Supafly.com

Yesterday afternoon my friend Adam H. sent me the code and database for Version3 of supafly.com. I’ve written about it a few times over the past year, but it’s basically a three column layout. This website has been up for over six years in a couple different versions. But it’s gotten to a point where I have create a site around a content, rather than letting the site decide what will go where. The biggest part of my site is my journals, and the new layout is that it gives easy access to all of my old journals.

So last night I spell-checked my old journals and added them to the database one at a time. It was pretty tedious, but it was nostalgic reading journals from 1999. I thought it was funny because shortly after I launched my website, I tried out for “The Real World.” I never wrote about any of the many interviews along the way. It was hard because I was so excited as I got closer with every step, but if I wrote about it, I know there would’ve been too much drama around campus.

The part that is so amusing to me is I remember talking about my website while I was trying out for the show, as if I had a corner of the Internet empire. In reality, I had only had the thing online for a couple months, and half of the sections hadn’t actually been updated. Another thing that cracked me up was how in one period I wrote almost one journal a day. If I remember correctly, I; was getting close to making it on the show, and I wanted to write as much to remind MTV how dynamic and interesting I could be.

I was feeling especially nostalgic, so I listened to a playlist on Rhapsody of the best Monster Ballads from the late 1980s and early 1980s. Although that music was from elementary through middle school for me, that music reminds me of a time where I felt like nothing exciting would ever happen in my life. I was just a kid stuck in a rural town in the South. So listening to Skid Row while uploading journals of my adventures in college gave me a sense of relief. I made it out of the small town!

Half way through adding my 1999 journals, people started to come over my house for our weekly 24 parties. These parties started a few years ago after XLT when a couple people would come over to watch an episode of 24 that we had recorded with Tivo. Now it’s different because one of our friends was cast as the assistant to; President Palmer. With 20 or more people in the room, people get pretty snappy when other talk during the show. But as soon as our friend shows up on screen, everyone roars claps, like we’d just won the big homecoming game. Then we’ll replay that three-second clip a few times just for kicks.

These parties have been good for the Catholic community in Phoenix. The success of a lot of parishes in the city are because the people there made a conscious effort to build community and spend time with one another. Sometimes “church social groups” can seem forced and dorky. But the 24 party is an organic thing. It just kind of happened, and it just keeps happening. When old friends are back in town, they come to the party. If new friends are in town, someone always brings them to the party. Strangers are in my house all the time.;

Matt Maher is in Nashville meeting with a lot of Christian music people this week. He’s a talented songwriter, and it seems as though several labels are interested in his stuff. We’ll see what happens. I think tonight or tomorrow night he’s going to Chris Tomlin’s party for the gold party for his latest album. That means he’s sold 500,000 copies. And one of Matt’s songs has been a popular song on the album. So I’m excited for Matt. A few years ago Matt had a song on a Grammy nominated album. I’m just excited to see people recognize my friend’s talent.

Once everyone left the party last night, I sat down in front of my computer and entered the rest of my 1999 journals. The site is still a little buggy, but I’m really excited about the new look. It will take some time to pull the portfolio section together, but that will be a lot of fun to do.

It’s been a busy week for me at work. I’m always; busy, but at least I’ve enjoyed the past month of my busyness at my business. I’m about 3/4 of the way through camps.lifeteen.com and I’m really enjoying it. I wanted the project to only last three weeks, but that was derailed when the camp directors didn’t get me their content on time. Plus, I have plenty of responsibilities at the studio I have to do for a few hours each day. But since I’m having fun with this site, I don’t mind taking more time.

It’s been exciting to work on camps.lifeteen.com because I get a chance to be creative. My first priority is to give the site visitor a chance to understanding of all three of our camp facilities. So if a Youth Minister is interested in taking their youth group to camp, they know what each camp can uniquely offer.; So I have plenty of pictures and information about where you will stay, what buildings you can use, and what you can do while you are at camp. Most people would have been pleased with the site if I did this and I did it well. But there is so much material about camps that I can work with, so I’ve decided to go all out.

I believe it’s important to create a sense of regionalism. Each camp is in a unique part of the country, and it is what around the camps that help defines the camp itself. For instance, camp RockyVine is close the Missouri River in the wine region of the Midwest. It’s one thing to tell people this, but it’s another thing to show them with maps.

Earlier this week I used Adobe Illustrator to make a graph that showed the difference in elevation from a specific camp and the closest city. I was shocked to see that our Arizona camp was three times higher elevation than our camp in Georgia. But once; you see it on a graph, you don’t really believe it. I’m not going to overdo it, but if there are other chances to educate people with graphs, I’ll be happy to do it.

One problem I’ve seen is that many people judge a camp as if it were a low-budge vacation destination. In all honesty, some of the photos of our cabins aren’t very flattering. It’s basically shelter from the elements. To get skeptics to think bigger, I’m trying to get them excited to be in the wild. I am flirting with is to have a wildlife page for each of our three summer camps where we educate people on the regional odd-ball plants and animals. It could be educating and amusing to see photos of local critters that you might run into while you are at camp. I talked to Adam, and I think that it would be cool to go the next level and and make a sound bird where you can click on an animal and here it make it’s sound. Win you hear a pack of coyotes howl, you can’t help but want to go to Arizona.

The way a web design project goes is a series of problems followed by delightful solutions. I’ve been at this long enough to know that I will eventually find a cool solution to every design problem, but sometimes the solution doesn’t come as quickly as I’d like.

I knew that I wanted to use a lot of high quality photos because they do the best job in telling the story of the camp. But after clicking through one of the camp sections; that is finished, I realized that the photos were overwhelming. Plus, it looked clunky and lopsided to have a one paragraph description and then six photos.

So yesterday afternoon I decided to do replace the tall column of photos with a tidy click through Flash slide show. It will be more fun to click through the photos than to scroll down, plus it adds a little flare to the site. Some designers would avoid a slide show because it’s been done so many times. But it works well and that’s enough for me. Another advantage of the Flash photos is that it will anchor each page because it is the first thing that grabs your attention when you load the page. The gentle transitions between photos will also help set the pace for using the site.

So here I am on a Saturday morning, and I’ve spent the last hour typing about work over the past week. I guess it’s official: I’m having fun at work again.

Last night Adam and Carlina, Gomer, and Candyce and I went to Four Peaks Brewery for dinner. We were having a great time when Candyce abruptly had to leave because she wasn’t feeling good. She and I have both had a cold/flue/allergy thing going on for the past couple weeks, and I figured that she was just tired and her body was ready to call it a night. I kissed her goodbye and went back inside to finish the night with the guys.

A couple hours later her mom gave me a call from California and explained that Candyce was feeling pretty rough, and I promised to drive to her house and check up on here. It end’s up that Candyce was developing symptoms of pneumonia. I know because I went to webmd.com. She had a fever that made her hot as hell. She had violent coughs, chest pains, nausea, and to top; it all off, she was under six blanket and she was still freezing to death.

I spent the night on the floor next to her bed, waking up every hour to give her a new cold wash cloth, a new glass of cold water, and to check her fever. She finally cooled off at about four in the morning. I gave her the final check up at eight and then I drove back to work this morning.

Now here I am at work on my lunch break. I feel weird because I think that I could be sick too…that at any moment I could get slammed with pneumonia stuff just like Candyce did last night after dinner.

I was happy to take care of Candyce last night because it sucks being sick when nobody is there to; take care of you. Candyce would do the same for me. But I don’t think males are wired to do that all the time. We just aren’t nurturing enough. I mean, I did what I did last night because she needed help, but there are other ways I feel more confident showing her that I love her.

I haven’t updated supafly.com in almost four months. I know that once I post this journal to the site, it will be a complicated thing to explain. For the sake of not confusing myself when I read this again the future, let me remind myself what’s happening.

In December I asked a friend if I could hire him to do a simply CSS layout for a new version of supafly.com. I know I had other things to get done in my life, so it was better to spend the money and hire someone else to get the site looking good again. He agreed to do it because he didn’t think it would take but a day. And I didn’t have to pay him… I could just return the favor if he ever needed it.

Now it’s February, and it’s still not done. He and his family have moved to a new house, and I know how hectic that can be. I just hope he gets it done soon because it’s getting embarrassing always checking in on him to see if it’s done. Plus, it’s embarrassing because I haven’t added a new journal because it’s like rearranging chairs on the deck of the Titanic.

I’m just ready to overhaul my image online. This old site has got to go.

This week started off weird because everything was thrown off by one day because I got stuck in the snow up in Maryland. I woke up at 2 AM Arizona time and began my journey from the far north east to the far southwest. It was a two hour drive to DC, a two hour wait for the plane, a three hour flight to Chicago, a hour wait for the plane, a four hour flight to Phoenix, a 15 minute bus ride to the parking lot, and finally a twenty minute drive from the Phoenix airport to my house. That’s 12 hours of traveling.

On the flight home I read some funny opinions about Valentine’s day in the airline magazine. It’s the kind of thing you like to read because somebody else says what we’ve all been thinking: Valentine’s day sucks. For a guy, it’s a nightmare because you don’t know how much to give. Too much? Not enough? It really is a girl’s holiday because it’s so frilly. It’s never about what the girl gets the guy because then the holiday would be marketed as being tough in cool. It’s just a bunch of artificial expectation that in the never pleases anyone.

To avoid any of that drama, Candyce and I decided ahead of time to plan the day together so neither of us would have to sneak around and conspire to outdo one another in gift giving. This was going well until half way through yesterday when Adam started buying everything he could see at the mall during our lunch break. I stood in two stores just long enough to feel inadequate and spend $60 to buy may way out of my sh!tty boyfriend status.

Candyce and I will usually make dinner together if we want to have a nice evening. But my kitchen is trashed because we’ve been having a lot of parties. Plus, cooking involves shopping, preparing, and serving, which can wear you out and steal away three hours. So I swung by our two favorite restaurants and picked up a bottle of wine and two boxes to go: an appetizer and our entrees. We were by the fire in the backyard by 7:00 PM. Not bad!

Candyce told me a funny story this afternoon after talking to her mom. Apparently her youngest siblings were deeply concerned that I was stuck in the snow this weekend and that I might not make it home in time for Valentines. They are nice kids and all, but they are too young to care whether or not their sister and I have a fun date. Candyce’s mom couldn’t understand why they kept asking how my flight was coming. This morning on the way to school, one of Candyce’s brothers asked their mom, “So, how was Candyce’s date last night? …that’s it? No announcements?” Apparently they thought I was going to propose to her last night. It’s pretty heartwarming when you imagine three kids–nine, eleven, and thirteen–all worked up over the suspense. I’m sorry to disappoint!