Chaos Love: love, life, design and more.

It's true! The work front has been good recently and has just got a whole lot better.

I've been working at a fantastic design studio called Downstream for the last few weeks and it's been a lot of fun. They mainly do large scale environmental design for universities and financial institutions, which is something I haven't done a lot of to this point in my career. I came in to help out on one specific job, a series of big informational screens for an enormous financial advisor. The screens show a ridiculous amount of stock exchange, commodities and currency information, all in real time and I had to take the general design and apply it across every screen, while still making sure that it was technically possible to produce! I spent the entire first full day researching actual stock market data to use in the mock ups to present to the client... my brain still hurts three weeks later.

While I was working there, 52 Ltd let me know that Wacom were interested in getting me back for a couple of weeks, but that there was also a long-term contract job designing and producing a huge Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for a multi-national infrastructure development company downtown. This is the first time I've actually had to choose between two jobs since I've been in the US. While I loved working at Wacom the first time around, the lure of long term employment meant I had to at least enquire about it.

I interviewed for the position on Tuesday and was accepted by Thursday. The job will see me gainfully employed all the way through until January, although the hours will vary quite dramatically from month to month as the EIS goes through approval and revision cycles. During August, I'll probably be working 50-60 hour weeks, while September may drop down to less than 20 hours a week. We'll see! I just love getting my teeth stuck into large projects; I see them as huge puzzles that have to be solved... and they don't come much bigger than this! Multiple authors, huge rounds of internal and client changes, diagrams, charts, maps... and I have to make it look attractive and easy to read! I start July 21st – wish me luck!

Posted in: chaosboy, employment, portland on July 11, 2008 at at 10:53:00 PM 0 comments    

Today was day that embedded itself into history. July 11th marks the worldwide day known as the release of the new iPhone just in case you didn't notice. Crazy geeks and hipsters gathered at Apple stores and AT&T outlets in order to claim the ultimate prize: a phone.

But wait, you say, who took all these pictures? Uh, that was me of course; in line to get my phone, because I am neither above or below everyone else. I am a whore to new shiny gadgets. It is all Sam's fault really. He is my capitalist consultant. It was Sam who got me to sit in front of Toys R Us to get a Wii at 3am in order to buy my $299 Wii in order to sell it on Craigslist before Christmas for $500 and now it is Sam who convinced me to sell my old iPhone for $400 and buy the new one for $199. Sam is going places in life.

Anyway, back to the Opening! Sam and I arrived at the Apple store at 6:30 in the morning. The line was pretty timid. Maybe 75 people back after some of these folks had been CAMPING outside the mall since midnight. Their determination makes them much more worthy than us to receive the coveted iPhone. Sam and I had to work sometime that morning but we were pretty confident that the line would scoot along pretty speedily. I began to feel like we were in an airport after awhile wainting to check into our flight as stood between our rope barriers. But the Apple staff were very genial and passed out bottles of water and even cups of coffee as people piled up behind us. We half expected a breakfast cart to come out next stacked with hotcakes.

We did find a fellow coworker at the beginning of the line - excuse me, not the beginning but NUMBER ONE in the line. He had been there since 12:30am. The store opened at 8. Sam and I waited another 1.5 hours before we got in the store. We were so relieved to get out of the halls of the mall as it has become very claustrophobic.
Getting in the store was a breath of fresh air. The staff was overly friendly and helpful and my iPhone was purchased, activated, and in the bag in under 10 minutes. We met up with our coworker who had nothing but trouble buying his iPhone as activating it with AT&T is mandatory and the network kept failing. So although he waited nearly 10 hours for his phone we ended up walking out around the same time. Poor Sam on the other hand was not granted the miracle of the phone as he was not the sole account holder for his AT&T account. He took it well enough, although I'm sure he would have killed someone given the chance. He had to go to and AT&T store to get his iPhone. But by the time he got there, the phones had sold out.

This whole AT&T shenanigans is the whole reason why Cam could not participate in the good times of waiting in line to pay money.

Afterwards, Sam and I went back to work 2 hours late and had to apologize to customers that although we were an Apple Reseller, we didn't have iPhones to sell them . *insert evil laugh here*

If you are wondering what is so great about an iPhone but don't want me to write 5 more pages of blogginess then you can check it out here!

Posted in: apple, chaosgurl on at at 9:42:00 PM 0 comments