Redesign / New Portfolio Pieces

Posted on February 17, 2012 by randy

So there is a redesign heading towards this site… coming in March I do believe. I think I can block off some time to do a little work here… here are my focus areas for the redesign:

  • Responsive Design
  • Mobile First
  • Progressive Enhancement
  • HTML5
  • CSS3

Should be good.

Also, new portfolio pieces to be added soon:

Yeah, so be expecting pictures and more details on those. Sorry for not having them on my portfolio page. They will be there soon.

I also don’t want to be one of those annoying people who say, “Wow! It’s been a year since I last updated this thing! I’ll be updating more frequently now,” and then you notice that the date that was posted was five months ago. So, since I don’t want to be one of those people who say that… you know.

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Goodbye HR… Hello DC!

Posted on May 27, 2011 by randy

Well, I have some really big news… two pieces of news, you might say:

I have official left Health Resources. My last day as a Health Resources employee is today… but because VRP was not willing to pay for two floating holidays, I decided to use the two for yesterday and today. So my last day in the office was Wednesday.

It was really sad. Health Resources was the first real job that I have ever had. I mean, I worked at my church as intern, but this was the first real-world job, haha. Everyone there seemed to be pretty sad about it as well. I guess when you work with people for 40 hours/week, for almost three years, you get connected to them.

There was a problem, though, at Health Resources. The problem was that I live so far away from the office! It could take me an hour to get up to Cullman! And of course that means an hour to get home too. I would leave there and sometimes take an hour and a half to two hours to get to Anna’s house. My point is, it was hard for me to feel the desire to stay in Cullman after work and grow those bonds even more with my coworkers. Regardless of that fact, though, those bonds still grew. They grew to more than enough for it to really hurt when I left Wednesday. The people there all have a special place in my heart, and are all people that I consider great friends.

I am so very thankful for my time at Health Resources. If it weren’t for Health Resource, the opportunity, and the people there, I wouldn’t have a career at all. All-in-all, I feel so very blessed for the chance to have worked there.

Next piece of news is pretty big… I am the new Director of Web Development at Details Communications! I had a few different offers to choose from, but I decided to go with DC for multiple reasons:

1) In the end, they had the best offer. There was a different company that made a very generous offer, and DC decided to offer more than they did. To me, that meant that they were trying to do more than just fill a chair that fits in their budget. It means that they were looking for a great fit into a great company to make a great impact. I really respect that. More than that…

2) The work is perfect. I’ve worked at HR for almost three years, and I’m tired of working on different products for corporate environments. I really wanted a design shop where I would be working with various clients on different projects. The before (corporate) seems stale to me and the after (client) seems exciting and challenging and fresh. Also…

3) The type of work and environment are perfect. DC caters to churches and Christian organizations. This is an awesome fit for me! Instead of working on health supplements, I get to work a web solution for church members! But it’s not only that that drew me in, the office is very inspiring for creativity and work-flow. A building with hardwood floors, right in the middle of downtown Homewood, what more could you want? I’ll tell you…

4) Finally, the people. The employees at DC seem more like a family and look like they work so well together. I feel that I could become a vital part of that work, and fit well with the others there. Everyone is also so friendly! I’m really looking forward to developing friendships with everyone there.

There are (close to home) definitely (closer to Anna) more (working on a Mac) reasons… but I’ll leave it there for now. Wrapping it up: I am super-sad about leaving Health Resources and the amazing friends that I have made there. However, I am super-stoked about working so close to home, working on content I care about, and working with a core-group of strong believers that I am looking forward to getting to know better.

To my Health Resources friends: Thank you so much for all you have done for me. I have really appreciated all the time that we have had together. I love you all. Let’s keep in contact!

To DC: I’m really excited about working with you guys and getting to know you all! I think this is the beginning of a beautiful time in my life, one that will allow me to discover more about myself and where my career is heading, and the potential there. I couldn’t be happier about this new position.

To everyone else who is reading this: I’ll be working in-town now! Let’s go grab some lunch sometime!

Posted in Business, Future, Personal | 2 Comments

Job Hunting

Posted on April 25, 2011 by randy

My current company, Health Resources, has been going through a merger for a little over a year now. There had been a few changes here and there, but the largest one came a few weeks ago… maybe it’s already been a month: the marketing branch of the company is centralizing in Plano, TX!

Wow, that’s pretty exciting news. I’m sad that I won’t be able to join them there. Plano sounds like a lot of fun, and Dallas is just nearby, so there would be a lot that is offered there, but a move just isn’t feasible right now.

So what does that mean? You guessed it: time to find a new job! To be quite frank, I’ve been wanting to find a new job since March 2010, but I wasn’t very serious about it until December 2010. Now I’ve kicked into overdrive and I’m searching high and low for any position that I may fill, at least the ones that fit the web development industry.

That being said, there are a ton of different things I’m learning about this new, growing industry. There are a ton of positions that have interesting titles, such as User Interface Designer, User Experience Developer, Information Architect, and the list goes on. This names are kind of confusing, to tell you the truth. What happened to just Web Designer?

Another thing, there are a lot of companies that confuse even the most basic of titles. What I call a web designer (someone who designs a website, then implements it using HTML and CSS) they classify as a web developer (someone who uses server-side languages to develop functionality for websites and web applications). Are my definitions screwed up? That’s what I was taught!

Looking at it, though, I guess I could see where they could blur the lines on the titles. You do technically develop a website using HTML and CSS… but still, it’s confusing, I believe.

So where do these other titles fit in? It’s gotten to the point where I have to ask for a job description and figure out if I fit the bill or not. Thanks a lot, HR People! Stop using the names of different technologies as buzzwords when you don’t understand what they mean! Goodness.

I had a coworker who had to, on more than one occasion, tell a recruiter that no, he does not understand the C# .NET language, and most web designers do not understand it. Those are web programmers. At the end of several calls, he declared that he was tired of teaching recruiters how to do their job.

So where does that leave me? I’m a web developer, looking at the bigger picture of becoming a web programmer. I am also very interested in user experience and user interface, but I am not at all familiar with positions that deal with those in a professional sense. Who knows, though? Maybe I’ll be able to call myself one of those cool titles.

Don’t even get me started on when they call web programmers engineers. Gah.

Posted in Business, Funny, Tech | 1 Comment

Design

Posted on March 15, 2011 by randy

Wow, has it really been a year since I’ve had this domain? How sad… I still have so far to go on it. I guess it’s been hard to focus on this since I’ve had so much more going on around me. Well, I promise to be more active on this blog/site/thing! I’ve actually been working the last couple of nights on a new part of this site, but phase one is still a little bit away…

Over the last week or so, I’ve really just plunged my head deeply into trying to be creative with designs. In case some of you don’t know, I’m a web designer for a company called Health Resources. I enjoy working there immensely, but in the past the level of creativity in my designs has been low. Why has it been low?

  1. I’ve seen what happens when others submit creative designs… the majority of the design gets shot down.
  2. I’ve been lacking in the creative mentality that produces great designs.

Over the last year or so, my co-workers and I have been pushing for more creative designs, and things have definitely turned around! We also have had a great manager who has served as a middle-woman for us between the designers and the marketers. She speaks both languages… think of her as the missing link.

Regardless, I have no reason to not be as creative as I could be now! Especially with the new designers, I have to step up my game and produce some cool stuff! So today… I designed this…

androrenew-header

Suit Up! Header for new landing page in development.

Granted, it’s not amazing, but I like it! Plus it’s very different than our usual header designs for our landing pages… it’s kinda weird… something that Shane Palmer would do… haha. I had a lot of different ideas for this header, but this is one that everyone liked and decided was the easiest to read and could possibly get through the review process. Let me know what you think about it!

So anyway… I feel like a creative door has been opened and I can tell that I’m about to breakthrough with some good stuff. So just hold on.

Oh, and eventually I’ll come up with a cool design for this place. ;)

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Funny Captcha

Posted on December 13, 2010 by randy

So I was entering some information in a form today (no need to post a link to the site), and look what popped up in the captcha:

what am I supposed to do here?

Looks like the captcha programs are really stepping up their game...

Posted in Funny, Personal, Tech | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

How to Even Start…

Posted on December 2, 2010 by randy

I will try my best to make this blog a bit of all the thoughts and aspects that make up my life, but I’m not sure I’ll be very good at it, considering the fact that I haven’t really figured my life out. To be honest, though, I’m not sure I’ve met someone who has their life figured out. So, here’s a small attempt to update on certain matters as of late…

Almost five months ago, everything changed (I won’t bore you with the details of where my life was before this moment, because that’s what an About page is for, and mostly a blog is to write on current happenings, so here we are). I have met the girl of my dreams: Anna Bynum. I’m the type of guy who would rather pour out praises to the person rather to everyone, so I won’t go into how beautiful, amazing, adorable, and lovable she is on the internet, just know that it’s a large amount. Point being: we started dating.

My life has radically transformed since then, and in an amazing way that I know only God could have worked out, therefore, I give him all the glory and praise for it. There was a small time at the beginning of the relationship that we didn’t see each other as much as we wanted, but now we pretty much see each other every day. There may be one day a week that we cannot make it out to see each other, and believe me, I’m very happy with that fact.

In the recent months, I’ve also started listening to The Dave Ramsey Show, and that has changed my mindset to a whole different degree. I’ve started thinking about money and saving in a way that I’ve never imagined I would. After listening for so long, I think I’m ready to start in on the hard parts of his Baby Steps… it’ll be tough I think; I think I will hate the budget in the beginning. I do believe it’ll be worth it, though. Which I think leads me to where I wanted to go with this post: the future.

So where do I go from here? Where is my future heading? Those are two large questions on my mind. There are so many different opportunities that are just sitting there, waiting for me to come up to them and take action. I can feel my future staring at me and wondering which path I’ll take. I think it’s time to stop looking away and stare right back with an answer.

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