Me Right Now [01.28.09]

Let the blogging and videos resume.

The First Week

Well I made it through the first week working at DigiMedia and I gotta say, I loved it. It is a bit of a big change from freelancing from home but I was expecting that. I love having to go to work each day and being around other developers and designers and working on larger projects. I spent most of this week in Photoshop cranking out graphics. The rest of the time was spent finishing a WordPress project that was already started. Fixing errors, setting up some new plugins, and other things of that nature. I got a crash course on their Ad Manager which is just massive and look forward to messing with it more and ending up giving a quick class on WordPress to some retail people. Overall it was a pretty good week and I think I will enjoy working there. Another plus with the new job is having to learn Ruby. As you know, I’ve wanted to for awhile but client work always got in the way. However, with most of the work at DigiMedia being done in Ruby this gives me a chance to finally learn it. I have some books that I’m going through and several people I can turn to for help if needed.

Besides starting the new job this month we will also be moving in the coming weeks. We are still debating on a house or apartment, either way we plan to rent. Between me just starting the new job and Melissa planning to change from online classes at Uni of Phoenix Online to local classes here at Midwestern State University for nursing starting in January we just aren’t sure what would be better for us. Either way it will only be for 2-3 years.

I am also attempting to finish my redesign. I posted a screen of it on flickr awhile back and got lots of great feedback. I have started coding it to WordPress and just about done with the main page but still have several things to do. The problem is client work is on top of my list right now and taking up most of my evenings and weekends so I’m having to make time for my projects which right now there just isn’t enough of. I would like to have it done by the end of the month. As next month is full as well between getting settled into the new place and taking a mini-vacation to Kansas to see Melissa’s grandparents.

What’s New?

That is a very good question. I am in the process of looking at some new clients and have recently made a partnership with another freelancer who is a little over booked with clients so I will be taking some off his hands. I am still working on my projects with my latest web app just around the corner. I also have a new project in the works but not ready to say just yet. Most of my work days right now are doing client updates. It seems I can go weeks or months and no client needs updates or work done and then when I get in the process of new clients my current ones start sending loads of updates. The good thing about updates is that the day seems to go by pretty fast.

Spring is of course here and one can only hope that we don’t have a repeat of last year. I really don’t want to have to deal with massive flooding again this year (the picture above is from Wichita Falls, TX during the flooding last year. It was not taken by me and you can see more here). Last year was bad enough. It also cut our camping trips to only two for the season when we had planned more. In fact we already have two camping trips planned so far with the first being the first weekend in June for my birthday in Lawton, OK at Lake Lawtonka. The other being around the 4th of July here at Lake Arrowhead. We plan to get another one in but not sure when or where yet. Need to start going through our camping gear in the next couple of weeks as well.

Moving to Wichita Falls, TX has a huge plus over Lawton, OK and that was the MPEC (Kay Yeager and Memorial Auditorium). They don’t get much during a year but they do get a few big concerts and shows. In January you may remember that we took the kids to see Playhouse Disney Live! which was great. On Monday I will be going to see Sevendust, Saliva, Neverset, and Overscene at the KY. I originally hadn’t planned on going but I’ve been a huge fan of Sevendust for years and Saliva is a great band. It should be a great show and I’m looking forward to it.

On top of going to the Sevendust show on Monday the wife and I will be going to see Jeff Dunham on May 8 at the Memorial Auditorium for his Spark of Insanity tour. I have loved Jeff Dunham for awhile and both of his DVDs are great. It will be great to finally see him in person. That is really all that is going on right now. Still working on my redesign which as of today is about 75% complete so it should be up very soon.