I – had – a – blast.

I’m SO glad that I attended, and would will absolutely be going again. Hopefully soon! I didn’t realize that NAPP was made up of such a great group of people – both employees, and members. Seriously. I went there on my own, made some friends, learned some stuff, and had a ball.

First I’d like to thank Mark (@tweakt) for letting me crash on his couch so that I could afford the trip in the first place. Thanks again! Would’ve been nice to actually hang out more while I was in town, but the schedule of events for PSW was pretty crazy as you saw. hahaha

I met a number of the forum peeps from the NAPP forums. They were all incredibly friendly and welcoming. My new buddies Lisa & Dave sage (@Lisa_Sage) – had a lot of amusing conversations with them. I was very excited to finally meet Nancy (@NAPP_News) – OMG she’s such a sweetheart! Margaret & April (@AprilAndrews?) were both cool – I ran into them a number of times. April has an awesome purse, and Margaret had a cool haircut so I could spot either in a crowd I met Firgs (@Firgs) of course! She’s a riot! hahahaha I can’t believe she talked RC into having the whole crowd do “the wave” right before the Closing Ceremonies started. Met Don Ricklin (@DonRicklin) the first night and realized just how small a world it is. Back in high school I knew his niece and nephew!

Met & bumped into a handful of others that I’m sorry I didn’t spend more time with and will probably get some of their names wrong… Hask/Harold was always smiling & friendly. Then there was Jeff (@jtamagini?), Will?, Roux (@LRoux?), Elizabeth (@egower), … and a number of others that I can’t think of at the moment. Too wiped from the trip – but I’m surprised I actually remember that many.

As for the instructors and staff – everyone was awesome (including Nancy mentioned above). I can’t believe how approachable everyone was! The instructors were knowledgeable and funny. Bert Monroy – as I said on Twitter – his work and knowledge just blows me away. He’s very inspiring. I wanted to send a special thanks to RC (@LayersTV_RC). He’s a big sweetheart and really helped make sure that I had a great time and felt at home. Thanks again RC!

Getting tired, and I’m dwindling, so I’ll have to stop there. I’m sorry for all those that I know I’ve forgotten. It was a pleasure to meet and spend time with you all.

Until then, if you’re looking to see any of my previous Flash work, you can find them on my school portfolio site here. I’m not working as many evenings or weekends, so I hope to have a better portfolio online soon.

Enjoy!

P.S. Sorry!! The forum’s still broken. I’m in the middle of mapping out the database tables between Vanilla and bbPress to see how that works out…

My job changed, and I should be getting the full details of my projects tomorrow – I’m very excited. No more on-call. Yay! I have a life now. Yay again! I’m getting out and walking with the dog (it’ll be more often once it gets warmer outside). I’m working on a website with a friend for our favorite local restaurant in exchange for food. I have a growing list of design projects for another company to work on. One of the projects is a new logo design – and I think I’m finally on to something that will fit well. These projects will also help finally pay off some debt. Our taxes have been submitted and accepted – and are really nice this year because we bought the house. That should help give us a small buffer as well as catch up on a couple of things. I’m also actually making decent progress on my school work as well!

It’s amazing what some “spare” time can do.

Now to make progress on redoing the master bedroom. Ha!

Make-URL lives again (and with its own domain)! I still have a bunch of “features” and checks to it, but it works. Mostly. Keep checking back.

I also brought back my little site dedicated to the progress of my design classes. I still like the overall look and feel. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s nice and uses a bit of PHP for the snazzy side menu, navigation, and setting the page titles. I’m just updating the content and doing a bit of housecleaning on it. I hope to at least have this one done before the end of the weekend. The Make-URL site will probably be several weeks before I consider it “finished.”