I’m sure something is wrong with my biorhythms

Or the voodoo saints are annoyed with me. Or I used up all my good karma points and now I need to rack up some bad ones. Or, something. That would explain why, just a couple of weeks after I broke my butt, I would get laid off.

What I do:

I am a web designer and developer. I make websites look pretty, and also make them do all that fancy stuff that they do. If the acronyms HTML, CSS, PHP, ASP, SQL and JS mean anything to you, then you know what I do. If the acronym CMS means anything to you, then you know what I’ve specialized in (content management systems).

I have mad graphic design skills in Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator. I know how to design for both print and online reproduction. I have formerly mad, now rusty, skills in AutoCAD, and rusty semi-mad skills in SolidWorks.

I am a cartoonist. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m a “fine artist,” but I work in paint, ink, pencil and other non-computer artistic media.

I am a fiction and a non-fiction writer, and I have worked as a technical writer. In fact, technical writing is how I ended up as a programmer in the first place. Technical writing seemed like the really obvious 90s career choice for a nerdy English lit grad with a journalism minor. I assumed I wasn’t programmer material, because I didn’t like academic programming, by which I mean, the programming that was in the college classes I tried to take.

Eventually I figured out that I enjoyed real-world programming, especially if it involved databases. I can’t quite explain it, but I really love working with databases. I think it’s fun. It seems to tickle the same part of my brain that used to like to line up all my crayons in order of spectrum color, then mix them all up and order them from light to dark, then mix them all up again and put them in alphabetical order according to name.

For a number of years I worked as a Visual Basic programmer, and I would consider myself the ideal person to take a look at your rusty old Visual Basic program and web-i-tize it for you. I think of programming in terms of logical systems, and pick up new languages fairly easily.

All that, and I steam a mean cappuccino.

So, if you need somebody who does what I do, please let me know.

15 Comments

  1. I’m so sorry.

    Every time I hear of someone I know getting laid off (that’d be about a dozen in the last 3 months, and that’s not including friends of friends….), I get angry. I’m not sure who I’m angry at. Well, there is one person who recently insisted nothing was wrong with the economy, but she didn’t actually cause the problem…. which gets me back to: who am I mad at?

    Sigh…..

    Keep us posted….

  2. I can’t offer you a job, but I’m half way done with the beta version of the FenWISE CMS I’m building for the B.S. of Comics and while I am probably going to finish it just fine on my own, I’m sure you could help me finish it! There are some things I’d like to do with it that I don’t understand yet that some of your acronyms are used for, and it would be an excellent way to keep busy between jobs.

    The purpose of the script is to do triple duty as a blog management system, a BBS and a webcomic hosting script for a whole group of people.

    At the very least, it could use some debugging. At the most, it would do well with some beautifying and an RSS generator and a chat system.

    1. Author

      Sure, if it’s really great and makes us famous it becomes a super resume item!

      What platform is it? I thought you were doing the php/mysql thing.

      1. Sweet!

        Yep, it’s PHP/MySQL. But there may be some use for AJAX at some point, or whatever we can do to make a google-chat/facebook-chat like thing. That’s a way late add-on, though.

        I usually have time on Thursdays and Fridays to do coding. I tend to work on comics Mon-Wed.

  3. As I said before, sorry to hear you lost your job. Hopefully something will crop up.

    Also, did you send off that Goth House order I made with you last week? Just curious as to how it’s getting along. Thanks.

    1. Author

      Yark!

      (That’s my version of Homer Simpson’s “D-oh!” I think it’ll really catch on.)

      Not yet, I meant to do it on Saturday and then forgot. Soon!

    1. Author

      Not so much, actually.

      I like Bellingham but I’ve been here long enough that going somewhere else (as long as it’s somewhere else that I’d like) seems kind of appealing as well.

      My willingness to move for a job is based on an extremely complex scientific formula involving how cool the job is, how well it pays, how much I like the area, and what kind of commute would be involved. Also involved: whether Paul would want to live there, and how easy/necessary it would be for him to find a job.

  5. http://www.elance.com/ and similar sites have a lot of freelance projects posted. Many of them are short-term projects you could do while you look for a full-time job.

    I’ll let my mom know that you’re looking — she and my stepdad Jon know a ton of people in Bellingham.

    1. Oh, and I assume you are networking with Jim Kling as well, right? He probably knows a lot of good writing job sources.

  6. Another idea: a recession is a good time to get a Masters degree. If you got one in English then you’d be qualified to teach college and there is always a demand for online adjuncts to teach composition courses (if you can stomach reading freshmen’s writing without slitting your wrists).

  7. You don’t read . She lives in West Seattle, went to Clarion West in 1989, and is searching for work for herself and her spouse. She frequently posts links to technical jobs that she’s found. She posted a bunch of links yesterday and today.

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