change on the wind

Dear Neglected Blog:

Time and time again, I make commitments to pay more attention, to be more attentive, to simply be there for you. The ugly reality is that each and every time, I’ve failed to follow through. Not saying that this is going to change, but at least I’m aware of the problem. And admission is half the battle, right?

Because I’m still the self-centered jerk I was previously, I’m not even going to bother asking how your day was. Let’s face it, that would be a bit of a one-sided conversation. Instead, I’m just going to launch straight into a tirade about my life, and blah blah, blah blah, blah.

So here we stand, January 1st. 11AM EST in the New Year. I am surprisingly (and quite happily) not hung-over in the least bit. The night was spent at a dive-ish bar on Ave A and 2nd with Natasha, sipping Jack & Cokes (spiced up via my flask), and ended at a yummy Mexican restaurant where I managed to convince Natty-Ice to dance with me for a least a couple seconds.

I made a couple resolutions, but I’ll talk about those at the end of the post.

The biggest news is probably that I officially put in my notice at Playboy 2 weeks ago, and my last day will be this Friday (January 4th). It was a wild ride, and I learned an immense amount about design and corporate life. Once the features stop being live, I’ll take some screen grabs and add them to my portfolio, but in the meantime you can see some of my work at the following addresses. Important note: Since I worked on the non-nude side of the site, this is all SFW. That said, if your IT department doesn’t take kindly to visiting the playboy.com domain as a whole, do not click forward! Spring Break 2008, Kane & Lynch Cyber Search Contest, UTour Golf Review, and Rock the Rabbit: Essential 7. By Friday, I’ll have also rolled out 5 new projects, but we’ll discuss that when I’m allowed to talk about them.

And where am I headed, you ask? Well, after a week in Peru, I’ll be joining the front end development team at Scripps Networks. I know, you’ve probably never heard of Scripps. Well, some of their better known properties include HGTV, and the Food Network. I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am about this position and how much I’m going to learn in the process. My boss is an ex-Yahoo! who loves standards as much (if not more) as I do, and the new office is on 9th Ave. After a little Google Map-ing, I figured out that my daily commute will drop from 5 miles (Midtown @ Central Park) to 2.5 miles. Plus, the people look totally rad. Expect my CSS-foo and JS-foo to increase 10 fold.

I am also in the midst of migrating all my web properties to the new Grid Server account at Media Temple, and things have gone pretty fluidly with the exception of some domain transfer hang-ups (elihorne.com included). Once they are all finalized, the transition will be fluid, and you’ll be welcomed with a new wordpress theme.

On a random but totally cool note, I got to meet two web celebrities recently. As I began my transition from designer to developer, I became aware that Davidville (soon to be renamed), the parent company of Tumblr was looking for “creative developers.” I fired off my resume and crossed my fingers. And then it happened: Nothing. Normally, I would have taken this as the brush-off that they simply weren’t interested, but instead, I was incensed. How DARE they not want me on their team??. After a second email, I resorted to tweeting about the dilemma which also netted me ZILCH. Finally, I resolved to simply show up at their office during my lunch break. While this is a little ballsier than I’m typically known to behave, it turned out to be a great idea. I showed up at 419 Park Ave South only minutes after Jakob Lodwick (of Vimeo and JakobAndJulia.com fame), and had an awesome conversation with David Karp and Marco Arment. I know it’s silly, but I was completely star struck. Here are two guys who are doing exactly what I want to be doing. They built an awesome app, have a fanatical userbase, and are incredibly down to earth. I even got to ask questions about the future of Tumblr, and the history of Davidville. Turns out, I’m just an impatient geek, and they were simply gathering the resumes and were planning on responding when everything was in place.

Obviously, as stated above, I took the job at Scripps, so there is no need for rumors or conspiracy theories that I’m going to join the Tumblr team, but I very much plan to keep in contact with those two as much as possible.

Alright. Let’s wrap this ramblr up (ramblr.com is not available. I checked). New Years resolutions you say? Here goes:

1. Manage my time better. In the past, I’ve over extended myself with projects and commitments. This caused certain things to get extra attention while others got neglected. I’m going to do a daily calendar check-in every morning, and stick to it. Instead of saying yes to things and pushing them into the indefinite future, I’m going to just say “no.”
2. Not over-extend myself. As suggested above, I have a hard time saying no to people. I love helping friends, and believe that knowledge is something to be shared. That said, I’m officially closing up all my freelance projects, and cutting off all consulting work. It strains friendships, and while I love what I do, I want the work day to end at work and not follow me home. I’ll still be doing personal projects and experiments, but that’s it. FERREAL!
3. Create more positivity. I know how wishy-washy that sounds, but it is the best way I could put it. I feel my best when I’m doing things. This means art projects, blogging, learning, exploring etc. This year is going to consist of personal improvement. With the newly freed schedule, I’m going to more movies, seeing more art, hearing more music, and taking better care of myself. Today marks the 3rd successful day of my new running regimen, and I already feel worlds better.

Cheers to the New Year, and to the unforeseeable but POSITIVE future. Knock on wood.