I just finished my second paid web project. I’ve been working on many simultaneously, but this one i’ve finished. Well, maybe not completed, but I’ve ended my job. The guy agreed to do the rest of the fine tuning, fixing links, etc. because I had already done too much. You can see it at http://jalenack.com/sim . Colors weren’t my choices, but overall it turned out very well in my opinion. Its just that it took sooo long. I did 30 hours of work for $200. Thats $6.66 per hour. Yes, I’m aware thats terrible, but I’m okay with it for several reasons. Firstly, I got a ton of experience and had my first major run-in with Internet Explorer bugs. That probably accounted for at least 5 of my hours. So it was good to learn from all those and learn some CSS hacks. Secondly, the guy really loved my work, and has offered me an internship at his office in San Francisco, where I could probably make some real money (as a graphic designer). Lastly, I gained experience in dealing with clients. I probably redid those navigation buttons 12 times each. Ah well. $200 is money. I
As well as finishing that project today, I got a call from my uncle. He wants me to redesign his site 
You can see his old one here. I had some spare time, so I prepared a mockup of a possible design, and I liked it a lot. I can’t wait to hear back from him.
Also today I created a mockup of a new Jalenack.com . Oh BTW, if you don’t know what a mockup is, its a picture of what a website will eventually look like. Web designers create them in Photoshop and then show them to their clients to see if they like the design before they get started coding it. So I’ve made a decision to move this blog to blog.jalenack.com and make jalenack.com my personal webdesign/portfolio site. It won’t happen this week, but hopefully soon. Don’t worry, you’ll still be able to find this when you go there. ] Both could use a little refining, but the main idea is there. What do you think?
In 1.5 hours, I’ll be headed for Winter Ball. I just found out my tie is dirty. 
Oh well.
Ok I’ll shutup after this: Some Jehovah’s witnesses came by my house today. It was rather awkward, because I was the only one home. Here’s a sample of our conversation: “Have you ever read the bible?” “No.” “Are your parents religious?” “No.” “Have you ever wondered about this stuff?” “Yeah I guess.” ***His face lights up*** “Would you like a bible?” “Err…” “Ok well take this pamphlet. I can get you a bible if you’d like.” “Ok.”
What would you have done? I was just trying to be polite. Ah well.
There've been 4 whole comments
8:18 am on 1/31/2005 1. Hizzle forshizzle
Yo, I think technically I get paid more than you+I get work experiance too. It’s cool that your up grading the site, but I have a feeling the release date will get pushed back. Remember there is you social life and homework. Don’t ignore those too long. Well peace, I can’t seem to log into word press…damn.
7:36 pm on 1/31/2005 2. tsguitar
Who brags about getting paid more than someone else like that? And I don’t recall reading a release date. What an ass…
Anyhow, congrats on the payment, Andrew. Follow through with the internship idea if that interests you.
Your ideas for your new site look fine, but several of the techniques are cliche, a bit. The pixelated site title is something I’ve seen work on a few sites, but it’s mostly just overused. I’m getting tired of the dropshadow, as you may already know from the forums. Still, at least you’ve applied it horizontally, so there’s a different take on it. But the drop shadow on the blog notification part of the image looks odd since there’s no drop shadow on the horizontal line above it. It’s like that part is hovering, but the piece above it that it’s fixed to isn’t. It doesn’t look right. And those tabs for site navigation are getting old, too. Is that the metal background that was used on the Sutherland Bike Web site I see?
Do you want prospective clients to see this blog? I don’t want mine to see it, so I don’t link to mine from my home page (actually, I don’t write in mine yet, but the initial attempts aren’t even linked).
I love orange, but that shade of orange is a bit…well…vomitous is all I can think of. Of course, my cat did just puke and it had a similar tint. But I’m not a fan of that shade, despite my earlier experience with the color.
And I liked looking at the code for the job you were paid for. I remember when I did a design similar to that a few years ago and the code was a complete mess of tables and javascript. And now, it’s all possible with slim, trim, decypherable code. Well done. I’m glad the client liked it and that it may turn into something more advantageous. Keep it up.
Oh! And the travelling missionaries? Slam the door. They can’t afford your $6.66 per hour, though I’m sure they would have run in fright if you’d told them that’s what you charge. Then you could have held up the devil-horn hand signal and said “Hail Satan” as they screamed down the street. That would have been worth your time and made for a pleasurable evening.
9:47 pm on 1/31/2005 3. Andrew
Ts..I once said one of your sites looked a bit like excrement (you’ve since changed it)…lol so its all good. I’ve dumped the pixel font and come up with a nice new logo… Plus I’ve coded it… http://jalenack.com/jalenack/ check out the pixy rollovers…not sure if i love them. I was thinking of making them somewhat inset..hard to explain how I’ll have to show you. It may be the same metal…who cares? I ditched it for the other site. You can see the current version of it at http://jalenack.com/suth/
I kind of liked the way Andrew Krespanis’s blog was shown at the DotFive website, tucked into the last paragraph of his employee description…lol. The only problem is I’m planning to use this domain for my new site and bump my blog to blog.jalenack.com … so it might cause some confusion for my viewers. Ah well. Tell me what you think of the latest stuff guys!
10:10 pm on 1/31/2005 4. Kenley
ur tooo pro!