First of 2010 - Shut it.
So it seems I couldn’t keep my word of posting more often. Maybe it’s not my destiny to consistently write in a blog. Maybe I’m just too lazy to actually take the time every other week or so to write a new post.
Life’s been crazy. Ok not really, but there’s been enough going on that it apparently got me off track enough to not take my thoughts and ramblings down on keyboard.
A lot has happened since my last post of July 2009, and I can’t even begin to remember it all, or attempt to, so I’ll see what I can come up with, and you’ll like it, or lump it. (lump what?)
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Update on my LASIK surgery - complete success. As far as I can tell, my vision is the same, if not better, than when I wore contacts/glasses. I would certainly hope so, after forking over a good $4,200 to have the surgery.
I was a bit worried when it took a while for things to really clear up, and night-vision was pretty lousy for a few months actually, still isn’t perfect, but the doctor said it could take up to a year for my eyesight at night to really get to full strength. Maybe that’s a cop-out for him, maybe it just really can take that long, who knows. But after a few checkups and followup exams, things seemed good on paper, and my eyesight was honing in to perfection.
Ironically, my worst ‘range’ of vision is now from probably 10-15 feet, especially the normal range for watching television. The screen seems to glow more than usual on the brighter pixels, especially if the room is dark and I have to focus with my fully dilated pupils.
Anyway, all in all I am quite pleased, and it’s CERTAINLY worth not having the trouble of contacts, not having to worry about falling asleep with them in, and/or remembering my glasses, or contact solution/case, and now not having to buy contacts anymore etc.
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I opted out of pursuing the multi-plex ideas of yesteryear. I honestly did continue searching around the Anchorage area for buildings I liked, and honestly just couldn’t find anything I would have been proud to be an owner of. Poo on you housing industry of Anchorage. I guess there isn’t much more to elaborate on this, but essentially I’ve moved on from that idea, at least for now!
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I did go back in to the doc and get a 3rd surgery… the knots that were holding my shoulder muscles in place near my collar bone were still buried in my collar bone area, and would move around and roll over the bone and it was extremely sensitive to any pressure if that area got hit or touched. I figure after 2 surgeries, and all the money going into it, and it still being covered by insurance, I’d better just make it right.
So I had the 3rd surgery for him to basically just cut the same line on my scar, go in and scrape out the knots (that were supposed to disintegrate but didn’t for whatever reason) and sew me back up and we’d be good to go.
It definitely seems a lot better now, still healing up from the surgery itself, but I can definitely tell a big difference with the knots gone, and I’m glad I chose to go ahead and go back under the knife.
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SO that brings me to the more life-changing update of present.
I’m currently in the SeaTac airport (on LONG-anticipated and needed free wireless internet from the airport… about time Seattle…) on my way to Orlando. Yep, I’m moving back to Orlando, FL. Ironically it’s been pretty dang cold in Florida, roughly 44 degrees right now… but been touching down to the low 30’s. But I digress.
After 2.5 years of being back home in Alaska, I’ve gotten a bit fed up with my routine. There’s nothing in particular that I don’t LIKE about the routine, it involves work (good), Kristi (good), racquetball (good), and working out (good). It just seems that I need to shake things up a bit, get a bit of a fresh start somewhere, so that’s what I’m doing. Sadly, that means not being around Kristi — But she’s been accepted to Multnomah University in Portland, OR so she would have been leaving me in Alaska anyway! So now I’m in FL and she’ll be in OR.
Sean McCoole has an open room now in his house (awesome little house bout 20 mins East of Orlando), so I’m infiltrating and taking up residence. It’s a bit of a comfort knowing it will work well because we lived together during school for almost a year, so we know how each other roll. Jason will be another story 
I AM bringing Nugget, for those of you that were curious. She will once again have the joy of chasing squirrels (some real, some imaginary — hey, she’s getting old, leave her alone)
I do get to continue working full time for GeoNorth. They’re graciously allowing me the opportunity to work remotely 100% of the time. Previously I was working from home 3 days a week, and driving into the Anchorage office twice a week. Things have gone pretty well with that arrangement, so we’re going to see how well it works for me to work 5,000 miles away.
I’m hoping to be able to audit some classes at Full Sail to expand my knowledgebase a little bit, hopefully helping in my job opportunities at GeoNorth and in my freelance work as well.
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Recently have launched a couple projects, most acclaimed of which is my redesign of nickhand.net. I was featured on Smashing Magazine in the article titled “69 Sexy Portfolio Designs To Inspire You” - Smashing Magazine’s Article I was pretty stoked to find myself on this list, and as some of you may know, Smashing Magazine is a bit of a big deal in the industry. Yes they feature a lot of sites all the time, but there’s millions of web sites out there, so to even be in the few thousand or whatever that ever make a SM list, I’m pretty excited.
Also launched recently was a small stationery designer site at www.thechocolatelily.com - nothing fancy, but a nice 10 hour project that went as smooth as a project can possibly go, with a very pleased client.
My other larger launch was the recent deployment of BecomingCreative.com. Quite a lot of work went into this personal project, with the help of Trevor Evans, a coworker and developer friend of mine. The site is built on the Ruby on Rails framework, with a dash of jQuery and plenty of CSS magic, topped with some clean beautiful design. 
The BecomingCreative concept is basically to provide a resource for designers and creative peoples to basically filter through all the hogwash blog posts out there and provide only helpful creative resources. I hand pick them myself, and add them manually, so there’s no random nonsense articles that slip through. The cooler technology behind the site is that you can follow me on Twitter by following @becomingcreativ , or become a fan on Facebook. As I add links to the site, they are then pushed on to either be tweeted or posted every half hour to each resource. If you don’t find that pretty cool, then… you probably aren’t a dev-nerd… which is probably most of you, so… nevermind. You CAN however rearrange the categories on the homepage of BecomingCreative, maybe you shallow underappreciative readers will think it’s fun to drag them around or look at the fancy one-page popup signup form?
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Alright here’s my “What I’m Listening To” top ten for this post:
1. Break - Three Days Grace
2. Junkies for Fame - Shinedown
3. Fireflies - Owl City
4. Hero - Skillet
5. World So Cold - Three Days Grace
6. I Will Not Bow - Breaking Benjamin
7. Let The Waters Rise - MIKESCHAIR
8. Snuff - Slipknot
9. City on Our Knees - Toby Mac
10. Crash - Cavo
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