Blog | Andrew Epperley | Portfolio & Resume

Making A House A Home

After four and a half years, Becca and I have finally…yes finally painted a room in our house.

This past Friday, we both took the day off from work to re-do our dining room. We had bought the paint back in May and had originally planned to do the room earlier this summer but that never happened. But Friday was the day. As I got the room ready late Thursday and began painting early Friday. We finished the room off midway through Saturday evening with some finishing touches.

Overall, I’m so pleased with the way things turned out. I do have one more painting to hang on the wall but I’m okay that that is all we have left.

Now on to another room.

October 28, 2013/0 Comments/by Andrew Epperley

life, soccer

The life of a soccer blogger

From time to time, I receive gifts or items from apparel companies or even teams in Major League Soccer. My almost seven years of covering soccer has come with some perks to say the least. I’ve been fortunate enough to get free jerseys, clothes, soccer cleats and more.

But yesterday may have been the weirdest item I’ve ever gotten in the mail. I got home from work to see a large box on my front porch that read ‘fragile’ and ‘do not lay flat’ on it. It was a large box too. I thought, maybe Becca ordered something and forgot to tell me. Or maybe worse, I ordered something and forgot all about it.

No, it was the picture above. A large frame from the soccer team in Portland. See, each year I vote in the media site of the end of the year awards for MLS. This frame was a way of lobbying for my vote for the various awards. I’ve had this happen before in years past. One team gave a plastic mug, others have given thumb drives with highlights of the players in it. Some teams are just more creative than others.

The frame is pretty cool though. It will be a nice addition to the home office one day when I get around to hanging it up.

October 23, 2013/0 Comments/by Andrew Epperley

Random Stuff

Nerd Alert: Back On Sim City

As Becca walked in the house the other night, she noticed I was playing a game on my laptop. Her first response was comical, “whatcha playing there nerd?”. Yeah, she caught me. Red handed, playing Sim City.

Recently Maxis and EA released a new version of the game for the first time in ages. After a few months of fixes they released a version for the Mac. I opted to wait a few weeks before I bought it and sure enough, I got addicted to it again.

I won’t go into the details of the cities I’m making or anything like that. Honestly, I don’t have a ton of time as it is to really play it like I used to when I was younger.

October 14, 2013/0 Comments/by Andrew Epperley

Becca, football, school

Baylor-WVU game

On Saturday, Becca and I drove down to Waco, TX, for the West Virginia-Baylor game. This was an anniversary gift from her.

I never knew how high school-ish Baylor games were though. From the PA announcer to the band to everything else in between. It came across as a high school game more then a major college game to me. Hopefully once Baylor opens their new stadium next year, that will all change for them.

Also, what is it with Big 12 teams and hand gestures. Baylor has the bear claw, Texas has the long horns. I’m sure there are others out there. I guess WVU’s is just flipping people off when they try to show the state outline on their hand. Ha.

While the blow out score was not something I wanted to see, it was great getting to see my Mountaineers in person again.

October 7, 2013/0 Comments/by Andrew Epperley

work

Updating Lakeview’s Website

I’ve been doing my local church’s website for the last five years, maybe six…I’ve lost count.

Anyways, about a year and a half ago I found a great resource for a church WordPress theme in churchthemes.net. I immediately put Lakeview on the Antioch theme because it fit the church the best. The built in sermon archive and podcasting features is what drew me to these themes but lately I’ve been wanting more out of the homepage experience for visitors.

I began tinkering with how the homepage was laid out. Before it was just a large slider area with three widgets below. Messing around with the responsive code wasn’t too bad either as I learned that it was fairly easy to adding more ‘widget’ areas that will work well on any device (well, not IE8 from what I’ve learned but I don’t care about that browser…only 3% of the LCC visitors use that browser).

I started out by creating a new logo, combining the EFCA tree logo with our text.

So far here is what I have below the original three widgets.

Below the latest sermons are also the latest news updates from the church. While changing up the layout on the homepage I did some research of some top designed church websites to see how other churches were displaying items on their homepage. Most did sliders, a lot did CTAs (call to actions, very similar to the three widgets), but all had some way of displaying their latest sermons and news.

The only draw back to the change is expanding the length of the homepage. For some that is a good thing as it requires you to scroll more, while for others that can be an annoying thing to have to deal with. Some people like the simple lack of scrolling while others were indifferent about it.

The next item to change is the fonts, I want to clean them up a little more. I’ve already removed some of the built in fonts to this theme. I’d also like to get more photos of things going on in the church posted on the site again. We kind of got away from that in the last year, not to anyone’s fault but just because. Sometimes it is hard to get recent photos from a church that is so small (LCC is only ~80-100 active attenders).

October 2, 2013/0 Comments/by Andrew Epperley

tv shows

More New TV

Yep. I’m back at it with some more new Fall TV. I’ve slowly gone through my DVR from last week to watch the new fall shows that I recorded.

Agents of SHIELD

Probably my favorite one of the bunch. The TV show based off the Marvel’s Avengers movies. None of the main characters from that movie are in the show except for Clark Gregg’s character, who is the lead in this series. Early on this show had a ton of promise and apparently the ratings were strong with it too.

Michael J Fox Show

I had high hopes for this one. I really did. But the pilot was over did it on the Parkinson’s jokes with Fox that it kind of was annoying. I haven’t got to watch the second episode yet but hopefully that one is better and less reliant on the lame jokes that the pilot had. I did like personal phone camera that they used in the pilot with the young daughter’s character. I hope they continue to use those angles in the series as I think that will add a more personal element to the show.

The Crazy Ones

Robin Williams returns to network television and it was good. The pilot was funny and had enough in it that will keep me coming back for more.

Hostages

The CBS drama based around a FBI agent who kidnaps a family so the mother of the family (who is also a doctor) can kill the US president. Wild concept. Lots of balls in the air in the pilot. But once the story played out I had two feelings. One, it was pretty good. The other, how on earth will they make this a series that lasts a few years? The latter of the two continues to baffle me as it just doesn’t add up for me. So, I’ll give this one another shot but it likely won’t last for me.

The Blacklist

James Spader’s new drama on NBC where he is a bad guy that tries to do good. Or something like that. I enjoyed the pilot for the most part, it definitely felt like it had the potential factor in it to last longer than six episodes.

We Are Men

A good cast in this one but the pilot was a little light on comedy for me. I think it has a shot at lasting a full season at best right now but we’ll see.

October 1, 2013/0 Comments/by Andrew Epperley

Becca, life

Coffee house night

Pearl Cup in Richardson is a fun spot that Becca and I enjoy. Friday night we went out after dinner to enjoy a cup of joe. Tonight I enjoyed a Toasted Marshmallow Latte while Becca had a Cafe Mocha.

I always love how this place makes their drinks. I swear if they were on my way to work, I’d probably stop here most mornings. Thankfully for my bank account they are not.

September 27, 2013/0 Comments/by Andrew Epperley

life, tv shows

Epic Lip Sync-Off

I really want to get a group of friends together, have some drinks and have one of these epic lip sync battles. The idea just sounds so amazing, why hasn’t it been done before?

September 25, 2013/0 Comments/by Andrew Epperley

Becca, life

Prost!

I love going to Oktoberfest each year now. Addison, a town just down the road from me in Richardson has one of the countries best festivals each year.

This year Becca and I went with some good friends of ours that we haven’t hung out with in months. Aaron and Sarah met us last night to enjoy some good beer, good food (roasted corn on the cob whhhhat?) and good times.

And yes we got photo bombed in our lone group shot. Ha