Throughout my life, I have been involved in technology. While only a small child, I learned enough DOS in order to play with my family's household computer. Since this time, I have been fortunate enough to pick up of software and technical concepts fairly quickly.
Through my jobs in publishing, my education, and decade as a heavy Internet user, I have familiarized myself with many applications and gained invaluable skills. You can find samples of my work and a summaries of my experience below.
Though I regularly use iWork for my personal projects, I am an advanced Microsoft Office user. My education required heavy usage of Powerpoint and Word. Use of Microsoft Word is a daily requirement of my freelance career.
At the age of sixteen, I took my first job as an accounting intern at the City Hall in Rosenberg, Texas. I was immersed in complex Excel and was expected to complete an advanced tutorial. At the end of the summer, I was able to create the spreadsheet that calculated sales tax receipts. My knowledge of the program has only improved since then.
I crafted this website from scratch using Dashcode and the Firebug extension for Firefox on my Macbook. I feel that it accurately displays my skills in CSS and HTML. Some Javascript is also used on the writing samples page.
I have, in the past, used WYSISYG editors such as Nvu, FrontPage, and Dreamweaver. I prefer hand coding for compatibility purposes. The design and implementation of this site is all my own. However, the PHP work on the contact page is the work of my husband.
I first began to learn Photoshop during my time on my high school yearbook. After I became the photo editor for the publication, I was the only person in the department who knew the software due to staff shakeups. Needless to say, I learned fast.
I am very comfortable making basic and slightly advanced adjustments in this program.
InDesign was not my introduction to the world of desktop publishing. While designing my high school yearbook, I would spend many hours with its predecessor, PageMaker. During my time in college, I jumped into InDesign and used it during my internship with the Texas Review Press.
In an effort to learn more about desktop publishing, I have started using Quark for personal projects.
As part of my training in technical writing from ACC, I am expected to complete a course on Framemaker.