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So Katie and I watched Gossip girl tonight (we missed it last night).  In one scene I realized that my hair is slowly starting to resemble Nate’s due to the length and how unkempt it is.

Afterwards I was talking with Katie when I said (mostly jokingly) that I should grow my hair out like Nate’s.  She replied, “I think it’d be weird to see you with long hair.  And it’d be weird if you didn’t have the same haircut as your boss.”  I managed to keep a straight face as I said: Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

Thought I’d take a moment to post a really quick comparison between my last job (although quite a bit of this applies to a couple of my previous jobs), and the company I’m currently contracting with Integrum Technologies.

Please note that although this list is a large portion of the differences, it is by no means all-inclusive as I can think of a ton of other differences that haven’t even been touched within this list. This is merely the most essential things to mention.
Read the rest of this entry »

I won’t go into too many details but I’ve found an amazing group of really cool developers who have been kind enough to give me the chance at helping them out even though it’s a completely new language for me.

More to come later, for now I’m a bookworm ;)

For those of you who may have somehow not know, I was told I was being let go last week, so I’ve obviously been putting my resume out as much as possible since my last day of “vacation” from my current job runs out tomorrow as far as I know (nobody has bothered to e-mail me back as to how many actual hours I had or how many hours I was paid for last week…. talk about a failure of communication even after multiple e-mail requests). That’s a long story for another time though (I’m sure I’ll blog more about my job loss AFTER I have secured a new job…heh).

Anyway, I’ve probably submitted my resume to about 12+ jobs on Dice & Monster in the area that seem like decent to really good fits, but I’ve found that there’s even better opportunities and more relevant positions actually available on craigslist.org. I’d estimate that I’ve sent my resume to more than Read the rest of this entry »