Can One Bad Tweet Taint Your Brand Forever? – Advertising Age – Digital.

Interesting read. Talks about the way very small numbers of normal people are tainting the way the masses are perceiving brands. Deals specifically with the negative views.

The movers are here, packing up our stuff. We’re supposed to finalize a lease tonight or tomorrow. The first place we wanted fell through. We are hoping beyond hope and praying hard that this one will work out. We need it to.

Puppy is going to stay with Audra for a few days while we take care of things. I can’t wait to be in our warm hotel room in Bannockburn tonight. Watching LOST. And relaxing a little. There have been a few hitches with this moving process, but I’m trying not to worry about stuff too much.

Tomorrow we’re doing stuff at Trinity; Thursday we’ll be moving in (as long as things go well); Friday we’ll be driving to Champaign to pick up Cors; Saturday we’ll have Jessica’s parents visiting.

It’s been a long couple of weeks.

This week is the week. Well, I hope it’s the week. We’ve run into a few snags in this moving process. We did find a place that we’re okay with living in for the next year. It’s only a 15 minute commute to school, pretty up-to-date, has a fireplace and a garage.

The only problem is that we are still waiting to hear if the lease has gone through. We are supposed to have the movers here on Tuesday, but without a confirmation from the landlords, we don’t know if there’s a place to have our things delivered to. Hopefully we will hear tomorrow.

I’ve got a few things to take care of beyond the normal changing of address. For one, we’re in a Dish Network contract and I need to know if we’ll be able to have a dish installed at our new place. We’ll have to see what Dish will do for us if we have to terminate early. Hopefully it won’t be too bad.

Sounds like Jessica’s parents may come up on Saturday to help us unpack. I’m thinking IKEA for bookcases and Giordano’s for some pizza (they’ve never experienced Chicago-style stuffed pizza). In any case, there is a lot to do this week with finishing up work, meeting movers, moving, going to an inauguration, and getting all settled. I start my new job at Trinity a week from Monday.

Well, my friends. Something I have vaguely alluded to on several different occasions has finally come to pass. As of yesterday I have accepted a position at Trinity International University starting later this month. The official title is Web Marketing Manager, and the work is much more along the lines of what I want to do than my current job.

Jess and I have been praying hard for things to work out (as many of our friends and family members have been) and it has been pretty incredible to see how God’s timing has played out. In about two weeks we will be moving our things from the St Louis Metro-East to the North Chicago area — assuming everything goes to plan.

As you can imagine there is a lot to be done before that move, so things might be a bit quiet around here, though I am going to try and keep up with the writing so I have a record of this move.

It’s a little bit sad to be leaving so many great people here in Greenville, but Jessica and I have, for a long time actually, felt stagnant here. This move is something that is invigorating and hopeful for us. Expect great things! We both are.

Those of you that knew about this, thank you for your prayers, thoughts and support while we were going through this. It means the world to us.

Where can we dock this marine monster when she reaches the port of New York? (LOC), originally uploaded by The Library of Congress.

The Library of Congress has the absolute coolest Flickr photostream. They routinely archive old newspapers and photos. I saw this today and it got the history geek in me excited. It’s the New York Tribune with an article exploring where the city is going to store the Titanic when it docks…

So cool.

I am traveling. Big day coming up and hopefully some news to come in a few days.

I registered for classes last night. And it feeeeeeels good.

I’m taking two required seminar courses and a design course that I am excited about. Color theory, typography, layout… it’s going to be great.

Can’t wait to start! Apparently orientation videos will be online on Monday and the processes to add me to Blackboard will also run. And allegedly I have no textbooks? That can’t be right.

I’ll have to check that out again later…

This week has been absolutely great. I received a lot of good news, had friends over for dinner, got a lot done at work, played LEGO Rock Band… And now I’m ready for a weekend of working for myself.

My first task this weekend is to get the tea@elevensies site up and running. It’s taken too long and I feel bad. But I did have a rough stretch the past six months or so that deterred me from getting it all wrapped up — still, not a good excuse. This weekend is the weekend, however, to bust out this site for Ashley and Char. And then probably see what Ash wants to change (she apparently is over her design now). But at least it will be another project down.

The second issue I’m going to try to wrap up is this site. I’ve got most of a new design mocked up and sitting in Photoshop, just waiting for me to bring it to life in HTML5 and CSS3. So this site will change in the near future. And for the better, I think.

Third, I need get started on redesigning Jessica’s blog. Her new branding is amazing and I want to get it up and running for her, as well as a complete graphics package for her Etsy shop.

It is nice to have some time to work on personal design and coding. Stress is gone, and that goes a long way toward the proper motivation in these sorts of situations. Things are exciting!

There’s been a lull here. I apologize.

I’m working on some design changes around here and the time put into that takes away from my actual writing. But I think the coming updates will be worth it. I’m excited to build out the new blog template and take advantage of some of the new WordPress 2.9 features.

The decision to redesign came partly out of my wanton love for redesigning this site (it’ll have been a year this Easter since the last one!) and the fact that the portfolio aspects of this site kind of blow. So, we’re going to fix all of that. Hopefully for the better.

I’ve got a couple other exciting prospects coming up and I start grad school in about a week. So I will be BUSY this year. But I’m also really excited about what 2010 is going to bring. I have high hopes and a renewed desire to keep moving. Jessica and I are going to learn French this year.

Speaking of Jessica, I will be working on a redesign of her website and Etsy shop branding this month and next. Our friend Ashley did an amazing job of developing a logo and branding for her business in exchange for a WordPress template buildout. So look for all of that in the coming weeks.

We had a great three week vacation and are glad to be home with our puppy, coffee maker, and consistent internet.