jordanriane

Category: Personal

  • I can has updatez

    Week one of work is officially over. It went very smooth, as as anticipated, I enjoy the work. The one thing I wasn’t sure about at first was the drive, which is 30 minutes one way, but surprisingly I don’t have to deal with traffic. I had expected the drive in the morning and night to be pretty horrific, but it’s actually a breeze! It also helps that it’s nearly a straight drive North, rather than dealing with random turns all over the place

    My days involve me waking up at 7am, taking a shower and getting ready. I leave at 8am, and typically waltz into the office around 8:45am. I have my own cubicle to work in, although the section I’m in only has three of us. At least in our “hallway.” It is interesting getting to eavesdrop on other people though, especially the ones that are on the other side of me. The other day a lady was talking about how a mouse got into her box of Splenda, and proceeded to hope that it got cancer from it. 😛

    I’ve got a bunch of projects on my platter right now, so I’ve been trying to get those done as quickly as possible. I like that I sit around all day coding up websites. Honestly, the day seems to go by really fast. Yesterday I started at 8:45am, and by the time I looked at the clock, I realized it was already 11:30am and my tummy was growling.

    I think my personal favorite of the job thus far is that everyone uses IRC to talk to each other. Although I have to admit that when I’ve got a few questions I feel weird PM’ing him in the #chan, because he’s literally diagonal to my cube.

    In other news, my birthday is in five days and my Kentucky Derby pick (Gayego) was a failure as it normally is.

  • Couldn’t have been a better time

    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

    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

    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

    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.

    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

  • In a constant state of creating.

    For the past few weeks, I’ve had this constant urge to create something new. Not even something specific either. The urge has ranged from baking, to new website projects, and god knows what else. I haven’t really followed through with any of them, but I have managed to get a start on a couple of my ideas that I’ve come up with. The need to create something new has been overwhelming to the point where it’s frustrating to me. I don’t want to have another project to manage, because I have enough already, but I can’t help but want to create something new to either earn profit, or to be the best.

    I’ve managed to find a bunch of new scripts that I want to test out. They’ve ranged from a host directory, gaming clan, to a Halo 3 screenshot directory. Some of them I doubt that I’ll ever get around to, but I’ve already put time and effort into the Halo 3 screenshot directory. I got tired of uploading all of mine into a Halo directory, so I went ahead and registered a new domain, and purchased some software to get the job done. Not sure if I really want to get it going to where other users join up as well.

    Aside from putting together ideas for new projects, I’ve been trying to keep myself occupied with other work. Design work has been really slow, which is probably the reason why I’m looking for something else to do. Hopefully I can nab in some web design jobs soon, because I’m going to go crazy if I start up another project.

    Other than that, I don’t know what I want to blog about here. I don’t want to write tutorials on A or Z; I don’t want to blog about someone else’s differences and shortcomings, but I don’t want to have an empty blog. I need to think up something to blog about because I hate having to bullshit my way to an entry on my own damn blog.

  • Dead Like Me

    A few years ago when I had been dating Antoine, he introduced me to Dead Like Me (official). We ended up the entire first season, and when it was over he told me that it had been canceled after season two and wasn’t going to be on air ever again. I was really sad to hear about it, because I really loved the show.

    Dead Like Me

    Meet Georgia Lass (who prefers to be called George). She is a young Seattle college dropout who is unhappy with life. She is always at odds with her mom, Joy. One day coming back from her temp job as a filing clerk, she is hit by the toliet seat of the re-entering Space Station Mir. Finding out she is now dead, she is recruited to become a grim reaper. As in life, she is a pain in the butt in death. She does not like the details of her job, and is always at loggerheads with her boss Rube. Her fellow grim reapers don’t really take much of a liking to her either. She also learns grim reapers don’t even get a free ride in death, as they must hold down regular jobs along with their death duties.

    I recently remember the show when I read that they were doing a straight-to-dvd movie of it, AND because it was a featured item on sale at Amazon where each season was 60% off. Of course, the only reason I even went to Amazon was because an old account of mine on Blingo had generated a prize for me to accept.

    You see a few years ago, a friend of mine had posted about Blingo.com and said that you can earn prizes by using their search engine (though I think it’s powered by google anywhere, but nonetheless.) I’ve won a few times there, namely Fandago movie tickets, but I got an email today saying that my referral won, thus I was able to pick out a prize too. It was $5 to amazon, or a fandango movie ticket. Since I don’t really go to the movies that much anymore, I opted for the Amazon ticket.

    So there you have it. I ended up getting $5 off of my order, and got both seasons of Dead Like Me for only $30 including shipping. Woot!

  • Close to home

    Yesterday, a local Lane Bryant was involved in an armed robbery that resulted in five of the women in the store being shot. Four of them were pronounced dead, and one shortly died later from the injuries sustained. I was in shock namely because this is just a few miles from where I live. I shop in the strip mall every month. Hell, I worked at the Best Buy that was in this plaza.

    I’ve been keeping up with all of the news articles, and the Chicago Tribune, Five victims named, sources say sixth survives, announced the victims names, as well as Lane Bryant putting up a $50,000 reward to help catch the piece of shit that did this. There’s a lot of differences between newspapers and news reports, but apparently he made the woman go into the backroom, and whatever happened in there, he subsequently shot them all.

    His victims were: Connie R. Woolfolk, 37, of Flossmoor; Jennifer L. Bishop, 34, of South Bend, IN; Rhonda McFarland, 42, of Joliet; Sarah Szafranski, 22, of Oak Forest and Carrie Hudek Chiuso, 33, of Frankfort. May you all rest in peace.

    LB Memorial 2
    LB Memorial

  • I will never love my car.

    I bought my car in 2004, used from a local Ford dealership. I think I paid about $6500 for it. It’s a 1999 Ford Escort ZX2, and at the time it had about 60,000 miles on it. Right now it has about 110,900 miles on it, and luckily enough has no major cosmetic damage (excluding some scratches near the keyhole on my trunk, and uhm, this dent in my bumper from a friend…)

    But I’m just had so many problems in the 4 years of owning this car, that it’s caused so much financial burden on me (and my dad), that if I could sue it, I would.
    2005 – $1530
    2006 – $3000
    2007 – $900
    2008 – TBA (I’m going to guess around $200-300)

    (more…)