Time to Move Forward

Well, it's the last day of the year 2010. How was your year?

Mine was pretty awesome. I got an awesome new job that I love. I moved to new apartment that I really like. I made a ton of new amazing friends. I generally had a pretty decent year if I do say so myself.

BUT, I think next year is going to be even awesomer (that is a word because I said it is). I have a lot of things planned that I'd like to do next year. Now we just need to cross our fingers that everything goes according to plan.

One of the big things I have planned I'm going to tell you now as it involves this blog:

For the past few months I've been taking a beginners web design class. I've been learning how to build my own site because I've finally decided I'm ready to take the plunge and buy myself my own domain to host a 40deuce web page. This blog will be one of the things to move over to that new site.

I had been thinking of learning web design for a little while. Not because I want to change careers or anything, but I just thought it would be helpful to know since I work in the online space. I always tell people, "I can use the hell out of a computer, but when it comes to anything backend related I don't know jack." Luckily, one day a random tweet caught my eye...

The tweet said that Bnotions (a web design and strategy company here in Toronto) was offering a free 9 week course that they call The Yorkville Media Center. I looked a bit into it, and frankly the price was right, so I signed up.

We spent the next 9 weeks learning how to build a site from beginning to end. We started with planning and went through design, html, CSS, Javascript, Wordpress, uploading the site to a server and a whole bunch of other stuff. It was kind of a lot to take in and moved quickly, but I think I have enough to do this thing on my own.

If I can't though, I know I can always go back to the Bnotions guys for some help. Before I started the classes I knew one person who had just started working with Bnotions, but now I know most of the guys that work there and they're all really awesome people who are really dedicated to what they do. I think it's safe to say I made friends with almost everyone that works in that office and I'm really happy about it. While everyone who was there and taught and spoke were awesome people I just want to give a special shout out to Mark Reale who taught us most of the design stuff and will be helping me work on my new site's theme.

So, if all goes according to plan, I'm hoping to get this new site up and running sometime in January. However, I may be lying to you since I'm going to try to tackle this thing on my own.

Happy New Years to all who read this!!

Leave me a comment and let me know how your 2010 was or some of the awesome stuff you have planned for 2011.

Oh ya, and have fun but be safe tonight!

Apartment Shopping is Hard

Like I said in my last post, I need to move at the end of this month... and I still have no idea where I'm going to live. That means in two weeks I could be homeless.

Hopefully, that's not going to happen. I have a good feeling it won't.

The worst part about the whole thing is, I don't want to move! I love the apartment that I live in now. I've lived here for over 3 years (minus the time I was in Oz). It's the perfect location. It's a great size. It fits all my stuff perfectly. Best of all the price is amazing.

Prices for places have gone up since I found this place. Everywhere I'm looking that's semi-decent is at least $1200 for a one bedroom or $2000 for a two. It's a bit more than I'd like to be paying, but for a good place I think it's just what I'm going to have to do.

Another thing is that my current place has character. It's got an exposed brick wall and a great rooftop patio. A lot of the places I've seen are condos. THEY ALL LOOK THE SAME!! It's actually a little creepy.

Really, I think I'm just a bit weirded out by the idea of living in a condo. I've never lived in a building with more than six units in it, and even those ones were weird. I don't know why I think it's so weird, I just kind of do.

I am trying to warm up to the idea of one though. There could be a few good trade offs with living in one. The best one for me is a gym in the building. My current gym is very close to my apartment and I'll probably have to quit it at the end of the month. The idea of trading off a little bit more money in lieu of a gym membership is kind of good. Plus the gym would be right underneath me, which will make timing not always such an issue.

Anyways, I have no idea what's going to happen, but I had to write some of this down to get out of my head. I'm kind of going nuts and starting to freak out about it. I really don't want to be homeless. I have too much stuff to be homeless with.

I'll let you know what happens.