Big week. On the good news side, I started a new job so I’m no longer unemployed. On the slightly-less-good news is that the job is only part time call center work. However, work is work and part-time income is better than no income. On the other hand, call centers shrivel my soul so I’m less than enthusiastic about the position, and I’m going to continue looking for actual development and design work.

I started training on Wednesday, and the first day was filled with confusion, chaos and corporate marketing diarrhea. Once the actual training began, it was conducted via conference call by a trainer in India. Outsourcing call centers to India is one thing, but now I’m being trained for local call center job remotely by a guy in India… This doesn’t bode well for the remaining taters of sanity that occasionally scurry out from under the rocks in my head to make sure I haven’t started chewing on my shirt.

After months of poking, hacking, tinkering, thinking, designing, building, tearing down, and building again. I’ve finally put together the final design of my website. While there are other more professional sites out there, I’m proud to point at this site and say. “This is mine. I made this, and it is good.”

Now that I’ve got this under my belt I need to start generating some content. ^_^

I’m going to set myself a goal of writing at least two blog posts a week. I don’t have ambitions of being a professional blogger, but if I force myself to learn about something to the point of being able to write about it intelligently, it should really help to focus my attention. That’s the theory anyway.

This last Saturday I got together with some friends from my gaming group and had a Halloween Movie Marathon.  (And yes, we know that Halloween is a week away, but some have family they’d rather be with on the actual day).

The movie list was as follows:

• Bubba Ho-Tep (imdb)
• Watcher in the Woods (imdb)
• Quarantine (imdb)
• 28 Days Later (imdb)

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Tonight has been pretty good as far as feeling productive. After work, I made it to the gym and swam laps for about 30 min then came home checked email and rss feeds, had dinner, folded laundry, and whittled down a bit on my “grand pile of stuff.”

I’ve been reviewing plans for my personal site and my freelance business site, and getting some more ideas. I’m starting to think it will be usefull to get a timeline planned out on getting both sites finalized. While donaldlivingston.com is in an ‘okay’ state right now, and I still may do a few tweaks here and there I’m not satisfied with it yet. Since rebooting it a month ago, putting it all together has been a piecemeal process while I learn the ins and outs of WordPress. Now that I’m a bit more familiar, I’m making plans on remaking it in conjunction with infinitemonkeystudio.com. I’m setting a goal right now to have both sites designed, built and operational by Jan 1, 2010. So mark your callendars folks!

I started this website with several goals and objectives in mind, though most of them were rather vague at the time. My ambition is to become a freelance Graphic Designer, Web Developer, and Software Guru (though in passing I should mention that I hate the term Guru, but I can’t think of a better word at the moment). Despite the shake up of my personal life, that ambition remains strong. While I’m still doing a lot of work on getting things in order, I’ve made a lot of progress in getting this site setup the way I want it. Now that I’m becoming more and more familiar with Worpress, I’ve got an itch to put together an EVEN BETTER site design. While I’m entertaining ideas about the future, I’ve got to avoid scratching that itch too much or nothing will actually get done. A well thought-out design is important, but there comes a time when you need to stop designing and start building. Read the rest of this entry »