Ron J. Clark’s website is officially launched! Everything is done in terms of the design of the website. There is still an extra domain name that they have bought that they would like hooked up to the site as well, and I’ll get that done this week.
To be frank, I love the way this site looks. It has slight undertone reflections of my own site and Khora-Direct, I think, but is definitely it’s own animal.
They had me add a contact form on there as well, which I’m happy with how simple it works.

I’m also finishing up a project with my Dad and Tamika for a poster for a school run by my parent’s home Church in Norwich, CT. Wildwood Christian School is doing a benefit concert. My Dad designed their logo a long time ago, so he drew an adaptation of their logo to serve as a backdrop for the poster and Tamika and I drew the rest around it. It’s coming out very nicely, I think. I’ll put it up when it’s done.

I’m entering into several website contracts soon, I’ll have more on those when they’re finalized.

This week has been pretty busy. I’m finishing up a new “download center” for work; it’s a sort of a page similar to what iTunes has when you download it’s software. It’s a pretty nifty hunk of code, and we’re going to apply it to PDFs and other things people download from the site so we can keep an eye out who’s interested in what.

Pray for me this week if you get the chance. I’m having an evaluation for my work at my job. I’m a little uneasy about it, to be honest. Everyone’s telling me not to worry, but it’s hard. My manager and I haven’t always seen eye to eye, and it bothers me a bit. I’ve overheard some conversations on occasion and sometimes he says things that make me feel I’m not up to standard.
I do feel like our relationship has improved in recent months, though, and have felt him warming to me. He’s been trusting me with more projects to do on my own, and seems impressed with some of the things I’ve worked on as of late. I’m not sure if that’s enough to secure me a good review, though.
Tamika has been a very strong encouragement to me, and has kept me strong in the face of this doubt.

I have a new bag! I have retired the old black & blue Targus video camera bag I used to carry everything in. Tamika modified a messenger bag she found at a thrift store and gave it to me. It even has the Zerflin logo on the front, which she iron-transfered on! It’s the coolest bag I’ve ever had, and now I can finally carry around large-format hardcover sketchbooks. I’m going to build a foam nest for my camera in the largest pocket. She even bought me a (very expensive) leather guitar strap to go with it. I’ve been carrying it around everywhere since she gave it to me on Saturday. She is special. 🙂

Well, I’ve got to go to bed.
Peace,

~Benjamin

Aloha!

My sister, Beth , is gone.

She had come to stay with Tamika and I for about 2 weeks, and she left on Wednesday.
She was planning to go to MICA, but it didn’t work out. They wanted her to re-take a whole bunch of her art classes, and said she’d have to load up on Gen Eds too. She’d only be able to take 2 Art classes a semester! She thought perhaps they would be a good school to go to, but that’s unfortunate.

Plus, I don’t know if she really like it here. She has a bit of a run in with some guy who was trying to pick her up. She had gone out alone around the neighborhood and through a neighboring cemetery to take pictures, and had gotten confronted by a group of guys. Pretty scary. She was stronger than I thought, though… she said that she wouldn’t leave because of that, but only if she felt MICA wasn’t going to work.

We had cleaned out our guest room and set up our old futon for her.
It was kind of nice to have her around. We got to play games together, and I know Tamika liked hanging out with her.

I really started to feel like I was beginning to regain a connection with her, even in the short time that she was here. Since I had left for college when I was 16, I feel like we didn’t get a chance to really know each other much.

Even though my father, mother, sister and brother are all both artists and musicians, none of us ever do anything cooperatively with one another. It’s a very odd thing. I’m working on the first graphics job I’ve ever done for my father this month (and I’ll put it up later).
I’m not sure if it’s just me, or if it’s the whole family. It’s not like we’re distant with one another or anything like that, it’s just something we don’t do. Odd.

I’m happy to announce that Ron J Clark‘s website is live!
I’ll be putting it in my website portfolio soon.
You can check it out here.
It’s pretty spiffy, I think compared to what he had before.
It’s a fairly simple site; and it makes me happy. 🙂
He hired me to do a e-mail submission form too, so I’ll be doing that next.

I’ve just embarked on an ambitious menu change for the CCFOF.
I designed their website for them back in October, and now that they’re growing at an accelerated pace; they need their menu to change. I just finished translating their email Newsletter layout into French as well, and it looks like they’ve got a couple other projects ready for me. I won’t be putting up the email in my portfolio, as it was a design created by HelloJo Studio that I just edited.
It’s a lot of work, but it’s also steady work and they’re a very good client to work for. Always full of new ideas on how to improve themselves, which is always a good thing.

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been heavily editing the Journal.

I’ve added Threaded Comments so that I can reply to you all, a post abbreviating system so you don’t get overwhelmed when you visit the page, and several cross-posting systems so that these journals show up on Friendster, Xanga, Windows Live Spaces, LiveJournal, and Zaadz. I’m working on a few more.

If there’s any more functionality that you think would be useful, let me know.

I’m also working with a friend of mine to get commenting ability in the galleries, so look out for that!

G’night, I’m off to bed. 🙂

~Benjamin

A few updates, to start…

Just finished a project for Chris McGraw, an aspiring actor and a member of my church. He’s got the idea to build a mobile restaurant on the abandoned railroad bridge that hops (but does not stop) at City Island in Harrisburg. He commissioned two drawings of what his project would look like when completed. I didn’t have a whole lot to use as reference save for my own memory, a rough sketch by him, and some pictures taken with a disposable camera.

This is what I came up with.

Also just finished up an update to my friend Timothy Laux’s pamphlet… He’s “running” a community outreach project in Harrisburg. No thumbnails of that yet, but perhaps soon.

Also am just about to launch www.ronclark.org
I’m finishing up the Beta version. I’ll let you know when I make it live with my new design.
I also worked on a logo for him, and have those up in the logo gallery now.

Work is tough. It isn’t fun all the time anymore like it was back when I was a Porter at the Groton Super Stop & Shop. It’s tedious.
While I’m at work, I wish I was at home. While I’m at work, I feel the drive to get to work.
People on my job try my patience. They rub me the wrong way, step on my toes, crowd my space, belittle my points of view, and overload me beyond capacity.

But what I realized today is that my job is a blessing I should praise God for. I was reminded at church about Disciples of Jesus who were praising God in jail. Wrongfully imprisoned for helping people and talking about Jesus, surrounded by filth, grim, human sewage, in complete darkness, death all around them…

They praised God.

Here I am, in a comparatively luxurious office, doing something I love to do, getting paid an adequate amount…
And I’m doing what? Complaining? Gossiping? Over what? Difficult superiors? Overzealous expectations?

So WHAT? God provided for me in so many ways. He’s the one who gave me this job, no question about it. So what do I have to worry about? I’m here to do the best I can do with what God gave me. If God decides I’ve been at this job long enough, who am I to stress and pine over it?

God has provided for me in so many ways. I’ve got a beautiful house, with a beautiful yard and woods behind it, that I can come home and rest in every day.
A nice car to ride home in style.
And a beautiful wife who loves me and supports everything I do.

Bless the Lord. The Joy of the Lord is my Strength.

~Benjamin Jancewicz

Aloha.

Happy New Year!

First off, I wanted to tell you all the wedding pictures are now up! You can check them by clicking the link on the left.

This will be my first post on my own site on my own Journal. I’m still filling in the old journals from DeviantArt. I have stuff dating back to 2003! If you’re viewing this through any other feed; the real source is www.zerflin.com/Benjamin/YoungSavage

Pretty soon I’ll have a subscription service you’ll be able to sign up for up here; using Blogarithm. In the mean time you can check out www.blogarithm.com.

I’ll also have a journal up on the front page too; for the business alone. This spot is for ME.

Married life is good. God has been providing for us in so many ways; sometime I wonder why we doubt him at all. I won’t lie; being married isn’t easy. It takes a lot of effort just to get along with a person you see 24/7. And we do. We’re working together at the National Fatherhood Initiative. I work on the website (www.fatherhood.org) and she works in the Resource center. She handles all the sales and transactions of the store (www.fathersource.org).

But like I said, God’s been watching out for us. He’s been diffusing situations that could have broken us.

I’m still trying to get back into a regular pattern of this new life. I’m still running a little ragged; not getting enough sleep and such. I need to do two things this new year, though… make sure I have regular time alone with God and to exercise more.

I’m getting pretty content, and the scale shows it! 208. 208! I checked it when we stayed over her grandmother’s house the day after Christmas. I haven’t weighed that much since highschool.

We went to Philadelphia for Christmas. We had gone to my parents for Thanksgiving, so it was their turn. Her mom’s side of the family came over. It’s rare that they get together at all, so it was good to hang out with them. Christmas was pretty uneventful; we just chilled and relaxed for the most part.

Tamika got me a whole much of cool things. She got me the new Common CD “Be”, Jimmy Smith’s “Cool Blues” and the new Cut Chemist album (he’s the DJ off Jurassic 5).

We came up to Harrisburg for the New Years. We came up Saturday night. Tamika’s Aunt Cookie had given us a freezer, so her Dad came down with the minivan Saturday afternoon to deliver it for us. We spent the whole day cleaning in preparation for the After After New Years Party.

We came up to Aebony and Derek Mitchell’s house late Saturday night.

We just got back from the New Years service at Harambee. It was amazing. I have never seen so much positive excitement over New Years. I mean, Dick Clark on TV; in Times Square… everybody yelling… what are they yelling for? Yeah, they’re excited; but for what? Why not get excited over something worth while; like truly working to be a better person?

Mood: Lonely .: Holes Inside :.
Listening to: .: Linkin Park – Session :.
Reading: .: Indians are Us? :.
Watching: .: One Day in September :.

Aloha

The revolution has begun. Visit zerflin.com/ethnic and log on.

I’m healing from the crash, my knee is almost all better.

I feel completely unbalanced. I feel so empty all the time, and out of touch. I fumed yesterday when I found out I wasn’t told about a chapel on campus about the movie Sarafina; even though some of my closest friends had gone.

I left the headlight of my bike on again, and the battery died.

I don’t know, I just don’t feel myself. Or very happy. But those are related.
I’m feeling taller, I wonder if I’ve grown again. My voice is cracking a lot, I think I strained it when I sang in Gospel Choir.
I have band practice at 6, and I don’t entirely feel like going.
I went to the loan exit session. I owe a lot of money. I don’t know how I’m going to do it all with only making 200$ a month.

I DON’T want sleep, I get too much of that. I just want to feel awake. I want to feel alive.

I need to spend some time alone with God.

As soon as I eat this cookie, I’ll feel right as rain.

Song currently playing: The Oneders – That Thing You Do

YAY! We have sunshine, and I have 4 days off in a row! I spent all day yesterday working on the van, I’m fixing some minor rust spots. I parked it on the side of the house, and have been primering it, popping off the trimming, and sanding bad areas down. I did break one thing unfortunately; the piece of plastic that covers the back hitch. I’m going to see if I can replace it or get a piece of Plexiglas to put over it.

Today I’m going to take apart the dashboard to see if I can figure out what’s going on with my running lights.

I got to talk to my Dad yesterday, we must have talked for two hours or something. It was great. I don’t often get to talk with my parents as much as I’d like because I’m so busy.
I gave him the address of my page, so he may visit (I hope!).

Gotta run, I need to get to lunch and then work on the book business.

Tonight I’m going out to the movies with ISA, so I know I’m going th have a good time. 🙂