Once in awhile I like to check out other web design sites and am flabbergasted when I can’t even find the person’s name anywhere on the site. There may be an “about” page but only describes the company… “we” are blahblahblah…. drives me crazy! What are people thinking?
I could work nekked if I wanted to…
but I don’t.
That’s one of the joys of being self-employed and working from home. Don’t have to fix my hair, no make-up and I wear whatever I want. Although when I was still working at the hospital I wore scrubs, which some would say wasn’t exactly “getting dressed” either.
The other morning I was sitting outside on the patio, waking up with my first cuppa, when the neighbor walked by on her way to work. Waving a cheery good morning to her, I thought about how nice she looked and briefly—very briefly—kind of wished that I was going to work. For the most part, having to crawl out of bed to the annoying squeal of the alarm, stumble to the shower and go through the daily routine of getting to work by 6:00 am isn’t something that I really miss.
Then I started thinking… what if I got up, fixed my hair and got dressed in something that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to be seen in, all before I plunked myself down in front of my computer to begin my work day. Would it make me feel more energized? More ready to dig in to my projects right from the get-go? If you’ve ever worked from home, you know how important it is to be self-disciplined and resist the urge to check into Twitter & Facebook & a few of your fav blogs to see what’s up before you actually begin working. Although it’s generally not a problem for me to do so (I am so much better at this than I used to be!), maybe by “getting ready” the old way would make it easier. Granted, I could still have foggy mornings either way, whether it’s at a remote workplace or in my own home, thinking about it yesterday was entertaining. As a matter of fact, as I write this post, I realize how much I really do appreciate not having to physically “go to” work any longer. And come winter when I hear my neighbor scraping the ice off of her windshield in 0º weather on her way to work, I’m sure I’ll have a chuckle (guffaw) at the absurdity of even considering all of the above! Silly me.
;)
Screen resolution, colors & irritation – oh my!
I am becoming increasingly irritated with my monitor’s screen resolution. I changed it to see how a client was viewing his new site with a high res setting, which was way too small for me (2500 x something) and when I went to change mine back to my previous settings – 1400 x 900 – I couldn’t. No matter what I did it just wasn’t happening. What the hell? Nothing else has changed. No new drivers, no updates to ANYthing. I am stuck with 1680 x 1050 (not ideal) vs 1360 x 768 (huge everything!).
I can read content ok, but things aren’t as pretty as they could be to me. The majority of websites look like crap… patterned backgrounds not wide or long enough, sites that aren’t centered. Heck, even some of my own site(s) aren’t as attractive which compels me to redesign them, NOW. It’s throwing me off in my own design process. I usually average my sites to look best @ at least 1024 x 768 even though the current trend is 76% higher than that.
Along with the screen res issue, now that I have my laptop side-by-side with my desktop, the color differences in monitors is just as annoying. My large monitor is color calibrated, vibrant & saturated with stunning graphics, but when I cross-check sites on other computers the view is discouraging (and ugly).
What to do?
I realize that I have no control how everyone else views the web… their screen resolution, color settings and the browser that they use ( don’t even get me started on browsers!), I can only do the best that I can. But this damn screen res setting on my pc definitely needs a solution asap!
Any suggestions? Anyone?
Transferring to new laptop & waiting for Baby
Which comes first, the baby or the laptop?
Things have been a little hectic around the Kitty household these days. **Baby Raisin is due to appear any day now. In preparation of my staying with Jennie & Brian the first couple weeks after Raisin’s birth, I bought a new laptop and am tediously trying to get everything work related from desktop to the laptop. I’m also trying to clear my palette of current projects before I leave. Ack!
Of course every day that passes is another day closer. hurryhurryhurry… and since it’s a 3-4 hr drive to Babyland, once we get The Call from Jennie, we’re outta here! There’s a lot of “hopefully(s)” that come to mind. Hopefully it won’t be during rush hour in Chicago. Hopefully it won’t be in the middle of the night and we can’t take the dogs in for boarding until they open… hopefully it won’t be a super-fast, extraordinary-for-first-baby delivery (sorry Jennie) (for you I hope it will be)… and on and on.
Ultimately it all doesn’t matter. What matters is the birth of our first granddaughter. The health of our daughter & baby. The miracle of birth. Is there really anything else?
**When Jennie found out she was pregnant, the baby books said baby was about the size of a raisin—hence the name “Baby Raisin.” And since Jennie & Brian won’t reveal the name they have chosen for her she remains Baby Raisin. Hubby says he’s going to call her that anyway, regardless.
;)
Getting impatient… finger tapping
I’m in one of those occasional holding patterns waiting for current clients & a couple of new clients to send me their info. Yup, sent out reminders & am getting positive answers— “working on it right now!” “OH, definitely want to proceed!”— but it’s not happening fast enough. I’m on a roll, I need to keep moving.
I suppose I could use this time to redo Ink2Art. Ideas have been percolating in my head for a couple of weeks now. Some of you may relate to the desire of wanting to redo your business site/portfolio, yes? Kind of like rearranging the furniture in your living room, just want a change.
Granted, I have a billion business cards with my current design on them and a couple of t-shirts. No biggie I suppose. Heck, I still have one of my first business cards from about 10 yrs ago! Pretty funny looking now.
Maybe I’ll get out of the office for awhile, we’re having a heat wave today—60 degrees. woohoo.
can’t sleep
It’s unusual that I *can’t* sleep. I used to choose not to, but my routine has changed—I go to bed earlier and I get good sleep as a rule. I think because I’ve been so involved in redoing business stuff for Ink2Art that my brain is in a turbo-charged mode, and it just takes a long time to get it quieted down. Ha! just reminded me of yesterday when I was getting my hair done and my hairdresser was irked that she paid lots o’ $$ for the cords on her equipment and they still wound up getting tangled. She showed me a trick where she put the end of the cord under her closed door, then spun the thing around about 5 ft away to stretch it out—kind of like playing jump rope. Ya, my brain playing jump rope!
Actually, you know what popped into my head when I was trying to get to sleep? Crate boxing. I was crate boxing and I couldn’t stop. What the hell? I just kept visualizing the whole “body-in-a-box” kind of thing and was watching myself trying to box my way out… whoa! I just had a flash of an image that I used awhile back on an old site… now I must find it. Hang on a sec.
ah-HA! I found it! In fact there was a site I had up briefly associated with that image, “pulseless.com”, where I put a bunch of my domain names on… dang, why did I let some of those go? The old “keepsomethingforever-thenyougetridofit-andthenwantitagain” thing, right? I found the site on the Internet Archives, but I doubt the link will come up for you. You could try I s’pose. That was from May, 2001.
Boy, nothing like going off on a tangent, hmm? So where was I? Oh, in a crate. ya.
I think why I finally just stopped trying to fall back asleep is I figured I’d get stuff done now then take a little siesta later, right? What’s the dif what time I do it other than when I’m able to? Of course.
You wouldn’t believe what I was just doing. Well, you might have at one time… but I just looked up a handful of the domain names that I had before and many are still available! ooooo, you don’t know how tempting that was to me! *for those of you who may not know this little tidbit, I used to be ca-RAZ-y for domain names. Never particularly knew what I was going to do with’em, but any time a word or phrase would strike me, I’d think “Oh, that would be a cool name for a web site” and then I would register the domain name if it was available. mm-hmm, sure dodid.
Shoot, I’d better get back to what I was supposed to be doing before I started crate boxing! dork. c’yall later. xoxo
