The Jake Neumann

Some people just don’t get how much work goes into making a website. It seems to me like there are a lot of people that don’t understand that making a website takes a lot of time and effort to make it look excellent. I was recently working with a non profit which shall remain nameless. They couldn’t pay much, which was understood up front. I knew coming into this that this was going to be a lot of custom coding for them, but I felt exceptionally generous with my time at the moment. I put my time in and I finished the website that we had discussed. When the customer saw the final product, they commented on a few things, which was probably just a miscommunication when the project started. I finished the first round of fixes for them. A few days after I submitted my second round of changes, they commented on some more things that they wanted to look different. I took a look at their request and I responded that I was going to be able to fix most of them, but not all of them; that seemed to please them enough. Begrudgingly, I finished my second round of fixes for them which was on the border of taking this project to the next level. I uploaded their newest version of the website to their server. They took a couple of days to look at it and said, “it looks like you did a little bit of work…but there’s still a lot to be done.” I responded, politely, telling them that I could do the other work for them, but I would need some more compensation.

Some of you are probably thinking that I’m a jerk for not doing the rest of the work that they requested, but I disagree. While I don’t charge a lot compared to many other people on the Internet, my work isn’t totally free. The more I talk to people, the more it seems like people think that when somebody works on a website they just type a few things and they are done in ten minutes. I feel like it’s telling a painter that all it takes to paint room is take some pain and throw it on the wall.

Web developers don’t get the respect that they deserve. A lot of people think that web developers just sit at their computer all day eating nothing but Cheetos. Well, a lot of them do that, but they work hard. For a basic website, from scratch, it can take upwards of twenty hours. This may sound like a lot of time to people that don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes, but if you want a lot of custom pieces to your website, that will increase time and energy taken on the behalf of the developer. Some people just don’t get it.

I write all of this to let people know that it takes time to make websites well. Anybody can type up a little bit of HTML, but it takes an artist to make a great website.

I’ve been thinking about myself a lot lately. And I realized that I should lose some weight. As the audience, you are probably guessing what the magic number is that I’m trying to reach, but that doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I’m trying to lose weight and I need a person or group of people to keep me accountable. This is where you come in.

I need the Internet in all of it’s infinite eyes to watch me for everything that I do. I have a few goals that need to be met. The first is that I need to release at least one plugin or theme for WordPress a month. The second is that I need to lose the weight that I mentioned. I’m not going to release any number right now, but I might in the future.

For my first goal, I am going to release a plugin that will allow me to track my second goal. I’m thinking something of a thermometer that you see when schools try to raise money, but instead of going up, it goes down as you lose weight. There will also be other options in there for graphs and stats to see the average weight you lose in a week. If there are any other things that you would like to see, I’m open to suggestions, as usual.

About two weeks ago, I had an epiphany. I am not living my life the way that it was intended to be lived. I am just skating through life, accomplishing very little. I feel as if I am a creative, talented person, but I am using neither one of those to even a small fraction of their potential.

I am going to start doing things to use my creativity and talents, this is probably going to involve other people. My reasoning for this is twofold: the first being that I want to expand my talents beyond what I am doing right now, and the second being that I am trying to figure out what I really want to do with my life. Due to this being a selfish endeavor, in trying to make my life better, I am not going to charge a set rate for anything I do until further notice. The only thing that I ask in return is that you pay me what you think that I am worth (hopefully, this won’t be a negative number. I can’t afford that).

I can’t do this alone, and I realize that. Over the years, I have realized that the Internet has a much larger network of people than I ever could. At this point, I just ask that you tell everybody about me, start a viral marketing campaign if you have to. If you know anybody that wants or needs web development work done, a website designed, some pictures taken, or anything that you think I might have an inkling how to do, send them my way.

It’s funny how, after a long time of not being inspired, a lack of inspiration seems normal. It has been a long time since I had been inspired, but I felt it again this weekend, and it was amazing. Due to this sudden spike of inspiration, there are some big things coming.

You can take that to the bank.

For those of you that don’t know what swing shift is, it is a job that you do not work the same shift everyday that you go into work. For clarity’s sake, swing shift is seven days on midnights (10:30 PM to 6:30 AM), two days off, seven days of afternoons (2:30 PM to 10:30 PM), one day off, and seven days of days (6:30 AM to 2:30PM), and four days off. This type of shift work is frustrating to say the least. I used to hate my standard office 9-5 job, because I am very much a night owl. After working a screwed up shift like this one, though, I would love to go back to something like that again. If you know anybody looking for a web developer, feel free to drop my name in a conversation with them.

Something that has an interesting effect on my body, is the four days off trying to adjust myself to midnights. As I write this blog post right now, I am adjusting, by staying up late the days before I have to go into work. Over the last nine months that i have worked this job, I have had time to think about my feelings about swing shift in general.

First things first, I thing that I would love little more than to work a straight shift, especially midnights, but that is not possible at my current job. When you are in a relationship, like marriage, with somebody, swing shift can strain the relationship to say the least. I couldn’t imagine working swing shift if I had kids to worry about. Over time, my wife and I have adapted to those weeks where we do not get to see each other very much, but it still proves interesting when we literally see each other for twenty minutes a day for a week at a time. I worked a desk job for a while where I worked from 8:30AM to 4:30PM, Monday through Friday, that I wasn’t a huge fan of, because I am a night owl. Looking at what I’m doing now, though, the job wasn’t that bad. The hours were always consistent with the occasional option for overtime. If I could go back to that, be able to pay the bills and still have some money left over to pay off my debt, I would probably take it in a heart beat.

Swing shift isn’t all bad, though. On those nights that I am preparing myself for midnights, staying up late all by myself, I am sometimes inspired with those crazy thoughts that you get when you have a lack of sleep. Right now, I am watching Gangs of New York, which has gotten me thinking about a setting for a steampunk setting set in the not too distant future, but that’s for another time and place. When I do go to bed tonight… this morning… whatever you want to call it, I will probably get an idea that seems great at the time, but in reality is just plain dumb. I don’t know if this happens to everybody, but my mind is always thinking about something so things can start to get a little loopy.

When swing shift does start to mess with my head, I start to remember how much swing shift messes with my mind and body. With the job that I have, I cannot have anything resembling a normal social life, because I am either working or sleeping when my friends are doing something nine times out of ten. That isn’t to say that i don’t want to do anything else. I would love to be able to have a consistent game meetup, but that isn’t possible with swing shift. I do get a total of seven days off in a twenty-eight day period, but on those days, my wife has these not so crazy ideas of spending time with me.

Studies have been done to show that when swing shift is required, such as in a glass factory, the shifts should be progressive, e.g. days, afternoons, midnights. Since my job is a union job and they want their long weekend to be as long as possible, I get to work the reverse of that. Personally, if I worked midnights, days, and then afternoons, I would probably be ecstatic, but that won’t happen with the way that the union I’m in is set up.

For those of you that have been visiting my website expecting new and exciting web designs, I’m sorry that I haven’t provided. Life has been as hectic as everybody else, and I’m still learning how to balance my time. I should be bringing some new designs to you in the very near future, but that will be at least a month away.

I am in the process in forming a business partnership with somebody that I know, we will be releasing designs as regularly as we can. Until we get that up and running, though, you get to deal with me blogging about my life and feelings.