Todd’s friend Steve does game and product reviews for Gamerz-Edge, which is in need of a new layout. Todd recommended me as a web designer to Nathan, who also works there, and Nathan and I spoke this morning. We’re going to meet on Friday to discuss me taking an existing design idea of theirs, creating the graphics for it, and then working up sample HTML and CSS. This will be kind of like the LXer deal, in which I didn’t get paid, but with the perk that I’ll get ads on their site afterward. They apparently get pretty good traffic now, though that might change because I just visited their site and there’s a message stating “Gamerz-Edge is no longer available.” This goes back to the reason they need a new layout in the first place: they’re branching off from their parent company, or something like that, and have to create whole new content along with a new look. I’m more than happy to help them, if only to get my name out there further as a designer, but the ads will be nice, too. Knowing that folks may be coming here in the future looking for Designer!Sarah and not just PersonalBlogger!Sarah is a big incentive for me to create a portfolio section of 3till7 to discuss work experience, skills, etc. I’ve gotten ahead of my homework today, or at least caught up with it, having finished my algorithms program, my discrete math program, and my discrete math textbook assignment, so I hope to begin working up a snazzy new 3till7 layout along with a portfolio section. Even if I don’t get the new layout up, I can certainly create the portfolio. That’ll actually help de-clutter the ‘about me’ section because that’s currently where I showcase previous sites I’ve designed.

I have a couple of new neighbors, or maybe that should be singular. A few days ago, this Asian couple was going upstairs and I was coming down. They stopped me, explained they’d be moving in in a few days, and asked if they could see my apartment. I let them take a peek, we talked for a few minutes, then I had to leave. Today, they stopped by again to say hi and we got properly introduced: they’re Angie and Andy. Andy explained that Angie had just moved to the country a few weeks ago, that he would be staying with her a little bit to get her adjusted, and then she’d be on her own. She said she didn’t speak English very well and when I introduced myself and tried to shake her hand, she paused for a minute, probably translating. That’s how it is for me when I’m deciphering Spanish, and I bet it’s that way for anyone who has a halting sense of a foreign language. Anyway, I think it’s really neat to have a neighbor that seems my age; all the other people I’ve seen here are old men. I also happen to think that Asian women are adorable, and this is going to sound horribly racist but I mean it in the best possible way, but whenever I see a little Asian lady that’s maybe 5 feet tall at most, I just want to set her down and brush her hair. They just remind me of little porcelain dolls!