The internet came to my rescue not once, but twice recently. It never fails to blow my mind how sometimes you can just put out to the world a small thing you need help with and boom. Good people come forward to lend a hand.

Crisis 1: My pencil sharpener. I was working on a tee design project for a client last week, and the biggest frustration I was running into was not getting the artwork right. It was that my $1 battery-powered pencil sharpener was refusing to cooperate and just sharpen my freaking pencil so I could work. If you follow me on twitter or facebook… I may have complained a lot about it that day. Sorry about that.

Fast forward a few days, and I got an awesome present in the mail from Josh’s Aunt Lynda. BEHOLD, I have a new manual pencil sharpener that sharpens like a dream come true!!!

Unfortunately, I’m a little hard on my pencils. And I broke the point off about 3.2 seconds after that perfect sharpening experience.

But still! I am so thankful for this new pencil sharpener. Auntie Spike, you’re the best! But let’s not forget, there’s still another crisis I needed help with.

Crisis 2: CSS code finagling on my online portfolio. I have over 10 years of work broken down into a bunch of categories in my online portfolio, and over the past few months, I’ve decided the old wordpress gallery layout I was using just didn’t look pro enough. So I put a snappy new slideshow functionality on my home page, and decided I liked it so much I’d use it on my portfolio pages, too.

I set it up on a couple of pages, and as time went on I realized I really needed to adjust the options on that plugin so I could speak with clients about specific pieces and styles in it over the phone or email easier. I decided to add the number navigation the plugin had available, but started running into some issues. It just. Wasn’t. Working. I can usually hold my own in tweaking css code to do whatever I want, but this plugin was giving me some serious crap.

I put out a call to help over Facebook, and the goodness of the internet community provided again. Michael Winchester of Michael Winchester Designs took time out of his day to help work out coding issues, and as we talked back and forth throughout the day my friend Alain chimed in as well. Between the three of us, we got the apparel page of my freelance graphic design portfolio back in tiptop shape!

Now if only I had enough time between projects to get the rest of that portfolio lookin’ as good. (Internet friends? Anyone? Crickets, crickets?)

Again, I am so grateful to the three of you that helped out when I was havin some problems. Sharing like that helps make the internets a better place.

What about the rest of you? Have you had your problems solved by internet friends recently? Let’s chat in the comments!