Today seemed really long, but not for any particular reason.

Gwynn (my wife), Gela (my daughter), and I ran some errands and we visited our friend Jeni, mostly to hang out and catch up and, a little, because Jeni wants me to re-redesign a logo for the plumbing business her and her husband, Brad, own.

I designed them a few logos a while back, then they decided to change the business name; which they ended up not doing, and finally they decided they’d like to go a different direction with the look and feel for the logo. Here are the rough logos we stopped at before the ‘almost’ name change back in September 2007:

It was cool hanging out, sketching ideas, and brainstorming. We ended up staying there almost 3 hours. When we got home I spent about an hour and a half or so doing some research and rough sketches of some of the ideas and themes we talked about. I’m not sure how it’s all going to turn out, but some of the concepts we all came up with have potential.

At 9:30pm or 10:00pm I decided I wanted tortillas, so I did what any self-respecting tortilla wanting person does: I made some tortillas. I used the recipe from “How To Cook Everything” by Mark Bittman. His recipe is:

• 1 1/2 cup flour (plus some for rolling the tortillas out)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons lard/butter/oil — I used Canola oil
• Water to make dough
• Profit!

They turned out alright, maybe a little too flour-y, but they didn’t take very long to make at all. My tortilla desires have been fulfilled.

Originally published at Screaming Ink. You can comment here or there.

For the last several days, I’ve been trying to update my blog to use a layout I created. Each time I sat down to work on changing WordPress’ default template (named Kubrick), my brain would seemingly click off and refuse to concentrate. It was as if looking at CSS and PHP was the same as those crazy anime scenes that gave all those kids seisures. Half the time I would just stare blankly at the screen waiting for something to happen. I kept searching for tutorials with the hope that maybe there was some super easy way to do what I wanted and that, somehow, I’d skipped over it the last time I did the same exact search.

Fast forward a few days, several glasses of iced tea, and a lot of research later and here’s my newly updated blog. Of course once I figured out the bigger picture, like using my own header image or using a custom background for the page element only, the little details started to kick my ass…like, how to make that whole header image a link and why that custom page background didn’t seem to be repeating correctly. I found work arounds to most of the problems I encountered.

Originally published at Screaming Ink. You can comment here or there.

Since I started my freelance business, I’ve been inundated with a vast array of business offers, credit cards, and various business to business services, all of which arrive weekly per the U.S. Postal Service. I’ve had offers to have “Nick Raimondi Designs” embroidered on sweaters and golf bags for all my employees and for myself, of course. I’ve even had design firms offer to help me with all my graphic design needs, which I’m sure would instill tons of confidence in my clients. I get a kick out of this kind of junk mail, because I’m the furthest thing from their demographic and, usually, the types of products these companies are pushing aren’t products I’m even close to needing.

Today I received a catalog from a company called Uline Shipping Supplies. As usual, I chuckled when I saw the large array of boxes listed on the front and at the strange collection of products inside, as I flipped through it. Later when I picked it back up and started actually looking at the kind of products they actually sell…holy friggin’ crap, this place is amazing. I’m being totally honest.

Anything you could possibly need that’s either shipping, warehouse, storage, food/beverage, office supply, or retail merchandising related, they have.

You need baggies? They got ‘em.

What’s that, you need a variety of rubber gloves to suit different purposes…oh yeah, they’ve got those.

Say, weren’t you just asking about expandable packing foam?? You were? They’ve got it.

Excuse me? Do I know where you can get Chinese food containers? Why, yes I do!

Do I know a place that sells a box cutting knife with a glow in the dark fish skeleton on it?? Actually, I do…seriously.

Like I’ve said before, it doesn’t take much to amaze or amuse me these days, but this place is awesome. I’m pissed that I don’t do more shipping, retailing, and merchandising. This place makes me want to find excuses to buy metallic silver sharpies and scales that not only weigh but also count parts. The fricking scale counts parts, ladies and gents.

I need to figure out how to buy a warehouse.

Originally published at Screaming Ink. You can comment here or there.