I think, in this case, the grunge look communicates well.  I also designed the T that way on purpose, and yeah, the swirls I left from the font (Bleeding Cowboys) are meant to subtly suggest horns.  Kind of a suggestion of the whole heaven and hell thing that many of us associate with death.  I also cleaned up a few of the splatters and what not because frankly, they were just too much.  I think it works, and that it sufficiently demonstrates that yes, I can do grunge.

But just because I can doesn’t mean I should.

Design is an art form, yes, and I do enjoy the artistic aspects of it.  But it’s all about communication.  I don’t talk to my 2-year-old nephew the same way I’d talk to my dad.  I don’t talk to my bishop the same way I’d talk to a love interest. And, depending on who my potential customers are, I might not want to talk to them the same way I might talk to my friends.

Sure, grunge is hip. Again. Frankly it’s terrifying that I’ve already lived through the real 80′s style and its rebirth as well as the comeback of 90′s style grunge, but I digress.  If you’re trying to sell your product or service to, say, businessmen twice your age, you might not want to talk to them like they’re the guy next to you at a concert.

Then again, perhaps you might. In my case, I choose to communicate here as I do with my friends, because it helps me find the kind of work I like to do.  But the point is that in any form of communication, be it visual or verbal, you must consider how your audience(s) will interpret the message, and make your decisions accordingly.

I can do well on about half the salary I’d earn working full-time, so you would think part-time work would make sense. The problem? Part time jobs typically pay less than half hour-for-hour what their full-time counterparts would pay, under the assumption that anyone working part-time doesn’t need to make a living. So instead of earning half of a full-time salary for half of a full-time schedule, it’s more like earning a quarter of a full-time salary for half-time hours.

In my case, that is not a livable wage, so I would be forced to work full-time or take multiple jobs to earn enough to live. Wouldn’t it make more sense to take the higher full-time salary in the first place? It would if I didn’t feel so strongly about being home with my kids when they are home. That’s a strange sentiment these days, I know, but one I’d hope some people out there can understand.

So there lies my dilemma; all my cards are on the table. This is what I want, and I’m fully aware that business simply can’t operate on the demands of its potential employees. But could there be some real benefits for employers to work with part-time professionals? Here are a few I could think of:

- If you’re a smaller company that might not need a full-time employee, you can get full-quality at half-price.
- You could also pay half (or even less) what you normally would for medical benefits and other full-time perks.
- Because part-time professional positions are rare and valuable, and because they allow the worker such flexibility, you’re less likely to have problems with turnover.
- How productive is an eight-hour work day anyway? A shorter shift increases productivity, and you get more for your money.

I’ll see if I can find some scholarly articles and research to help back this up, particularly the bit on higher productivity in shorter shifts, but I think anyone who has worked 8 hours per day and observed their coworkers doing the same knows that much time is spent gabbing, goofing off, and otherwise not really being productive — the idea being that so long as an employee is in the building for at least 8 hours per day, a company will get their money’s worth.

In the meantime, if anyone’s aware of a company that could use a part-time designer/marketer/geek, let me know. I am looking.

Today I caught myself… er… critically reviewing the ads in a local coupon mailer. I’ll add a few others that caught my eye, too.

I am excluding the many, many ads that successfully peddle their wares via misogyny — like the one I saw of a man in a suit and a woman in lingerie saying “Strengthen your marriage!” Because the strongest marriages are made up of white-collar wage-earners and women who run around in their undies all day? Or is that the OTHER woman you’re supposed to compete with by buying more lingerie? Maybe I’ll post those sorts of ads another day, since they bother me immensely but do, in the end, convince men and women that they or the women around them just aren’t hot enough without their products. Again, that’s a topic for another day.

But just on the basis of poor communication or bizarre  aesthetics, you tell me, am I too judgmental? Also, I realize the photos taken with my droid aren’t very good, and yes, I criticize that as well.  But my DSLR just doesn’t fit in my purse.

Off with her head!

The Problem: Either really unfortunate photography, or (more likely) hasty photoshopping.
The Solution: If you can’t just use one good photo of your model, splice, don’t slice. Pay attention to shadows and natural placement. Ask yourself, “Do humans look like this?” and if the answer is no, go back to your originals.
Other annoyances: Seemingly random margins on the coupon, and truly ridiculously tiny social media icons that stand just a few millimeters tall.

What does this MEAN?

Problem: Cognitive overload!  Are those chicken nuggets?  Why are the girly nuggets naked — as evidenced by their high shoulders and super-saggy cleavage — and lazy-eyed to boot?  What happened to the middle nugget girl?  What is that guy looking at?  Are they on the pizza? What is going on here? OH! I see the 2nd from the left coupon says “our famous Mojo Potatoes” — which must mean these are potatoes. Whew. But what have they to do with this pizza?  I don’t see any potatoes on it.  The coupon says “Pizza & Mojos” but the top says “The Mojo Supreme Pizza” — I don’t get it!  I need a nap.

Possible explanation: Maybe these … weird looking thingies — are featured on a TV commercial or some other marketing channel.  I still don’t know what they’re trying to say, though. I would recommend sitting down and deciding all of the ways you could communicate what you’re trying to say, and then eliminate all but the most vital.  Then, make sure that message is conveyed in each channel so that it can have stand-alone meaning.

Does your wittle huter-wunter want his minky winky?

Problem: Well, I had this typed up but lost it. and I’m tired. I’ll revisit in the morning. Unfortunately it already published since I posted this via phone, so, bear with me.

Gingerbread Jones and the temple of doom

No wonder he was able to run away from the little old woman and the little grey man!  He had no heart – at least not after brutally ripping it out.  Here he is offering it up, though, and winking at us in the creepiest of ways, “Heh heh — well, wont’ be needing this, want it?”

The solution: Just don’t pose the heart in his hand next to the hole in his chest. That’s what made him creepy.

- You probably need to enable Paypal’s IPN for this to work. From the merchant account in Paypal, click the profile tab, then click the payments option, and choose IPN settings. Enable IPN and set the listener URL to the URL of your WordPress installation.

- In my case, we then had to deal with Internal Server Errors on the listener. I still don’t know why that was, but the site worked fine on other servers. I had the host move from FreeBSD to a linux server, and it worked well after that.

- Disable the built-in CSS so you can make the buttons as you’d like them, then go back and add in your own CSS plus whatever you deem necessary from their CSS to make the site look fine.

- Form Fields won’t line up in IE:
The form page was showing up in quirks mode; if I used the Developer Tools to display in strict mode, it worked fine. As it turns out, there were some hidden input fields above the DTD. IE didn’t know how to deal with this, so into quirks mode it went. I talked to my super wordpress guru friend, Tyrel, and he pointed out that wpnonce was echoing rather than returning. So I had to change wpgft_processOrder.php like so, from:

if( function_exists(‘wp_nonce_field’) ) $post_content .= wp_nonce_field($nonceID);

to

if( function_exists(‘wp_nonce_field’) ) $post_content .= wp_nonce_field($nonceID,’_wpnonce’,true,false);

Currently, I’m trying to see whether I can find a way to display gift certificate information such as the name of the gift, rather than its purchase cost, on the printable emailed certificate. I’ll share details there once I have them.

It would be a lot of work, but I think I would be able to much better showcase my geek/designer/marketing skills here if I took the mommy/faith/life stuff over to another blog. I’d also feel far more comfortable talking about faith and life stuff if I wasn’t always a bit concerned about what potential client/employer has to sift through everything else to get to my work-related posts.

The new personal blog in the works already, and in fact has just a few posts in place. So the trick is just going to be getting everything migrated. I’ve never tried it before, but this is what I’m guessing I’ll need to do. Or at least this is how my woke-up-at-four-and-desperately-need-more-sleep logic wants to send me. I figure I’ll write it down and go over it again when I’ve got my wits about me.

- Back up both blogs!
- Export this blog
- Take the few articles I’ve got in the new blog, untag them, and uncategorize them
- Export the new blog and increment my post_ids, wherever they might be, by hand
- Possibly edit the novapages.com export to swap out instances of novapages.com for my new domain
- Make a fresh WordPress install on the new site
- Import the old blog to the new site
- Import the new blog to the new site
- Fix pictures if I need to (copying them over from one site to the other, if needed)
- Get a handle on the new site’s look/feel/organization
- Get rid of techy/marketing/designer-ish articles on the blog
- Start removing / redirecting personal posts from this blog
- Redo novapages.com organization & look/feel

Un-techy considerations:
- Check with CJ.com about segmenting my domains You might have noticed I don’t put many ads on here, but I do have one article that’s popular enough to help with the bills. I’d want to keep that going.
- Comb through my analytics so I can figure out which popular articles I’ll want to redirect. (I won’t worry about anything that doesn’t get google hits)

I also want to get VaultPress installed on the new blog as well.

Wow. And the moment I finished writing all of that down, my tired brain instantly decided to relax and let me sleep… at least for a few more hours. Hooray. I’m off to bed. And I won’t start this project til next week when I won’t have much else to do at night (while the kids are out.) Wish me luck then and sweet dreams now.

I heard many comments at last night’s board meeting (and I was extremely proud of my son for deciding to comment himself!) but one of them I heard at a meeting-before-the-meeting rather surprised me. Something along the lines of, “If we do that, then they win.” And I thought, “Who are THEY? What are THEY?” — yeah, so on the rare occasion when I do think in words, it apparently comes in the form of song lyrics, thank you Jem! Whatever. Anyway, what ever happened to “WE” as a whole?

It feels like each group has been handed 250 jigsaw pieces when in fact the whole puzzle needs all 1000 pieces. A successful charter school needs good teachers, a good administration, wise board leadership, and willing parents, who can all take a step back and see that the big picture: it is all about the kids. We’d work better as a team, and you don’t even have to take my word for it.

1) Job Titles don’t match experience: If the title doesn’t match, name the departments instead; the goal is to provide more meaning in fewer words.

2) Layout issues: With less content, I was able to add more space. I might still tweak fonts and spacing, but what I’ve got is actually based roughly on golden ratios in hopes for a more pleasing look.

3) Concerns about Education: Combined freelance work, volunteer work, and education into one section.

4) Too wordy: chopped out most of the content and replaced it with simple phrases stating what I did at various companies.

5) Communication: I tried to communicate at the top just what my value would be. I don’t know if I’ve got the words right, but I want to say right up front that my best feature is my wide range of experience.

And the new resume is here; the old one there. Let me know what you think.

So I added a column and threw in some client comments thinking that would give a clearer message about who I am. It worked well. In fact, the other night when I was out with my UPHPU friends talking about my work situation, one of them suggested that technique saying they’d seen it on a friend’s resumé. I certainly wouldn’t claim I’m the only person in the world to think of that, but the idea was original to me when I did it.

Truth be told, I’d probably just throw in another line of experience if I could find the original file, but it’s nowhere to be found on the computers or disks I have here, and for some reason I can’t even copy and paste the text from this PDF. So I have to redo it somehow, and re-typing all of those words has me rethinking whether I need them all in the first place. Plus I’m wondering what other original ideas might help communicate my value to prospective employers, particularly since I consider my ability to creatively solve problems the most valuable of all my skills.

I’m finding as I do this, by the way, that my biggest weakness is letting a quest for perfection keep me from progressing! So I’m taking a bit of my own advice by setting some parameters as far as time limits and goals go, and aiming to do my best within those bounds. I want to have this done by Wednesday morning. Given that Monday is mostly gone and I have a full day Tuesday, I’m going to have to focus. Here’s what I don’t like about my current resumé:

1) My experience is far more broad than deep, so none of my job titles accurately portray what I’ve done at different companies.
2) The layout is not very attractive, given that I will most likely apply for positions that involve some design work.
3) I should mention something about education. However, the fact that I’m still in school is no doubt somewhat unattractive to the type of employer I’d like.
4) No one is going to read all of the way through it. Just try reading through it out loud. I stop about halfway through the second paragraph. Less is more.
5) I suppose a resumé is supposed to make me sound smart, hence the big pretentious words and phrases used here, but just how smart do I really sound if I’m unable to communicate who I am and what I can do for you?

So whether the end result is perfect or not, I would like a version of my resumé that solves these problems, done before Wednesday morning. Think I can do it?

I was in a bit of a panic, making lists in my journal of all the things I needed to do, and the ways I need to change, and feeling overwhelmed with trying to figure out what ought to happen first. Somewhere in all that jumble of ideas, I realized God must know what my priorities ought to be, and decided to ask for an opinion. The answer I got kind of surprised me: “Get up, change your shirt, get your camera, and go for a walk. And don’t forget that SD card.” (Yes in words; no, not in my ears. That’s how things work sometimes for me. You can read about that in another post if you’d like.)

I glanced at “that” SD card: the one sitting on my desk had popped into my head with those words. It was only 4GB. My 16GB card was in my camera already. Surely that’s the one He meant, right?

But I did get out and take that walk, and it was exactly what I needed. The exercise, sunlight, and fresh air were obviously helpful, but more than that I needed to clear my mind. Plus, with having just quit my job, I’d been feeling fairly sheepish about my new camera, and even worse that I hadn’t spent as much time learning to use it. So I spent the better part of an hour playing with my settings, trying this and that, and just relaxing and enjoying myself.

That was awesome, til I saw “Card Full!” on my screen. D’oh! The sun was just about to set anyway, though. So I put my camera away and was tweeting about it and posting a pic with my phone. Then a gorgeous stag stepped out of the bushes front of me. My droid’s been buggy again, so I couldn’t even get a picture with it before the deer was gone. Alas, and oh well; a gentle reminder came next: “I wouldn’t have mentioned that SD card if I didn’t love you… but you know that. Next time.” Lesson learned: I need to be a better listener, but I am loved. And the deer was beautiful enough for me even if I regret being unable to share it.

It occurs to me that it’s probably pretty weird for me to share something like that on my blog, particularly when I ought to be searching for work. Typically my facebook and twitter accounts get much more attention than this little neglected corner of my digital world, so I’ve used it to share the more personal things I hope would help someone in the unlikely event they actually happen to read it. My kids read this blog more than anyone, really – so hi kids! I miss you today! If you’re a prospective employer, hi! This is the me very few people get to know. I tend to be fairly quiet about matters of faith. I’m far from perfect just like everyone else, but things tend to go much better when I tune in. So this is who I am & want to be.

Anyway, whoever you are, I feel like I had to say this today, so hopefully it will help you: As confusing as life can be sometimes, I know God is real, that He love us, and He is watching out for us. He doesn’t shield His children from every difficulty, but He is there to help us through, and we grow from it. I don’t know whether I would have this kind of relationship with Him had I been prevented from dealing with some of the trials I’ve had over the years. I do feel awfully lucky for it, though. And even though you might not always feel sure about it, He loves you, too.

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.

The Serenity Prayer, by Reinhold Niebuhr

I had to laugh. The NPR article about bacteria was interesting, too. You can check it out here.