digimedia

Me Today 8.14.08

Finally found a house, putting deposit down after work, loving the new job still, and learning Ruby.

The First Week

Well I made it through the first week working at DigiMedia and I gotta say, I loved it. It is a bit of a big change from freelancing from home but I was expecting that. I love having to go to work each day and being around other developers and designers and working on larger projects. I spent most of this week in Photoshop cranking out graphics. The rest of the time was spent finishing a WordPress project that was already started. Fixing errors, setting up some new plugins, and other things of that nature. I got a crash course on their Ad Manager which is just massive and look forward to messing with it more and ending up giving a quick class on WordPress to some retail people. Overall it was a pretty good week and I think I will enjoy working there. Another plus with the new job is having to learn Ruby. As you know, I’ve wanted to for awhile but client work always got in the way. However, with most of the work at DigiMedia being done in Ruby this gives me a chance to finally learn it. I have some books that I’m going through and several people I can turn to for help if needed.

Besides starting the new job this month we will also be moving in the coming weeks. We are still debating on a house or apartment, either way we plan to rent. Between me just starting the new job and Melissa planning to change from online classes at Uni of Phoenix Online to local classes here at Midwestern State University for nursing starting in January we just aren’t sure what would be better for us. Either way it will only be for 2-3 years.

I am also attempting to finish my redesign. I posted a screen of it on flickr awhile back and got lots of great feedback. I have started coding it to WordPress and just about done with the main page but still have several things to do. The problem is client work is on top of my list right now and taking up most of my evenings and weekends so I’m having to make time for my projects which right now there just isn’t enough of. I would like to have it done by the end of the month. As next month is full as well between getting settled into the new place and taking a mini-vacation to Kansas to see Melissa’s grandparents.

A Big Transition

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.