Sunday mornings usually entail watching excessive amounts of pro football analysis, provided by ESPN and FOX. Today is a little different though since I am without a TV for my reality and fantasy needs, no jokes people. So, I am stuck with using Yahoo’s online video fantasy analysis, which is mainly provided by Brandon Funston. Most of my fantasy options are closed off since I’ve got three players on a BYE and I’m not dropping Frank Gore, even if he fumbles twice a game.

In non-fantasy news, group projects continue. My last test was Wednesday and boy was it a mother of a time. Database Management II is a challenging and interesting course, but there wasn’t enough time in an hour and a half, not to mention 50 MINUTES, for this test. For DB nerds out there: 10 mc, 3 short answer using an ER diagram, 2 difficutl SQL statements, draw an ER Diagram from a client rqmt, normalize to 4NF a 1NF table, and some more stuff. So, thank goodness its a small class and that test will have to be curved.

In fun news, my boss and a former co-worker got married yesterday. Now there’s on honeymoon in Disneyworld, so if anyone sees them roaming around Epcot, shout out: ‘HEY mark and reka!”

Well, I’m off to the Airliner for 1.50 slices of pizza and a salad while we all watch football. How much better can a weekend get? Oh wait, the Hawks lost, but that was expected, even if there apparently a horrendous call made. For details and development in the latest Hawkeye screwjob, keep posted to Oculon

Happy Friday all!

It’s been an exciting two weeks for school and work and play.  First, school has been going spicily.  Not too much individual homework, but the group work is just beginning.  I have semester long projects for two major courses and we’ve got milestones due for both this coming Monday.  My roman literature paper is also due on Monday and will require me to read another play by Plautus and write a summary and analyze the themes and characters compared to other Plautus stories, as well as contemporaries’ stories.

Work has been going swimmingly as well.  Me and my coworkers are about ready to roll-out a few re-designed websites.  Namely the University of Iowa’s Department of Anthropology and the German Department are extremely close to delivery.  As for the Scruple business, we may be adding a realtor as a client by designing a realtor profile and property listing page.  Also, another potential customer has visions of a CMS-based website for visitors to be a part of a social network that disseminates topic-specific information.  I will explain more as the site gets closer to implementation.  Until then it is classified *stamp*.

Fun things have been happening as well.  This Thursday marked two friends’ birthdays and a little celebration at the Iowa City piano lounge.  The pianist was Sean and he was quite good.  We enjoyed wine and martinis and good music and you could sing or clap along too.  Sean felt that our clapping for the Violent Femmes’s “Blister on the Sun” was the best he’d ever heard.  He and his band will be playing at Third Base tonight and the WTS folk will be stopping by to hear the ensemble performance and get some cheap ‘n’ tasty burgers.  When I’m not listening to good music, there’s always the US Open and college and pro football on TV.  Since Roger Federer took down James Blake last night, I’m down to rooting for R-Fed (not to be confused with K-Fed).  Saturday will feature your IA Hawks taking on Syracuse in the Big Apple. GO HAWKS!  The football fun continues into Sunday with the true start of NFL ball and super competitive fantasy sports in multiple leagues.  The fall should be pretty packed, but two tons of fun as well.

Jim Gaffigan ~ “Hottttttt Pocketttttt!  Diahhreaaaaaa Pockettttttt!  Now they’ve got the Breakfast Hot Pocket, so you can have a Hot Pocket for breakfast and lunch and be dead by dinner.”

D-rock

Things have certainly picked up in the last few days at the U. The weekend had many students moving into the dorms and setting up their computers on the University’s network. I was in the most remote dormitory, so my team only had to support one dorm, unlike others that had 3-4 dorms.

Also, Scruple is looking to become a formal business with a bank account and potentially an office in the BELL Center on campus. We’re acquiring new clients left and right, and are about ready to implement the Le Reve Salon & Spa site. We’re also looking to make a website for a local opthamologist that doubles as a business and informative site on LASIK eye surgery.

At work, the phones are ringing off the hook since we’re only three days into the fall semester. Yesterday morning started off with 32 voicemails and non-stop calls and voicemails for the rest of the day. With all this activity its hard to imagine when I’ll have free time to design again. But, once things slow down, I’ll be able to redesign the CSS for this blog so that it can be a part of the happy dsjoo template family.

Testing… Testing…

Insert Picture Test:

Exciting things continue to happen even as the semester looms. I’m at Web Services and designing websites again. Right now, WTS is working with a few new departments and just finished delivered a project – Department of Cinema & Comparative Literature. That website was a collaboration between myself and a coworker in design and delivery, since I was gone during last two months. The training on Contribute went well enough and support questions will continue to filter in for a few weeks.

As for Scruple, things are progressing quite a bit. We are in the process of getting a Tax ID and a business bank account. We have been collaborating with another student who has added quite a bit of ideas to potential Scruple projects.  We’re also looking to make a login section on scruple.net for clients to view design comps and other client-specific information.

In other news, being without a TV in my room has lead to watching tv shows on my computer.  Much like Tivo, downloaded show series allows for watch-when-you-want programming.  School will start in less than two weeks, so hopefully I will be finished watching Deadwood Seasons 1 & 2.  In the mean time, in the words of Steve Ballmer, “Developers, developers, developers!”

Hello all,

This is my first blog post to the dsjoo blog. I had another blog, almost two years ago, but abandoned it a while back. I had no reason to blog then and wasn’t even terribly interested in web design. In the past year though, that’s all changed. I began working in a new position at the University last fall. Since then the web world has opened up and renewed creative juices have been flowing. I now have multiple jobs, all dealing with web and database design. One at the University, where I, and coworkers, design websites for departments and then train content managers on maintaing the site. I also work at Scruple.net with a small group of friends,designing websites for local businesses. Right now, I’m interning at FSI, a steel fabrication software company.

All that and the year’s just half over. Hopefully more exciting things are come.

Au revoir

-Derrick

P.S. At this very moment, I’m typing this blog entry using the Performancing Firefox extension, very slick.