I’ve already finished up the redesign for my portfolio (and created a PDF resume), so I’ve got that knocked out of the way. Hopefully I can get the design for atourworst.org done tomorrow, so I can get back to working on a redesign for Holdfire.

Other than that life has been quite peachy. I’m still on the lookout for a full time job, but I’ve managed to tide myself over with some gigs here and there. Things with my boyfriend Armando are going quite well, and I’m happy with that.

Some websites, applications, and anything else that I’ve been into lately:

• Jing Project - “…instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere.”
• Tiny Twitter - mobile twitter app I use for Windows Mobile 5.X
• InType - Switched from Notepad++ to InType as my main code editor
• FeedDemon - Armando showed me FeedDemon, and it was enough to get me to retire browser based RSS readers.
• Wefunction.com
• Designsadvice.com
• Designreviver.com
• Sixrevisions.com

What applications or websites have you recently found?

At the end of last week, I had a phone call for a job interview downtown. The interview is set for today at 1:30pm. So last night I decided that I wanted to run out to pick up some more shampoo and conditioner, as well as take a look at getting a new pair of shoes for the interview. Well, I hope my cheery ass into the car, turn the key in the ignition, and press my foot on the brake…

Oh, but wait, what’s this! When I press down on the brake, all I hear is the pressure from doing it. I’m supposed to hear the brake unlocking the gear shift so I can take it out of park. Since I’m a stubborn bull, I sat there for 15 minutes pumping the brake, turning the car off and on, and cursing the piece of shit to oblivion. No dice. My mom ended up pulling into the driveway, so I hopped in her Escape Hybrid, and went along my merry way.

As my family and friends know, anything that goes wrong with my car, I have my dad look at. It was already 9PM (and dark) so there wasn’t much he could do. So I did what any nerd would do. I googled the problem. I ended up finding a Yahoo! Answers page, which mentioned popping off a little cap, and manually override the gear shift lock. OH WUT.

So this morning, I wake up and the firs thing I did was go to my car to see if it was coming out of park. No dice. Cue me starting to panic, wondering how the fuck I’m going to make it downtown for this interview. So I hopped back online and googled more, then I finally came across the Owners manual for a 1999 Ford Escort (ZX2) (pdf link). Page 96 explains that if your gear shift is locked, there’s an override that you do for it.

I grabbed a mini-screwdriver and marched my determined ass back outside to get this piece of shit in gear (lol @ pun.) I found the little cap next to the gear shift, which oddly enough, I have honestly never noticed before despite having this car almost four years. Popped the cap off, stuck the screwdriver in and got the gear shift unlocked. WOO!

That little issue is fixed, and I’m hoping to God that nothing else happens between now and my interview at 1:30pm. I don’t think I can handle anymore “surprises.” Although if something does happen, it’s just further proof that A.) I don’t need a full-time job, B.) I’m going to be stuck finding my own work for the rest of my life, C.) I need a new car.

100% of me is leaning towards option C. I like it better.

So, with that being said, can you guess who this washed up artist is? One hint: red hats.

Aside from ignoring my blog, I’m currently admist working on a startup with Armando. I think I would call him my pseudo-boyfriend? Anyway, that’s an entirely different blog. I’m not going to go into details at all about the startup we’re going to start working on, but regardless, I’m excited.

So there, you’ve got my monthly update on what I’ve been up to. Expect more. Maybe.

Life has been decent to an extent. As usual, work (or lackthereof) is stressing me out. My social life as usual is sub par but it’s never been on my list of priorities. There’s one person who has managed to get a lot of my attention for the past few months. So it’s safe to say that I think he’s amazing, regardless of what my PMS induced moods may make him think.

Maybe I’ll update this. Who knows. I doubt it.

Anyway, I finally decided to get it done with today, so it’s now residing on grunt, while it had previously been on oreos. The main decision to move it was because I don’t like using resources that should be set aside for Holdfire Network. Granted, grunt is still a network server, but there’s about triple the resources available on this server, compared to my other ones. I was initially setting it up as my personal dev server, but decided to add it to the company instead.

That aside, I’ve been putting some finishing touches on a new design that I’ve been working on. The process is a bit slow, since it’s always a pain designing for myself. Sooner or later I’ll get it up, although I’d prefer sooner.

In other news, I haven’t been up to much other than trying to look around for more freelance work. It’s so frustrating being a freelancer sometimes, when your skillset does not include graphic design. It’d be much easier to find work if I was also a graphic designer, but because I’m not, my scope is a bit more narrow. There was a full time opportunity I was a candidate for, but I didn’t get offered the job, and the owner of the company is not able to give me any details as to why I didn’t get it. I’m a bit miffed that I can’t resolve what I lacked, but I’ll just keep trying elsewhere. I’ve been searching like a mad woman the past couple of weeks.

Other than that I haven’t been up to much other than work, Halo, a cute boy, and well… Yeah, that’s pretty much it.

I turned off the console, and decided to boot it back up only to get a red ring, with the error code E 74.

Needless to say that I’ve tried the troubleshooting for it, and it’s still unresolved. My warranty expired apparently, so the Xbox repairs would be out of my pocket. I’m not sure what I plan on doing, but I’ll probably end up dropping out some cash for a new system on Tuesday.

Hopefully I can get my sister’s friend to let me borrow his system for the time being. And oddly enough, I’m surprisingly calm about it right now.

Today the $4.00+ gas finally made its way from downtown [Chicago] to the outer suburbs. It’s been skirting around $3.90-99 for the past few days, with hopes of it going down. On my way to work, I paid $3.88 at Shell (which in the past, used to be the last place I’d ever go to!) with a $25 gift card that my grandparent’s gave me for my birthday.

While I was on my way home, the gas station two blocks from me is now at $4.07. What. The Fuck?! It’s not even Memorial Day, and it’s so typical for gas to shoot up .25-50 cents more around that time. I’m going to cry when I start paying $4.50+ for a gallon of gas. Namely for the fact that I currently drive on average about 35-40 miles a day for work. That’s 5 days a week. Ughs.

Other than outrageous gas prices in Illinois, I celebrated my birthday in style by going out to dinner with my family (and my best friend Amy) and then out to Durbin’s (a bar) for some good old fashioned drunk fun tiemz. Didn’t party too hard since I had to work the next day.

Speaking of which, work has been going along quite well aside from having to work with ASP/.NET. Really, I’ll take PHP/MySQL over that stuff any day. Especially with the client I’ve been working for right now. Their site is.. well, let’s just say there are inline styles, 59 “template” pages, and a database we can’t even use for development. Oh, did I mention we got the project on Friday morning with a due date of Tuesday, with Wednesday for bug fixing? Yeah. :’(