PR news

After months of struggling I've finally gotten a break! The local sheriffs office has decided they want a site that they can update (aka a cms). Great! What's better? O got the job! After almost an hour of discussion we decided on $250 being the base price with $25 a month for the server.

I was sent home with an outline of the sure structure as they get the content and images together.

What could be better than this? How about a county wide press release? Yes! The sheriffs department is going to have a press release about the site because of the tip section, where someone can anonymously submit tips on some one with  warrant on them. Because this is a new feature for the department they are really trying to push it. But why is this good for me and getting me excited? They are planning on mentioning me, my site and recommending me for everyone else who want work done!

Finally a good day!

Today I had my appointment with Donna from mdsalem.com. It went great. Not only am I going to be re-doing their entire site for my Service Learning credit, but I'm also going to continue updating it, I convinced her to switch to my server, creating brouchuers, and doing other sites for Donna. It turns out she works for quite a few different companies that Salem. She sent me home with with a PDF file she wanted edited and converted into a PowerPoint Presentation and was willing to pay for that as well.

After I got everything finished up with Donna I headed to my next stop, Country Accents on Greene, a small shop near the city I live in. I had a tip that they were considering getting a site and I wanted to be the first one to jump on it. The lead paid off. After about an hour of talking and explaining the owner showed a lot of interest in getting a site and said she would have to talk to her husband about it first. Hopefully I'll get to hear more from them soon!

Special effects

I went to see"i am number“ four last night. It was pretty interesting, I'm not really a fan of alien movies though.

I was really impressed by the special effects though. It was really high quality stuff.

It inspired me to take up after effects again. I want to try and make a few of the effects I saw in the movie. The first effect I want to remake is the teleporting effect number 6 did, that one really stood out to me. The next effect I'd like to try is the reguvinating effect 4 used on 6. Unfortunately those will take awhile to make, but until then I will be making my own version of 4s hand glowing effect. This is, for the most part, finished. All thats left to do is take the video and track it to something. After effects built in tracker sucks though...so I may have to manually track it to something.

On another note Peace & Conflict Studies if beginning to look promising. We're finally getting out of all the war stuff and into the peacemaker studies.

And I just got news(literally) that I've been accepted to take the electricians union test. I've been really hoping to get into this due to the complete lack of web design work available where I live. If I'm able to get into the union I do plan to finish my assoc degree since I only have a two semesters left. I may try and keep going after my masters at the state college, but from the sound of it the union training keeps you busy. But who knows. What matters is they will pay me to learn from then then give me a job. A well paying job.

This how ever does not mean that I plan to stop my side job of website development. I plan to keep this up even of I can only do it a few hours a week.

Feb 22

Today really sucked.

It started out great. When I woke up I was well rested thanks to my new sleeping aid. I started my new morning rutien, sda lesson, pray, meditate and I was feeling great. Next I decided to do some zend framework work. I worked clear up to the setting up a database with sqlite, but couldn't get the php script to run right.

Then the day took a turn for the worse. Mom got up in an extremely bad mood and immediately started bitching. I couldn't take it anymore so I used shoveling snow as an excuse to escape her. When I got outside though I remembered why I hated shoveling at my parents house. They have this old plastic shovel with a metal handel, and it is by far the worst tool for shoveling ever invented. The actual shovel part is so thin and flimsy that it bends if to much snow is lifted with it!

After a half hour of (atempting to say least) pushing snow around with this shovel it's finally decent enough to go back inside. As soon as I step in the door mom goes of about tracking snow. Yeah sorry about that mom, I mean the only reason I spent the night at your house is so you and jerry wouldn't have to shovel snow yourselves, but it's cool yell at me for standing on the tiled kitchen floor right inside the door.

Instead of getting mad I decided to try and be nice. I figured she must have a head ache, but it was apparently just a bad case of bitcitous.

Why?

Well I've been thinking about doing a blog for awhile now, but with school, moving out and a girl friend time is limited.

Yesterday changed my mind though. I read that netutsplus was wanting new writers for a posting position. Hell yes! After class tonight I plan on putting together my "piece of cake, cakephp tutorial." It will hopefully be up in the next week or so.

I also did alot of research on ScreenFlow, my screen casting software, and I feel I've learned how to use it fairly well now. Knowing how ocd I get about my projects though I'll end up editing it with After Effects.

As far as work goes I'll be finishing up my last website job this week. I desperately need to find some new clients. I have a few leads I'm going to follow up with around town. I also had the thought today to offer my services to the student council at my college. They're not even mentioned on the school site and I've seen the flyers they put out, they're horrible. Catching anyone in the school council is the hard part though. I've been to theyre office multiple times and they're never there! They don't even have anumber to call... But regardless I'm not giving up that easy.

In more personal news my girlfriends, kayla, arrival has been delayed once again. She was originally going to be here March 8th, but her father wants to meet me first. I can't blame him for it, he's never seen me and now his daughter wants to move states away and live here. But without her here I'm still very lonely. The new date for her to be here is April 14th. The reason for this is her little sisters spring vacation. The whole family is conning up to see me.

That I don't mind. Her mom had always been nice enough to me, and her little sister Raven loves me. I'm pretty nervous about meeting her dad though. I've talked to him on world of warcraft before but that's it. I just really hope he likes me and lets kayla stay up here...I'll wait as long as it takes to convince him that I been take care of her and provide for her.