2011: My year in review

Ok, so I’m a little late to the game. January is almost done and I’m only just starting to think about my 2011 “list of things I’ve done this past year”.  (I should really think of a better title.)

1. Retired from Barvinok (after 18-ish years I’ve finally hung up my dancing boots)
2. Trip to St. Johns/Newfoundland. One of the best times of my life.
3. Hung out in a bar after hours
4. Free drinks from bartenders after said bar was closed
5. Getting Screeched-in
6. Stayed at a B & B
7. Getting a personal tour of some of Newfoundland’s most wicked education sites (yes, I’m a nerd)
8. Going on an excavation site in Canada’s oldest town
9. Holding rings and pipes and other stuff that’s more than a century old in my freaking hands (no gloves or anything)
10. Seeing Puffins!
11. Being called “Mississauga”
12. Disturbed/Korn concert
13. Little bro gets engaged
14. NYC!
15. NYC bachelorette
16. Wine tour in Niagra
17. 30 Seconds to Mars concert
18. Ottawa for Canada Day
19. Mini trip with all my closest friends
20. 7 rounds of shots and no one went home sick!
21. My first outdoor wedding/non-Ukrainian wedding (that’s you Anne!)
22. And 80 hour work week
23. A 36 hour day
24. Trews concert
25. Deciding to move to Halifax (even though it’s a fair bit away)
26. Actually getting upset that a character gets killed off on a show (that’s right Being Human, I’m looking at you)
27. Beerfest
28. Ukrainian day at Centennial turns into Aussie night at nearby bar
29. Hotels.ca acts like a little bitch and refuses to help a sister out
30. I get my revenge with hotels.ca
31. I’m introduced to Misfits (such a good show)
32. Took my final bow at Carassauga (where Fedir acknowledged each of the retirees)
33. Got slapped (by an asshole obviously)
34. Montreal with the boys
35. Was the tallest person (not just girl but person) at a bar/club
36. Hung out with Parisians in Montreal (who’d have thunk it)
37. Actually watched (and liked) Teen Wolf (yes, I’m at least embarrassed about this)
38. Reached my biking goal (of the summer)
39. Started running again
40. Chatted with a very nice Brazilian dude at FITC (who would have thought I’d actually socialize)
41. Became closer with friends I wasn’t that close with
42. Sneaked into the beer tent at Ukie day
43. Had a police horse push me around (gently)
44. Had a very drunk guy from my old elementary school hit on me
45. Surprised said guy when I said I knew who he was (he obviously didn’t remember me)
46. Got lost in St. Johns
47. Attempted to walk home at 6am and got lost (I guess this should be part of #46…but I feel like they’re 2 different events)
48. Met the guitarist(?) from Hey Rosetta!
49. He made me do math at 5am (really just tell me you age when I ask; don’t give me some sort of a math calculation to do in order to figure it out)
50. Went to the bar that’s featured in Republic of Doyle

Tags: 2011, memories, review, year

The forced redesign

So I had been meaning to update my site for a long time. Don’t get me wrong, I liked how my old site looked. It was still one of my favorite revamps to date, but it just didn’t flow as well as I wanted it to, and it was really hard to update. In fact, I had some work up there that wasn’t even valid anymore. Some of my client’s had moved on from my work; I’d become obsolete in their eyes. (No hard feeling to these client’s, I’m glad your continuing on refreshing your sites!)

Even though I knew this, I was stuck in a rut, I didn’t know the style I wanted to go with, I didn’t know if I wanted to maintain a single page site, would I switch to WordPress or continue with a hand coded site, when was I going to find the time to design and develop this thing? And like most designers with full time jobs, I put my site redesign on the back-burner for when things died down and I had “time” to think of all of these issues.

Then, I got my android phone and I wanted to see what my site looked like on the tiny screen and that’s when I saw it, those dreaded words from Host Papa telling me that my site had been suspended. Suspended?! WTF for? I got in touch with them and they too were perplexed. They sent a message to the higher ups and I finally got a response. Someone hacked my site. My site. A site that doesn’t exactly get millions of page views.

Brilliant.

But it gets better. HostPapa has to delete my corrupted files along with the healthy files, which I completely and totally understand from a security point of view; from my personal point of view (read: I didn’t back up most of my work and my server had become really a convenient storage space for stuff I wanted but didn’t know where to put) it was a disaster. Not only did I not have my most recent HTML files backed up, the files I did have were so old that it’d be like starting from scratch to get them into the shape they were before this disaster.

So what did I do? I quickly put up a coming soon page and got to work on designing a new site. After all, I’d been meaning to do this for half a year now.

The outcome? Well, it took me about 3 days from start to finish to: get inspired, mock up a design, figure out what content I want displayed, and code the site. Three days of work that I’d been putting off for months.

The lesson learned?

1. Back up your files

2. Stop procrastinating

3. Pressure really seems to get me working as quickly and efficiently as possible.

So yes, it sucks that my site was shut down, because some hacker wanted to play around with my site. Am I angry at this person? Not really (though, hacker, if you’re reading this, please have mercy on my freshly created site). I needed/wanted to create a new site, I’d been procrastinating and this site suspension was a blessing in disguise. A blessing I hope never to have repeated again.

Here’s a screen grab of the new look:

Tags: hostpapa, lessons, redesign, web design, website

That time of year again

It’s that time of year again: FITC flash video time! I’m not sure what I’m going to be doing yet and I usually have a difficult time coming up with a concept, but if there’s one thing I do know, it’s that it will definitely be text centered. I’m by no means a flash developer. And my AS3 skills are very rusty (close to nonexistent if I’m being honest) but I always like attempting something in Flash. It’s a nice way of bringing me back to my IMM roots. So here’s hoping that I’ll be able to pull something out of my design hat and create a fun and creative vid.

Tags: FITC, flash video

An open letter to Hotels.com – thanks for the horrible experience!

I began my call to you at 6:03pm today, waited for 35 minutes before an actual person answered the call. Fantastic! I’m used to things like this from you. Last time I phoned I only waited 30 minutes, so I guess I shouldn’t be complaining.

After listening to the best mix of oldies and early 90′s hip-hop I got to speak with “Mabel”. Please note that “Mabel” is in quotations and I highly doubt that that is her name. I asked Mabel about a hotels.com voucher that I got. I wanted to use the voucher for August 31-September 2, but the coupon said it expired August. I hoped that because I was booking before August and that the first date of booking was also still in August I would be able to use this voucher.
Not so, Mabel told me. After repeatedly trying to get her to understand that I’d still be technically USING it in August, she refused to understand my logic. Clearly you have a script and boy does Mabel know how to follow it. She repeated the same sentences over and over no matter what I asked.

Frustrated beyond words, I asked to speak to her supervisor; she gladly put me in the ‘hold loop’. I really like that you have a name for what you do to people, clearly no one has ever spoken to a supervisor without going through the fun that is the hold loop.

Another 20 minutes goes by, luckily the music selection this time was more uplifting: salsa! At this point I’ve now switched to the third phone in my house, as I’ve lost so much battery power just WAITING for a human to speak to me. The salsa number gets interrupted by a voice. A supervisor I think! But alas it was not so, it was Mabel again. She wants to “advise” me that she will be willing to accept my voucher, if I book today. I ask her to explain how that would work, as it clearly says on the voucher that I have to return the voucher AFTER my stay and she wanted me to send it in before my stay. She didn’t explain anything, she just repeatedly “advised” me that I needed to book today (congrats on training your employees to sell, sell, sell). Finally, I say that I will agree to book today if I get an email from her or someone at hotels.com saying that they will honour my voucher, if I do it the way Mabel advises. Unfortunately she can’t send out emails.

I hope you know what I did next. You guessed it; I asked to be put back on hold to speak to the supervisor.
Back to the sweet, sweet sounds of salsa, I wait another 30 minutes before the ever helpful Fred P. finally comes on the line. Let me clarify right now that by ‘helpful’ I mean complete and total ass. Freddy was not willing to listen to me at all and kept spewing out the exact same lines as Mabel. And when I told him what Mabel told me she would be willing to do, he completely ignored me. In fact, this is how the conversation went. “Well the woman I was speaking to before said she would honour my voucher if I booked today.” I said. His response was “No—“ then what sounded like him hanging up. Thankfully, he couldn’t get me off that easily. I waited until he returned. When I asked him if he’d put me on hold he said he had. I then told him that it’s customary to let someone know when they’re being put on hold, and not just stopping mid-sentence and expecting me to know this. He didn’t apologize and just continued speaking as if I hadn’t said anything. And what did he say? He gave me the same ‘advice’ Mabel has been giving me. Woot!

Beyond frustration I asked to speak to someone above him. Well guess what? No one is above Fred. Fred is the Man. Congrats Fred! Well I asked for the number to head office. Apparently they don’t give out that kind of information. You know, for being the Top Dog, he sure isn’t privy to much information. He did tell me to find and fill out this lovely email form. Wouldn’t even give me a direct link to it or anything, just told me to ‘find it’ on my own. 7: 23pm phone call ended.

Lucky me, I know how use the internet, I’ve found not only this handy form, but I’ve also found out your corporate number. So I’ll be calling that too.

I understand what both Fred and Mabel are telling me, but the fact that they were unable to DO ANYTHING to make my experience with hotels.com a pleasant one is completely unacceptable. You’ve lost a client. And guess what, I like to talk; I like to tell people about who I book with. I also like to blog about it, and tweet about it, and facebook about it, and send out mass emails about it. So thanks, I’ve got a lot of fun writing ahead of me.

Tags: call center, client services, customer service, horrible customer service, hospitality, hotels, hotels.ca, hotels.com

Artsy-fartsy

I’ve recently created a tumblr page to hold all my little art works. I initially wanted to design and code a completely unique site for it, but tumblr has a super theme that works PERFECTLY for my art.

Right now it’s mostly got my canvas works as well as some photos/digital work. One of these days I’ll be sure to add my little doodles/graffiti that I did during school (I find I don’t have much time to doodle now that I’m at a full time job).

For your viewing pleasure: http://yellowbellyproject.tumblr.com/

Tags: acrylic, art, painting, photos, tumblr, work, yellowbellyproject