Right now I am sitting up at Snowshoe with Carl and Chance getting our shred on. This is about the only time I have to work on my web site with work and everything else that I do with my life. There's been some changes in my career since the last time I mentioned it. I quit M/I Homes and went back to tracermedia to work with Carl and Eric for a couple months on NEP. NEP was a million dollar web site that helped young entrepreneurs link up with investors over seas and in the United States. After the project ended, so did my position. I then made a move to Clutch Interactive (I know, the site doesn't say much). I've been there for around 4 months. So far I really like it there. We currently are working on a project with McGraw Hill that is extremely big and is driven towards kids 6th-12th grade. I also wrapped up rainsoft's web site design. Kevin Mack did the the back end. Overall I wish I pushed the design more with the inner pages and typography. It still feels amateur to me, I guess it's all a learning experience.
So some may wonder what I've been doing outside of my career. I've became a big party guy, even more so then before. I kind of realize that I don't want to waste my time I have now, working and doing the same thing over and over waiting for a year to pass. I go to about 2 or 3 concerts a month. Also been hitting up these crazy dance parties that Milk Bar hosts every month. The 3 good ones are Get Right, Clampdown, & O-GEE. Look for more info here. Check out this sweet ass shot of this frog.
I got a new car too (BMW E46 M3). It's been giving me a lot of trouble with cops and maintenance but it's been all worth it.
I try to make trips out of columbus to places my friends are at like Dayton and Athens. Right now I'm in West Virginia trying to live up the snowboarding while it's still good. I go to Mad River, my local mountain/hill about 3 times a week. I learned a bag full of tricks this year and I hope I keep going. I'm going to Daytona in 2 weeks for the weekend for spring break. I hope it's crazy. Looking to make a trip to chicago in the spring and maybe New York or Vegas in the mid summer. Get a hold of me if anyone's down to do the same. This was a really bad attempt to summarize my past 10 months. Imagine charlie sheen sober and that pretty much sums it up. Winning!
P.S. If you scroll all the way down, you can hit the older/newer buttons and you can read more crap that I've already posted a while ago. Check me out on twitter so we can live chat during my shows. No I don't really like birds. If you want to look at pretty pictures check out flickr
I know it has been like two million years since an update so I thought I'd try a quickie before I go to bed. Thats what she said....sorry I had to. Anyways, as most know I have been working at M/I Homes in the Corporate Marketing department. It is me and two other designers. In other words we are screwed 50 hours a week. Most times more. Me and M/I aren't a perfect match so I have been doing freelance on the side like usual. My current project is wrapping up a site for Rainsoft of Columbus (old site). I'll give a little sneak peak down below.
Not all of it is fine tuned and its been a design while code process. I have been going to shows like crazy. Recently been taking a good amount of pictures with the 40D. I think I want a 100 m f/2.8 macro lens. Been hearing good things. If you want to check out some of my mediocre photography then click the link.
Just got a pair of Matix jeans today from jackthreads. I suggest every skater at least own one pair of these. So comfortable. Well that took 30 minutes too long. Hi dad, hi mom. Later people that look at my blog from foreign countries.
If you want more of my non sense, follow me on twitter.
So I've noticed its past 3 months of me not posting anything on my blog and I feel like I needed to do an update. This entry will be just an update so the people that visit this amazing site (sarcasm) will know how hectic my life has become after just 6 months out of college. I'll try to do this in order.
Since October 2nd, my girlfriend had her birthday, we went out the night before to a dance club. Went to see August Burns Red at skullys. Didn't buy tickets in advance so we had to wait in the cold for an hour. Got in while the 2nd to last band was doing there hardcore set. Experienced ABR to their fullest and realized that they are one of the best bands out there. Girlfriend got punched in the face, on purpose. Went to Dayton for the week before Halloween. Realized my friend was way to drunk to even realize I was around. Went to OU for actual Halloween. Saw a dude dressed up as pac man and saw 3 ghosts chasing him. AWESOME!! Entered two rail jams in two different parks for snowboarding. Got a bunch of free crap. Won a stupid twitter contest for photoshoping Michael Jackson in a metal band, hosted by Nopattern. Got a free book.
Went to the CSCA Creative Best. Talked with old friends from school and my boss. Got denied to buy beer across the street. Won a merit for my identity.
Went to another friends birthday party. Had my one year with my girlfriend. Had a huge party for my Birthday. A lot of friends showed up and a lot of friends didn't. Got my first keg of Keystone. Got my iPod stolen along with a case of beer and my friend had his iPod stolen and a poster. He also got his window punched out. Went to my first Underoath concert with August Burns Red and Emery in Cleveland at the House of Blues. Missed Emery but August Burns Red was amazing like usual. Went to a skateboarding premier at the Milk Bar, Drank some beer and hung out with the fellow shredders of campus. Joined in on a SAA reunion party. Fun times. Went to two other friends birthday parties. Watched Carl cry because he was laughing to hard. Entered in the Rome SDS Premature Jibulation. Got my shred on.
Went to my works Christmas party. Regretted going to my works Christmas party (got to tipsy and tried to sleep in someone's yard. I do this a lot.) Got my new camera. It's used but new to me. Canon 40D with a 22-80 mm lens. I am extremely intimidated by it. Went snowboarding about 20 times. Got my Medical insurance card!!! Went to do a Cab 3 snowboarding off one of the jumps and ended up going to fast, digging my edges into the snow and started to do an underflip and slammed my face into the snow/ice. Started doing volunteer work for the FWA. Went shredding some more and slipped off the double kinked rail and landed my shins into it. Cut my left leg pretty bad, blood all down it. Should of got stitches. It's still pretty disgusting and still open.
Oh yea! Got a Xbox 360 for christmas. Been playing call of duty a lot. MW2! Username is "Step Child 614". It's a snowboarding thing, my parents love me. Went to enter in the Big Air comp at Mad River. Filled out all the information, went inside to warm my hands up, came back outside and my snowboard was gone. I seriously searched almost every where. Key word Almost. Got the cops involved, filled out a police report. Told my girlfriend that it was stolen, I called her and asked her when I first noticed it was missing and she said she didn't mess with it. Then she told me she moved it 5 boards down after 2 hours aka she is full of shit! Ended up missing the the Big Air warm ups and didn't bother competing and looking like a fool getting wrecked. Heard the word that my time was ending with tracermedia :( . The same day I received a phone call for an interview at MI Homes. Went for an interview. Got the job at lunch. Going to be doing both print and web which is a bonus. Went to the CSCA meeting. Pretty sweet designs. Turned in my last full TK lesson. Hooray!!! That's pretty much sums everything up. Chow!
So I have a huge list of sites I’ve been meaning to get to but I don’t have enough time to write about them. Instead I’m going to post two sites that recently got updated. Both being Design firms and in Ohio.
The site went live a week in advance of their open house, which I might add was pretty sweet. Free drinks and food, cant go wrong there. The thing I like about this site is it’s not just your average day site. Its got a good mix between content and graphics. I enjoy the fact that there building is part of the main graphics. I feel it makes the company more personable and it is part of who they are as a company. The website showcases there portfolio pretty good. There are some minor glitches but I’m not about to point those out because overall the site is pretty much Real-ly Awesome. If you get time, check out the invitation video incase you weren’t one of the lucky ones to experience in real life. First click on the “in 3D” button on the homepage. Then click watch the video. Really cool stuff. One other thing I would like to add is when you click on there different links, it goes to an actual url and grabs another file. This makes SEO a lot better and plus you can set external links on other sites and link to certain areas like their portfolio.
The company that I’ve been contracting for, for a couple of months now has finally decided to update their website. Some may know that the past one wasn’t all that special. It wasn’t bad, it just didn’t have enough information for the user to see. It was originally a single page site that has now grown into a 20+ page site. The graphics are very nice. Soft easy colors that aren’t too dominant with a nice signature tracermedia orange. The reason for the reconstruction is for the adobe max. Tracer has been nominated for an award and is in the final 5 for the education bracket. The voting started September 28th and goes till October 6th at noon. Vote for your favorites, no limit. I like the subtle inner shadows and outer shadows. Gives a small glance of flare. Plus the added corkyness to the site helps people know how the company is. Laid back hard workers that enjoy a Friday beer at the office.
So my well needed vacation after graduating from SAA and going through their hell like portfolio process, and working two jobs, putting in anywhere from 70 hours to 50 hours a week, I finally got that vacation. It was fun but it wasn’t for me. In Atlantis, they nickel and dime you everywhere you go! My bad, correction, $5 and $10 you everywhere you go. Once you get to this expensive ass hotel you would think your paying for all the luxuries it has to offer. Wrong, you pretty much are just paying for that room. Do you want maid service? Okay, that will be $14 a day. You want to watch a movie? Yea that will be the same price. Oh, did you want electricity for your room too? That’s $19 a day. Drinks were $10.50. Everything you wanted to do or eat had 15% gratuity already added into it. Say you ordered a pop at BK lounge and you filled it up yourself, yea, they got a tip for that. Every receipt you signed for had a line for an extra tip. It’s like a bottomless pit for you to loose your money. Technically you aren’t loosing your money cause you know where it is going. It’s all going to pay off this glass sculpture that they paid way too much for. $1,000,000.00 for this sun like glass blown sculpture. That’s almost like a million crispy chicken sandwiches. I mean that could feed a lot of homeless people. As if that wasn’t enough, you cant have a sun sculpture with out a moon one right next to it. 2 million bucks for glass. That’s a lot of chicken nuggets.
After we got settled in and forgot about the price of everything, we did this boat package. Snorkeling, wakeboarding, tubing, and kneeboarding. I was stoked when I heard wakeboarding. This whole summer, my goal has been to learn how to wakeboard and once I did that, it was to jump the wake. Well back in Columbus I didn’t have the luck of jumping it. I landed on it a couple of times but I ended up getting the damn thing done this time in the Bahamas. The salt water is choppy and unforgiving when you go in face first. My nose was screwed. Hali ended up getting a couple of good shots of me. I need to work on my form a little bit so it doesn’t look like I’m rocket airing all the time.
The one above is when I landed perfectly into the wake. Smooth as butter, amazing shit ever. Now the one below is just purely awesome. I don’t know how Hali got this picture. Perfect timing and everything. I can’t believe I even got over this thing.
I guess when its life and death, instincts just kick in. After that fun time, we went parasailing. It was a nice view but its kind of freaky chilling up above the 30 story hotels. I wasn’t feeling it that much. The bar that was holding us to the parachute, yea it would make sense to use something strong and metal. I guess wood works, right?
I played the casino a bit. Got up to $500 ahead and then around $47. I guess its all for fun. I went skating for a bit in a parking garage. Cab kickflip ended up getting me. Board flipped around and hit me in the ankle with the nut that holds on the bearings. Looks like I have two ankles now.
Now its back to working at Tracer for my last couple of weeks and working on the Orange Cab website and folding shirts at Pac Sun. Hope you enjoyed this extremely long blog. Have a good week. Oh did I mention my camera is broken now. AWESOME!!!!
