sketch of home page

Unfortunately, I had to push the deadline again for the appetizer release because, well, I’ve got tons to do yet and little time to do it. Go figure. So trick or treat, my new target launch date for this thing is Halloween, who who ha ha ha! I added a couple countdowns on the side bar here, check em out. I sincerely hope the top number (appetizer) never gets bigger than the bottom number (birthday) as I really want to release something before I hit my midlife crisis (although I think I’m already there).

To meet this deadline, I have spent the last couple weekends doing nothing but coding, debugging, cursing, researching, and occasionally sleeping/eating. I put in 11 hour days last weekend and rarely left the computer’s side. There are still lots of coding hours ahead but I’m making good headway and getting this new framework figured out, slowly but surely. Most of my shared components are put together, so the groundwork is pretty much complete. All that remains is actually building the individual pieces.

So “the programmer” (aka me) is plugging away on the behind the scenes stuff and the other part of the equation, “the designer”, should be starting any day now. We are still in contract stages but these should be signed this week and I’ll have him on board stat :). He is a super talented designer and I’m excited to have him on the team. In addition to the images on the site, he will be taking care of the overall site design and blog skin as well. I’ll give him my sketches of the basic components and let him take it from there. I’m sure he’ll do a much better job laying them out than I, and that’s why I’ve decided to leverage his skills on the entire site. This will also save me a lot of time and free me up to focus on the programming and business aspects.

Man I’m getting excited about this. I can’t wait until all the pieces come together and I’m able to share the mystery application with you guys. But I’ve got lots to do in the next 28 days to make this a reality. And a lot more actors to work with: the lawyer, the writer, the host, the trademarker, the shopkeeper, the mystery team (under wraps for now), the accountant (possibly), and so on.

With so many specialists, I feel like I’m pulling off some sort of a heist! Whatever that feels like?