Downing's Basement

Been working quite hard on a guide that I hope to have posted up here in the next week or so. I originally wanted to go live with the site (i.e. start telling people about it) on the 6th, but I might push it back another week just so I can get as much content up as possible. Though it’s looking pretty good at the moment, I still have some more content I need to get loaded. This guide is going to be a pain, but it will help very much with the traffic of the site as I have a trick up my sleeve that I hope will kick start this blog. So that’s where it’s at now and hopefully within the week we’ll be up and running!

I now have a new header logo that appears I cannot use on the site itself with this theme! Kind of a bummer, but this will replace my signature on the Forums and serve as the primary graphic for the site. I may actually make a smaller copy of this so I can place in the side bar and therefore it will at least be seen on a regular basis. I might do a few more revisions of the work, but this also serves as an example of my PhotoShop and design skills that are in the Other section on the main menu. Currently I don’t have anything posted there, but I’m working on updating my portfolio from school and will post that here as well.

Anyway, I hope to have this site live and start directing traffic to it by weeks end, maybe mid next week as this one has been pretty hectic with work and real life. Not rushing is the key though so I’m going to make sure I have a decent, clean and above all interesting site up waiting so when the first hits start to come, they might actually want to find out more!

Ok, so the Project Showcase is fully updated with write-ups on my most recent completed projects. Though I still need to update the Other section, it’s well on it’s way to being somewhat interesting. 🙂 Anyway, weather is much nicer today, although most of my home town is still underwater and will be for the foreseeable future. Very sad too as we lost several land mark bridges across the state to the raging waters. I’ve seen some floods, but I had never seen anything like this before. The thing of it is though, is that the storm wasn’t even close to the most powerful we’ve had here, but it still was one of the most devastating. Mother nature…never forget that she is still in charge.

On another note, I updated the menu bar a bit and added a link to the MBB Forum. Rater than start up my own again which really wasn’t going to get far anyway, nor was there reason for it to, I’ve made a direct link to his as I am very much apart of that one as I would be my own. But this is were networking can come into play, where as I will still be posting regularly on the MBB forums, I’ll also be setting up my own personal web profile presence which is kind of the whole point behind this site. Although the forum is great, it is loaded with lots of other posters and Modders who wish to showcase their work as well.

This is all well and good and I encourage others to keep signing up, but as far as a personal portfolio of all my projects was concerned, this was the way to go. Hopefully within the next week I’ll start on the process of releasing this blog to the general public and my friends and just see where it goes.  I’m under no rush to see this site blow up so I’m just going to take it as it comes and if people are interested in reading they will. If not, I still have a journal which I’ll always be able to keep.

Well Irene turned out to be a Bitch, even though it wasn’t quite a hurricane when it came to wind speeds, but the rain it dropped was unbelievable! Over 8 inches of rain in my area and when we lost power, our basement began to take on lots and lots of water because the sum-pump was not functioning. For a good two hours we were bailing out our basement through windows and the bulkhead door.

Almost got to the point where I was gonna hotwire my shop-vac to my car battery and use that as a median, but power fortunately came back on pretty quickly for what we were expecting. Parts of my home town are still without power and have more water than they have ever seen. Scarey when you think about it…there is a lot more water than land out there! Hoping the worst is over now and trying to get back to normal tomorrow.

Some in-depth showcase articles have been posted in the Project showcase section. I’ll be adding more, but they take quite awhile to write because I guess I just forgot how much really went into these and the effects they’ve had on the web and myself.

I would have gotten more done, but I was busy laying stair treads over the crappy granite steps that the previous home owners laid down with little to no regard as to how they were going to look. On top of that, our anal insurance company demanded we have a railing on these steps as well otherwise the wouldn’t cover us.

So in the interest of keeping our house insured, we complied but that kinda crap irritates me. Yeah they have a right because it comes out of their pocket if something happens, however, we are paying for this and it’s not like we’d hold the insurance company liable if there was in fact an accident. But the problem is is that more of this country’s justice system is run by insurance and liability. What a freaking joke…anyway, done ranting. It’s done, looks good and I only got hurt once doing it! Successful day!

Ok, so I think I’ve got most of this figured out. Took a bit to understand the difference between a static page and a blog, which is why I was having the infuriating battle with my creative collective conscientiousness and my dark, just get it done, side! Almost ready to start posting this to the world, just need to get some actual content in place. Hopefully that will be done soon and we can start going forward with this!