Designer at heart.

I also missed customizing my design. I’ve been on a weird bender lately with designing and building projects (overhaul of silencia.net and creating bitchin.me), and felt “inspired”, so to speak, to redesign ohsoang.com. So here it is. Still needs some work. There are a couple minor glitches in Firefox and IE (bleh!). I’m still not sure what to do with the footer, so it’s a bit random and messy.

I’d also like to figure out how to get 2 widgetized sidebars. Right now, only the right column is the widgetized sidebar, and I’d like to have the left also work like that. Twitter’s default widget is hideous! Widgetized footer too, for that matter. I’ve been spoiled with themes on my other websites using WordPress. That’s the best way to learn though, right? Tearing apart existing things and seeing how they work.

Thanks to those themes, I’ve gotten into dabbling with Google Web Fonts. On this page now, you see Droid (general text) and Waiting for the Sunrise (headings). Fun! And my favorite price: free.

New*bee!

After years and years, I finally joined the Quilting Bee. I think I was only an approved member for a day before I was digging full-hog into the Present Hunt activity and creating free*bee patches and even a Pixel Train car (mine is the rollerskate). I’m a newb to the “pixeling” world. I also designed and built my own Quilt page. I’m not kidding: I’m on some weird web project bender! I can’t explain it, but I’m running with it. Maybe it’s due to my holiday break from uni?

School’s out!

Speaking of, I got a “B” in European Impressionism & Post-Impressionism (art history) and Photography Alternative Processes, and an “A” in Design Technology and Typography. Huzzah for me. The photo class was all about creating cyanotype prints, which royally kicked my ass for the past couple of months. I never want to do that again! I’m all-digital now, damnit. I do not have the patience for cyanotypes.

So here I am.

Back at my old WordPress stomping grounds. More things to come? I’ll be working on my other pages, as well as doing some more tweaks to the design. Be a peach and subscribe?

“I did everything I was supposed to and I have nothing to show for it.”

It’s not the arrests that convinced me that “Occupy Wall Street” was worth covering seriously. Nor was it their press strategy, which largely consisted of tweeting journalists to cover a small protest that couldn’t say what, exactly, it hoped to achieve. It was a Tumblr called, “We Are The 99 Percent,” and all it’s doing is posting grainy pictures of people holding handwritten signs telling their stories, one after the other.

More at the source.

• Design Technology I. The syllabus tells me this class is wayyyy below my skill level. At the end of the semester, we’ll be using Dreamweaver to code a webpage! :-O Gasp! The scariest part of that will be fighting every urge I have to re-code it by hand and blowing everyone away with my mad CSS skills. Gotta love spending many thousands of dollars on learning… nothing.
• Typography I. This class will be interesting and fun. I’ve been excited to take this class since the beginning of last year, but they force you to take classes in a certain order instead of letting you actually learn something useful when you’re already way ahead of everyone.
• Photography II: Alternative Processes. Another class I’m not too excited about, but if I want a Photography minor, I have to take it. It sounds like it’ll be an entire semester of printing photos in “cyanotype”. I’m not sure why they have alternative processes as plural since it’s just the one process. A whole semester of blue pictures. Excitement abounds. The teacher is a total crunchy-granola artsy type, which is extra annoying.
• European Art History: Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. It feels a little weird to be excited for this class, but I love the teacher. In fact, the only reason I took this particular class (besides for my Art History minor) is because she was teaching it. She’s just so passionate about everything she teaches and makes it interesting. No drab history here. It sounds like I’ll be writing several papers, but I think I’ll survive.

Among beginning all these classes, I’m trying to plan another trip to Italy in October to visit my sailor while he’s on leave. Hopefully it can come together. I’ve emailed all my teachers about wanting to get anything due while I’m gone done ahead of time so I don’t have anything late or missing. Maybe I won’t get straight A’s this semester, but I think that’d be a small price to pay. As long as I pass everything. Two of my four teachers have responded positively. So, fingers crossed that it’ll happen! I’m missing him somethin’ fierce. And the pizza. But mostly the sailor.

Still on the hunt for web projects and/or clients. If you know anyone who needs a website, or some work on a website, or a sweet Flash animation… You know where to find me.

Lately I’ve been trying to hash out an idea for a web project that I can make money with, and less on hunting up clients for whom to make websites. Nothing big in the works, but ideas churning. I’m also working on studying up my HTML/CSS coding skillz, as I’m a bit rusty. It’s all coming back easily, so I’m getting back up on shaky legs. Slow and steady.

I will hopefully be taking a trip to Italy in July. Fingers crossed! I haven’t been making much money for awhile, so it will be tricky to figure it all out. I’m studying up on everything I’ll need to have in place to go. And studying freakin’ Italian. Mi dispiace, non parlo l’italiano! If only I was going somewhere they speak Spanish. I’d probably still sound retarded, but I know more words than Italian.

I feel like a bit of an asshole. I was checking out the list of domains that link to my website through my analytics and webmaster tools stuff. Turns out there are a bunch of cool people linking to me, and I had no idea. So you cats are all linked up from my side now!

Fun video:

Last month, I had an interview with a potential client. A design company who might take me on a project-by-project basis. Fingers crossed they hire me for something! Tomorrow I have an interview with an organization within my uni, looking for a graphic designer. Fingers crossed I can blow them away with my real-world experience and design prowess!

Not much going on other than that. My winter break I spent sleeping, sleeping, playing LOTRO, sleeping, and… playing LOTRO. Best break ever!

I even got a 99% on one of my midterm exams. And I had been worried I wouldn’t do well because I didn’t feel like I was absorbing the info. Hooray for my semiconscious?

I live in northern Minnesota, so it is getting much colder already this year. We even had a little snow last week. I hate winter. Like, even more than Nazis and licorice. I hate sub-sub-sub-freezing temperatures and knee-deep snow and having to shovel that knee-deep snow. Ice cold winds that rip through every one of my 4 layers of clothing. I cannot figure out why I still live here. Laziness I suppose. As well as my family being here. My arms and hands have been half dead thanks to all the drawing, colored pencil-ing, jigsawing, wood sanding insanity of school, so shoveling will be extra difficult. I am old, damnit. I need an assistant.

I’ve got 5 blankets on my bed. A warm steam humidifier. Hot minty cocoa. Some new long underwear. I am about as prepared as is possible. To be honest, no amount of preparation is enough. There is no way anything is supposed to live here.

Wake me when it’s May!

It amuses me to see other people freak out when a project is due or an exam is looming. “THERE’S A TEST?!” You’re in school, retard. Yeah there’s a test. “WHAT’S ON THE TEST?!” Everything you should have learned by now, stupid. These are probably the same people who don’t do any readings or assignments until the night before it’s due or there’s an exam. It’s a pity, because they really aren’t learning anything. If they do manage to make passable grades, they probably haven’t absorbed any of that information beyond the exam. Why spend thousands upon thousands upon thousands of dollars and not actually make the money worth it? Unless these are the kids who have (parents with) money to burn. I guess with age comes some perspective. It’s all fun and games when you’re just out of high school, but when you actually need to earn real money, suddenly you wish you had learned more.

I still haven’t made any friends here yet (I know, you’re shocked). However, after overhearing their inane conversations every day (“Is the fist bump back?” “Like so like I like talked to like that cute guy and like he was like and I was like…” “OMG I’d die without self-tanner.”), I have come to realize I am better off with my own company. I’m still seeing a lot of nasty bitches who apparently roll out of bed, wad their hair up (like we can’t still see it’s greasy), throw on some sweats from the floor (or are they pajamas?), and come to class. Newsflash: you stink. You smell bad. Try a shower and some clean clothes, stank ho. You probably didn’t even brush your teeth. Sick, dude. I know you stayed up until 5am cramming because your dumb ass doesn’t understand the concept of time management, but how about you don’t punish everyone else because you’re an immature moron.

It would be nice if there was anyone I could relate to in some way and make into a pal. A girl I sit next to in one class is a possibility. She also likes to make fun of the weak. But I don’t think we have much in common beyond that.

Here’s a fun fact. Apparently WordPress’s iPhone app’s “Save” button actually works like a “Cancel” button. In that if you take the time to type up a whole entry on the iPhone and want to save it to review it and post it later, that Save button will just completely cancel out everything you just did; it’s all gone forever. Thank you, WordPress iPhone app. Fail.

No, I haven’t been having all those typical college experiences. I don’t know if I’m just old or incredibly socially awkward (or both), but I can’t say I talk to one person more than a sentence or two a day. Where my freaks at? Everyone here is very Abercrombie & Boring. What’s with the dumb bitches who have their hair wadded up in a nasty ponytail with a stretchy headband around their heads? Are you just about to wash your face? Knock that shit off. It won’t kill you to take 10 seconds and run a brush through your hair, Nasty McStinky. Take a little pride in yourself.

My time has been spent in classes, working on projects for classes, and going to bed by 8 or 9pm, so I can be up at 5am. It seems every week I will have multiple projects due, none of which are ever completely clear to me. I follow instructions carefully and I still end up missing things that I suppose I should have magically known based on nothing. My first essay did not have a title at the top of the page. Nowhere in the instructions did it say I needed a title. I lost 4 points just for that. A project due the second week was deemed “not creative” and “not outside the box” and earned me an F. First project of the year! Apparently I should have created a masterpiece based on murky instructions and barely 2 weeks of knowledge of the software used to create said masterpiece. Silly me.

Complain to the instructors, you say? Well, if I thought it might do any good, I would. I have no doubt all they will say is to do better next time and learn from my “mistakes”, as well as earn me a reputation as a whiner. For the instructor of the F project, I’ve said a few times in class (one on one) that my goal in going to school is to learn how to expand my creativity because I know it’s an area that I have a hard time with. This subtle information I am hoping she will remember when it comes to watching my work get better throughout the semester. Or she’s a cunt and wants to ensure I fail at life. Either/or.

It has been suggested that I start kissing some ass, but if I were a teacher, I’d see that shit coming from a mile away. It seems to me that that would hurt me more than help me. So I’m trying to more subtly play the naive who is here to learn from them. Which is mostly true. But they’re already on my bad side.

I feel like a dweeb for often getting my assignments done early, and (now) really trying to go above and beyond what’s expected. Without going too far, because I don’t need to lose points for doing too much either. Beware the pendulum. I really need to get excellent grades so I can try to get some scholarships to pay for upcoming semesters.

As it is, I have zero time for much of anything outside of school stuff (and sleeping – a rested brain works better than a tired one!); I can’t imagine how much worse it would be if I had to also be working a job right now. While in school, my ideal situation is to continue to not have to work. I want to really do well and learn and get this shit done as quickly as possible. I still do some freelance work that I squeeze in time for here and there, but I don’t have a steady job. As I’m learning, there is a lot of nickel-and-dime’ing of art students to get various overpriced supplies continually, so more of an income may be needed. Seriously, $5 for a small sheet of foam-board to mount one stupid project; for no real reason I can discern. It doesn’t add anything to the design of the project. Don’t tell me “that’s how it’s done in the real world at a real job” (they all love to spout that shit) because I was just there. I have never needed foam-board in my nearly 6 years working for a web company. Most design work is just emailed now-a-days. Perhaps you need to get back in the real world in a real job so you know what is still even relevant these days?

I discovered my intended plan of earning my degree by 2012 sounds like an impossibility. Working against me is the fact that many of the classes can only be taken in a certain order, and several of those classes are only available in certain semesters (spring vs. fall). So the powers-that-be have ensured they can suck more money out of students by making them hang around longer, I have no doubt. I might be able to finish by 2013. That is if I can continue my full time class schedule.

I just so desperately want this goddamn degree so that I can move on with my life and my career. I feel like I’m at such a stand-still now. Yes I’m learning valuable things, but none of it is earning me money yet. Patience is not a virtue I have much experience with.

That’s often my thought when I’m spending 8, 10, 16 hours on projects:
I’m not even getting paid for this!

Next week, my schedule will have a few more bumps, with gatherings for a couple of clubs I may be interested in (design, gaming). I also have a meeting with my adviser; I want to make sure I can do what needs to be done to graduate in Spring 2012.

I haven’t really made any friends or acquaintances to speak of yet, so waiting between classes is kind of a bore. I finally installed my new (larger) hard drive in my laptop, so I think I’ll bring movies/TV shows to watch. And I must check out the gym, damn it! I’m so lazy.

Ready for school!

Deciding on an outfit. I don’t think anyone will care how I look, but it might set my mood for the day. The forecasted high for tomorrow is about 55°F, so I’m thinking light layers! I have a four hour gap between my classes; I might check out the uni gym. I don’t think I’ll utilize it right away tomorrow, but at least see what’s what. If I bring gym clothes, that’s another bag to keep track of. Must find out about a locker so I don’t have to carry all my art crap back and forth on the bus every day.

When I went to community college, on the first day almost every instructor would give this lame-ass fucking lecture about “you’re all adults now, so I expect you to act that way” and do things on time and all that garbage. How patronizing can you be? It’s a given we’re adults, don’t try to lecture me like you’re my parent. I hope I don’t clash with any of the instructors.

I know I’ll be mocking many of the students, so expect my Twitter to be busy! I am sure there will be leggings and pajamas as far as the eye can see. I’ll try to snap a pic to share if anything is super awful.