it's october!

so... when's Poe in the Dark? they still do that, right?

reunion, anyone?

even just a small one?

free business cards

I've written about this site on my own blog, once before. I found out recently they're having a little contest and giving away thousands of free business cards. for the freelancers among us, perhaps? or anyone, really.

here are the details.

if any of you win, be sure and let me know!

aren't they pretty? mmm.

font fight

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6djQHeqMwQ

something needs to be done

so.

I'm going to ace the GRE. that is my new goal.

all the free practice programs I've seen so far are not compatible with Linux.

this is unfair.

who can I write an angry letter to?

Amelia,

it's your long lost bff vanessa...you're taking the GRE? I took it and it sucked! Any questions? hehe. How are you? How's life?

this will work. i hope.

I'm going to try exporting one of these blogs and then importing it into the other one.... in effect, merging the things together... any objections?
it probably can be undone if it ends up being ridiculous, but if it works, it'll save us any worries about having loose ends lying around.

so... cross your fingers...

It's back!

Does anyone know why the blog disappeared and why it is now back? Or did nobody else notice?

Hello??

It's back!

Does anyone know why the blog disappeared and why it is now back? Or did nobody else notice?

Hello??

hmmm....

let's see if this works. this is a picture of my desk in my second area in Lethbridge, Alberta. random, I know. mostly we're just checking this out to see if the blog here is really still alive...

v strikes back

Hi everyone!!!

I knew I should have dug some of Shae's old papers out of the recycling bin while I had the chance so I could Ebay them.

I have been MIA for a while, but Jerilynn brought me back to the fold with a very lovely and impromptu email. I hope everyone is doing marvelously well in this booming economy of ours and if anyone has a massive estate in Sonoma now, please feel free to host a reunion at your earliest convenience. Has anyone heard from Senor Bateman? No doubt he has a castle in Dubai that we could crash in for a few nights, do some indoor skiing and whatnot.

Much love to all,

Vanessa

Merry Christmas

Never eat snowflakes. I miss you all! Have happy holidays wherever you are.

She strikes again!

well friends.....Shae's done it again. Remember extremely accomplished amazing Shae Curtis? Who's seeming fountain of talents never seemed to cease? Well she posted this on facebook and I stumbled across it. So way to go Shae and add one more astounding accomplishment to your belt!

Happy Halloween!

Hi everybody!

I'm still alive! And really bad at emailing and posting to the blog, but you already knew that part. Nothing too exciting going on here, but I just wanted to brag a little about my office Halloween decorations.

This is the former occupant of my office...

Actually, he's one of those coming out of the ground skeletons and he's held up with push pins, packing tape, and a lot of wishing.

And actually this isn't my office anymore. They moved me and my office mate (you can see his desk to the left of Yorik) to the corner office.

It's lovely, with two walls of big windows where I can watch the weather and traffic patterns. The only downside is that all of that glass is cold!

This is my desk. It's huge. before I started here, this was the CEO's office. Then our company got acquired by Pearson and the office (and desk) sat empty and available for visitors until now. All of that history makes it a little strange to be here, but it makes sense for two of us to share the larger office, rather than being smushed in a smaller office.

K, I guess I have to get to work now. Love!

the importance of font choice

In Honor of Halloween

Spencer and I were in Walmart the other day, buying pumpkins to carve. I saw Lisa's twin, and as usual, went to wave excitedly, but caught myself, unlike numerous times before. However, to my extreme delight, it really was LISA! I was so excited. Her poor sister probably is so sick of me waving frantically at her, then trying to play it off like I'm fixing my hair. Anyway, we embraced and chatted for a minute. It made me miss everyone terribly.

Speaking of, don't we all miss Poe in the Dark? I considered going this year...you know, since Spencer is still a student. But I just felt too old; I couldn't bring myself to do it. I found this to commemorate the season though. It still makes me laugh hysterically.

It's about time!

Has anyone noticed? THEY FINALLY CHANGED THE ENGLISH DEPTARTMENT'S WEBSITE!! Yay! Only two years later. (Click on the link to the right to see.)

. . . I really wanted to be noticed.

Has anyone heard from Amelia?

Bejing 2008

This is in honor of the Olympics....thought you folks might enjoy. Please note that the gymnast was a competitive men's gymnast at the University of Illinois. Also the audio is very quiet. Enjoy!

Incase you didn't get my e-mail:

For my fellow nerds.

xoxo

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1823766

vacation

I am on vacation this week and I am glad on several levels.
1. I am tired of work and need a vacation.
2. I need to catch up on my sleep because I actually have a social life.
3. It will do my social life some good to step back, evaluate, and come to its senses.

By the way, in case you couldn't guess, I am sorta seeing a guy. My friend at work set me up with his 30 year old son. Our first date was July 3rd, and we have gone out a total of 5 times. I've been invited to Sunday dinner at his parent's house and now to the family reunion.
It seems like its going a little fast for me. Two and a half weeks and now I'm invited to Bear Lake for a week of Meng family fun?

lament of a freelancer

Hello, Loves.
I almost blogged about the forthcoming experience on my personal blog, but then I realized you were the only people who would fully understand. Enjoy.

My stellar boss at the University recommended me as a logo designer for his step-daughter as she is opening a boutique in the Cache Valley Mall. I met with her and we discussed the look she wanted. She told me she wanted black, white, and pink...we even specified a pink. She also told me she wanted floral and we looked at which kinds of flowers she liked. We also discussed what fonts she liked...handwritten girly fonts and maybe a cleaner one for the subtext. We chose specific fonts. I told her I charged by the hour at $15.00 and she sent me to work. These are the options I gave her, based on her input:







That last one is my fave. She then told me she didn't like any of the fonts anymore and I gave her a list of free font sites to look at. She didn't like ANY fonts on ANY of them and wanted to write it in her own handwriting. I had her do so, then I scanned it and vectorized it. She also told me she didn't want pink or floral, and sent me a graphic she wanted to use off of some one's myspace page. I told her it was illegal to use someone else's graphic without their permission and she didn't know where she got it. So, I told her I'd recreate it. The finished product looked like this, in business card form:


Note the suckiness. EW!!!!!! I was disgusted by her handwritten logo and didn't want my name to be connected with it. Obviously, I didn't tell her this, but, hoping she'd change her mind, I gave her a few more options:




Once again, she told me she didn't like any of them; even the one's with her own handwriting. Then she told me that she didn't want black and white, she wanted the whole thing to be white, but embossed. She wanted her signage to be this way too. I discouraged her from doing so with the signage...since the whole point is for people to read it...but I was very tactful. I told her I couldn't emboss it myself, that the place that printed it would do the embossing and they usually charge a lot for custom embossing, but have a set of standard embossing plates with their available fonts on them. I told her I could make it look embossed, though. She didn't like that either.

At this point I decided to give her an invoice for my 20 plus hours of work. I knocked about 10% off cause she was my boss's daughter. The total came to $285. She was livid and exclaimed, "But I don't like anything you've done! How can you charge me for things I'm not purchasing?" I explained that as stated in the contract she signed, I charge for my time, not just the finished product. I told her that I held up my end of the bargain and provided the best designs I could, based on her wants and needs, also stated in my contract. She told me she would no longer be needing my services and would send me a check.

Two months passed without a check, or any returned phone calls or e-mails. I finally had to give her step-dad, my boss, another invoice demanding payment. She sent me a check for $280 a month later...five dollars short. I hate her.

Spencer and I went to the mall to check out how her sign had turned out..it was supposed to be on an awning. I wanted to take a picture, but it would've been waaay too obvious. It looked exactly like this:

Yep. Bradley Hand, everyone. That's right. How original! It was printed on a vinyl banner, in black and white. It was a little too small for viewing. She also cropped out my tiny copy write...which is a violation of my contract. Too bad it's not a real copy write...but she doesn't know that! Ew. Ew. Ew.

Next time I will fully review my contract with my client instead of assuming they read the entire PARAGRAPH!

Help!

Hey team!!

So I'm considering taking a contract position out in Hawaii...I'm just in the preliminary stages of this so I would like your feedback as to what sort of questions I should ask and what I should kinda expect. Anyway, you are all geniuses in my opinion so please give me some advice!

thanks! elsie