sarahneedsajob.com

It all started in portfolio class.  Our final project was to make significant progress on a website for ourselves.  I had the hardest time finding a website builder that I liked so I ended up choosing a random one and throwing stuff in at the last minute.  I finished the class convinced that the kind of website I wanted to make with slideshows and side bars, etc. would be ridiculously expensive.  Yesterday, I picked it up again, trying to make some headway to my pathetic site which led me to two places.  

1) I downloaded a random new web server called Opera.  It's actually quite a bit awesome.

2) I became convinced that the builder I was using (webs.com) was useless.  After only a few minutes of searching I found wix.com and my life was changed.  I have spent a large part of the day working on my website and it is in very useable condition.  

My brother jokingly called it "sarahneedsajob.com," which is a fairly accurate description.  I would like to invite you to visit the real site wix.com/sarahchanis/portfolio.  If you need to make a website or if you're looking for a new browser, I would recommend either program.

An Upgrade

Over a year ago, I went to a basketball game and I dropped my phone beneath the bleachers. This was the one in about forty times that my battery cover popped off and while I was able to retrieve my phone and battery, the cover was sadly MIA. Fortunately, I knew that there was a razor battery cover in the assistant stage manager desk in one of our theatres. I claimed this battery cover as my own and was actually quite pleased with its different color. However, a different color apparently indicates a different size and I had to resort to using spike tape to hold my phone together. The ghetto phone became such a part of my life that when the time came for an upgrade, I chose to keep my razor that was loaded with personality. Alas, in the last couple of weeks the razor stopped responding and the upgrade happened. I am enjoy my new phone very much, but I wanted to immortalize the phone that served me through many years and many misadventures, a phone with personality. (The green tape is part of the original tape job)

This is my new phone, which is clearly quite shiny.

Ironically, I published this post and then checked my email to find a message from Verizon that said, "Give your new phone some personality!" What do they know?

You Can't Teach an Old Dog New Tricks

Okay. That's fine. The old tricks work quite well for me. In fact, I am learning at this point so I am not planning to teach anybody anything. I really don't feel like I'm asking for too much.

Here is my first request: Light, turn on.

Unfortunately, this is too large a task for our archaic lighting instruments.

As a part of our lighting design class we must design a moving light show (sometimes called Roboshow) to 3-5 minutes of music. For the past 10.5 hours at least one person in our class (and at least one lighting staff member) has been trying to make the lights work. The good news is we had a school holiday today so we had the time to deal with it. The process is slow and somewhat excruciating, but the project has a lot of value and should produce something I can be extremely proud of and enjoy.

For now, the conclusion of the day is this: You can't teach these old dogs old tricks!

On a lighter note, my friend made up a lighting joke today. (Background: when a light is on at its highest intensity it is at "full," so a lighting designer will ask for a specific light at full).

THE JOKE: What did God say when he created the world? Sun, at full.

Missed Calls

Tonight I as I was digging in my purse I discovered something that made my heart skip a beat: I had left my cell phone at home. After the initial and terrifying discovery, I reminded myself that it probably healthy for me to be without my phone every once and a while. After all, I had spent the previous three hours without it, I could leave it a couple hours more. If anyone called or texted I would be able to see that when I got home and respond then.

When I walked into my apartment, there was my phone sitting on the coffee table. In an effort to detach myself further from the Compulsive Cell Phone Disorder, I refrained from checking it immediately. A minute or so later I heard the satisfactory beep altering me to two missed calls. Both were from the number Unavailable which I knew immediately was my mom. She is the only person I cannot call back since it is actually a Skype number. I won so much ground in my fight against cell phone addiction and I actually missed the call I needed to answer right away and on a rare occasion when I could have talked to her. Sad.

This story does have a happy ending though! I emailed my mom right away to tell her what happened and a few minutes later I received a call from Unavailable. She has the day off today (tomorrow?) for the Midautumn Festival and was able to call later in her day and talk for a while. How long? 40mins 54 secs. When does that ever happen? I am the luckiest girl in the world.