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I thought that it might be time to give an update.  I have been very busy over with the agile evangelists at Integrum Technologies and have been loving every minute of all the things I’ve managed to absorb in the past few months.  My conversion to Rails has been drastically better than my past experience of learning other languages.  Within weeks I felt confident enough to start my own side projects and dive head-first into things that I used to wait months to fully understand how to do with previous conversions.

I have come to gain a very solid appreciation of AJAX, as long as it is done unobtrusively. I’ve also come to love the purpose and structure that a good MVC framework can provide.  I’ve come to swear by TextMate.  I can’t imagine managing a web project again without it.  I’ve found that pair programming provides amazing benefits that can never be guessed at until you’ve tried it yourself. I’ve found that my errors and refactoring due to pair programming have been exponentially improved and that my development style in general has become more efficent, more detailed, and more well-thought than in the past (in much less time).  I’ve also found that agile methodology as a method of software development just makes sense (for me at least).  Software (especially web based applications or sites) are constantly changing in their requirements, goals, needs, and acceptence criteria.  Agile methodology ties in perfectly with this dynamic lifestyle of software growth.

As to the other things that I’ve been up to, well I’ve started at least three side-projects Read the rest of this entry »

As I woke up yesterday morning I was greeted to a loving wife who looked at me and said, “I’ll get her, you sleep in.  It’s Father’s Day.”  I had completely forgotten the occasion and was too tired (as I always am) to argue.  I gratefully rolled over and slept for another few hours while Katie took care of Paisley and let me sleep.

Katie made me a beautiful Father’s Day card from Paisley that was adorable.  I never could decide what I wanted for Father’s Day (seeing how the iPhone 3G doesn’t come out until July 11th).  Read the rest of this entry »

Katie has spent a lot of time teaching Paisley what “loves” (or “luvs” as I think of them due to some diaper company marketing I’m sure) are over the past several months.  “Luvs” are when we kiss Paisley on the cheek and then she returns the favor by leaning towards our cheek with a wide-open mouth so as to distribute as much slobber as possible amongst maximum surface-area on our face. Read the rest of this entry »

What began as a simple goal of making my blog look better a few weeks ago became a sudden priority last night after being told that I won’t be employed with my current employer after this week essentially.  I need to put a good face forward and since my blog is the first thing that comes up when you Google my name, I decided to put in an all-nighter and get business taken care of.  

So thusly, welcome to my new theme for StevenHaddox.com. Read the rest of this entry »

About a week ago we went to go and get Katie some contacts and while we were there all the women in the optical shop were swooning over Paisley (as usual). One of them had a grandson that had started in the modeling / advertising industry when he was about 8 months old. She said that he made more than 10k in his first year and that Paisley should definitely be on every box of Huggies. The lady told us the name of the agency her grandson had used was Elizabeth Savage Talent Agency.

We’ve always thought Paisley was cute enough to be in advertising, print, media, etc. The only reason we really haven’t looked into it before now was primarily because we had no clue which agencies were legitimate and which were not. Apparently Elizabeth Savage Talent Agency has been around for 19 years and is the biggest agency for actors and models in all of Arizona. We set up an appointment with them and went and saw them today.
Read the rest of this entry »