully) class is on Thursday. It’s my internet technologies class which will primarily be about hosting, servers, and all that other good stuff. I’m really hoping that I’ll be one of few (or the only) female in that class, just so I can boost my ego even further.

The only class I don’t have to go on campus for is my WWW Authoring class, which is strictly online. I’m slightly disappointed, since I’d love to be in a class for this (as if I really need to be taught this) but unfortunately it wasn’t available. I don’t think this class starts until October, though I’m really impatient. I’m going to email the department head and ask her if it’s possible to get started early on this class rather than wait another two months. I mean, why not, it’s based online anyway. 😀

Aside from class, I’ve been working on stuff for the new client I have with work. Their graphic designer just sent me his PSD today, but there were uhm, a few things I did NOT like, so I sent him a really long email on it (and to the client) so hopefully some things will be considered/looked into. I got in some hours today; Ended up working 9-1:30pm, and played around with subversion and Ruby On Rails during most of that, and then got a skeleton set up for the site.

Tomorrow is going to be busy. Work in the morning, then off to buy 4 new tires for my car, and get an oil change. Then off to school early to buy $330 worth of books, and then GD class from 7-10pm. Debating whether or not to go to sleep now, or when I can’t keep my eyes open.