If you follow me on twitter then you already know this news and if you don’t follow me, why not? The big upcoming news is that several weeks ago I was contacted by a local development company wanting to know if I was interested in coming in for an interview. Now I have been freelancing full time for well over two years and part time for awhile before that. I love working from home, setting my own hours, finding clients that I enjoy, etc. However, last year I started thinking about maybe moving to a firm. I had looked at a few but in the end just kept with freelancing. Being contacted by DigiMedia last month was an opportunity that just fell into my lap so I had to at least check it out.
I went for an interview and it went great. Met the other developers and got a tour of the place which was really nice. They are located on the 8th Floor of the Chase Bank Tower here in Wichita Falls, TX. In fact just down the street from where I live right now. All the guy there were great, they have a great setup and working on projects that interest me. The company started as a domain company with a huge portfolio of top level and mostly generic domain names (jerky.com, drum.com, etc). However, they are working on developing out some of those domains. Meaning it will be 100% internal work. I won’t have to deal with clients, invoicing and all that admin stuff that I hate doing anyways. Some of their recent two sites are FantasyFootball.com and MovieReviews.com.
I am looking forward to joining their team and finally got word last night that I will be starting this coming Wednesday. I will still be doing some freelancing part time. I have a few clients that I will continue to work with and of course plenty of personal projects to finish up. So, things will be changing for me but it looks like for the better and I’m excited about it.
Tuesday night I had tickets to see one of my favorite bands, Drowning Pool. I had seen them twice before at Ozzfest two different years but that was with Dave Williams (RIP). I hadn’t seen them since. I didn’t really care much for their first album after Dave. It was mostly Jason Jones, vocals, that I just couldn’t get into. Nobody will ever be Dave but he just didn’t have what I wanted in Drowning Pool and came to expect. After finding out Ryan (former vocals for SOiL, another great band live) joined the band and hearing the new album I just had to see the new lineup live.
It was great to find out that they were going to play The Iron Horse Pub here in Wichita Falls, TX. The Iron Horse is not a very big place but after touring so long doing major cities, Drowning Pool is on a small-venue tour which I’m sure is amazing. The feeling you get at a small venue is great. I ended up directly in front of the stage and as time went on found myself to the right of the stage in front of the speakers. I normally go to shows in bigger venues like Kay Yeager and Superpages.com Center so it was a change to be right in front of the stage and the band and able to feel their energy.
I’ve seen so many bands live (check out the about me page) from 4 years of Ozzfest and other shows including Metallica, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Godsmack, Korn, Godsmack, Sevendust, Saliva, and plenty more and this is by far the best show I have ever been to. They had a great mix of old school Drowning Pool (Ryan pays plenty of respect to Dave) and new stuff off their latest album. Overall it was an amazing show and without a doubt a band I plan to see again very soon. Next week I’m going to Dallas to the Superpages.com Center for Mayhem Fest headlined by Disturbed and Slipknot, as I love getting lawn tickets, I think I will leave missing something that I found at the DP show. Being able to feel the energy from the band.
Tonight the kids (and Melissa) took me to dinner for a nice steak. Afterwards I figured we could take the kids to the park to fly kits, blow bubbles and play on the playground. They enjoyed flying the kites (although not so much Rachael as she just liked to watch and blow bubbles). Here is a quick video of them playing and a short message from Chase. He was actually recording what he did at the park (it was suppose to be a Me Today from him, but he didn’t have much to say). You can see plenty of pics from the day here.
The Sevendust and Saliva show last night was amazing. All four bands kicked ass including the two local ones from Dallas, TX; Neverset and Overscene. You can find pictures on my flickr here; http://flickr.com/photos/twofivethreetwo/sets/72157604790835222/ (pics aren’t great but a few good ones as crappy camera + fog machine/strobes = blurry). I also took a few quick videos of songs from Saliva and Sevendust which you can find here; http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=9E8B85193A11B197 . Also did a quick Me Today as I was leaving the Kay Yeager.
After dinner tonight we headed to Midwestern State University to the Fantasy of Lights as it was the last day and due to weather and a busy holiday week we hadn’t taken the kids to see them. It was still cold (just below 40F) but was nice. Plus this gave me the chance to have my first blog of the new year to be a video. Tomorrow I will be posting my resolutions for 2008 along with my plan to Blog365. You can see more Fantasy of Lights pics in my flickr gallery.
