So I guess my mission has changed a bit since I took a position at The University of Texas at Dallas.

I started there on December 3rd and am now employed full time doing what I love to do - Web Design!

I'm working in a team environment with a team leader and 5 other coders in the Web Services Department. There are various skill levels represented and each member has their little niche that they excel in.

I (don't laugh) have a Dell laptop that I use in tandem with my Apple Powerbook G4 paired with (2) 19" Dell monitors. Each machine has a 19" to extend the desktop, so it's a sweet setup.

I have dived in and am involved already in 2 major projects as well as having just worked on the Fall 2008 Graduation this past weekend.

The school is on break until Jan. 5th, so I don't go back until then. While I am on break I have started a major re-design job for the Dallas Jewish Community Foundation's website.

I will continue to help my freelance clients finish up the sites I was working on. Then I will take on freelance jobs as I have time available, with the ok of the University.

The opportunity came from a job ad I answered on Craigslist while I was in San Antonio working from the hotel. The benefits are really good and the people I am working with are really nice.

[The Emily Morgan Hotel right next to the Alamo]

Well, my intentions to get a lot of work done was there, however the WiFi was not.

Let's just call this test #2 of working freelance remotely.

I just spent 3 days in San Antonio, TX with my wife for a work conference she was attending. I was going to get a lot of freelance web design work done from the hotel during the 3 days while she was off learning about new things going on with cities and municipalities at the Texas Municipal League Conference.

Enter crappy WiFi service at the Emily Morgan 4 star hotel we were at. The suite we had was big and beautiful with the Alamo just across the street. If only I had been able to get some work done!

From 1-2 bars out of 4 bars to 0 bars (most of the time the service was just not even there) it was very frustrating.

The first day I was only able to get about 15 minutes of actual work done. The hotel staff were total ding-dongs...useless at helping. I called the company that provided the WiFi service (they were in Georgia) and they got it back for 10 minutes for it only to drop off again.

They tried to tell me that someone in the hotel was using all the bandwidth and that was the reason for my lack of a good signal. Hah! Call that the answer they give customers as a stock answer. I had no signal at all, not a weak one.

The second day I just grabbed my trusty Apple Powerbook laptop and walked along the river until I found a very nice little spot in another hotel on the riverwalk that had free WiFi, a nice quiet table with plug and even a coffee/tea/soda station right next to me. I spent the afternoon here and was very happy and actually got work done.

We will stay at that hotel next time in San Antonio.

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My freelance web design business, GushinDesigns, has started to become a thriving business. I am starting to get many good referrals from family, friends and past clients.

I am almost finished with a new photography site I am designing for a client that does all types of photography, plus I will soon re-design this client's massage web site when we finish with this project.

I have been doing work on the Dallas Jewish Community Foundation's site. They need some fixes and I am mostly doing maintenance work on their site.

I am working for another client on 2 small sites in the building/real estate industry.

For about a month I have been designing for a company called TowerOS. This is a contract type position and I have been working on and off on about 4 projects for them.

There is another client that is in the works for a re-do of his company's site. The company is Ed Brown Distributors and they sell commercial laundry equipment.

I also have another pending client for an antiques business in Jefferson, Texas that will be a new site I will create. It is creeping along and so far we have only met once and secured the hosting for the site.

The important thing is that my invoices are starting to be paid and money is starting to come into the business accounts!

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I always wondered how this effect could be done easily. You have seen it before. You click on a section of text or a word and then all this text pops open like magic.

You can put a line of text or entire paragraphs of text here. The expansion will handle lots of text.

When you click on the text above it will expand the box with whatever text you put inside.

I love it when web designers and programmers come up with simple well designed software or WordPress plugin's and this one is great.

Once you have installed the plugin and activated it you just insert a simple tag into the post or page and save. That's it.

Go check it out at the Dagon Designs site.

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Today I got a call from a recruiter for a Web Design contract position doing HTML and CSS work.

It was from a post I answered from the Dallas Craigslist Web Design job board that I frequently look at for postings related to the type of work I'm seeking.

The recruiter was very nice and told me that the client most likely would be looking for more detailed information than I had on my resume on GushinDesigns.com that pertained to the type of HTMl and CSS work I had done at Hitchfinder.com in my 2 years there.

So, this gave me the opportunity to go and look at my current resume.

Let's just say that I have revised what was there.

The online version and the downloadable PDF version were not even the same, plus the PDF was like the online version, which is to say - no caps!

The whole site is without caps and is that way because I wanted that look, but to have someone download a resume and print it out, well, it just looks silly with no caps. So that was fixed today too.

Progress marches on. Hey, I might even get a call back from the recruiter for an interview.

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