Not Entirely Sure

I'm not really sure what I want to write about today even if I really shouldn't feel the need to write about anything in particular as this is my blog after all, but I want to write about something, so I think I may just ramble for a little while and see where things go.

This morning I sent of my resume and portfolio to yet another potential employer. Yesterday I followed up on other jobs that I had either applied for or saw new listings for and all of them had been "filled" so I went my merry way towards the next ones on the list. This particular job is actually here on campus in the mechanical engineering department. They are looking for what seems to be a junior-ish web developer to help with the department website. I took a look at the website and can't really see why they need someone but I'm not going to complain.

I called up the contact within the department to ask if they were still looking for someone and they said that they were, so I got a few more details and sent off my information. According to the job listing the only real requirement is that you have a proficient knowledge in at least one of the following programming languages: HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, or mySQL. Lucky for me they weren't another employer looking for Flash and .NET programmers, and also lucky for me that I think I could consider myself at least proficient in three or four of the languages asked for.

Seems like I fit the bill, at least at first glance. The contact in the department told me that they would review my resume and portfolio and then most likely call me to set up a preliminary interview. It's a waiting game now I guess.

I'm cruising right along in my efforts to re-read the entire Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan before the next book comes out on November 3rd. I'm almost finished with the third book (my favorite) and will be trying to finish at least 2 per month for the next couple of months. I may want to try and cram as much in before the start of school as I can if possible because I've got a couple of literature classes, but we'll see how things turn out. There are also a lot of other things happening this summer that take up time too.

Conquer Club Trivia is doing as well as can be expected. I still haven't found a lot of time to stock the system with questions (there are only about 300 or so right now), but Russell was kind enough (and much more tolerant with me than I probably deserve) to help me find a bug in the system that was allowing repeat questions when it shouldn't have been. It turns out that I had made another what we now call "Caleb Mistake" in an entirely different place that was backing things up wrong. It's now fixed though, so that is good.

The first day the site was live I had 96 unique visitors, and the next day I had 156, but that has been the record so far. Since then things have tapered off rather dramatically and it seems there are about 25 to 30 visitors a day, which is respectable for something that only fits such a small audience anyways. If I can get more questions in I think it will help a bit, but like I've said before, I don't expect it to be anything that is wildly popular, especially since I'm not making any money off of it in the long run.

I finally broke down and asked my first every question on the BYU 100 Hour Board this week, something I've always refrained from doing on some sort of strange principle before, but I had a fun question after going to dinner with Holly the other day and figured since we personally know one of the board writers I could address it to them personally and have a little fun with it. Now I just have to wait and see how long it takes for them to find the answer I guess.

Which leads me to another thought. The BYU 100 Hour Board is old, like really, really ancient, and as far as I can tell hasn't had a proper face lift in quite some time. It has the appearance of a website built in the late 90s in my opinion and doesn't seem to function all that well according to the writer that I know. Obviously given my current area of interest this has me pondering and considering the idea of making a website with a similar approach, but in a much more aesthetically pleasing way. We'll see if anything substantial comes of the thought down the line, but it's at least something to think about.

Jack is crawling, but that certainly seems like old news at this point. He now stands up next to the furniture with only one hand and steps to the side so he is barely holding on. He also has learned to push boxes against walls and use them as step stools to get to drawer and cupboard handles that he has been a long time in pursuing. Even yesterday I found him unexpectedly hanging onto the cross-bars on the back of our kitchen chairs with both feet off the floor and on the cross-bar between the chair legs. No fear, that's my son it seems.

He is also getting a bit better at sleeping through the night. Sometimes he still wakes himself up, but now he doesn't necessarily need to be fed in order to get back to sleep. Many times I can just rock him in the rocking chair for a few minutes and he's out cold again. If he does eat, he doesn't chow down on six or eight ounces of formula like before, he's lucky if he makes it through two before nodding off. I take it as a slow and steady move towards not eating at all during the night and sleeping more soundly because of his heavily increased physical activity during the day.

Solid food have been an interesting endeavor to say the least. He loves his rice cereal, but basically refuses any sort of "baby food" that we've tried. We have gone with peas, applesauce, peaches, pears, squash, and a couple others, but his reaction is to spit it back out, clamp his mouth shut and give us a look of, "Are you seriously trying to feed me that?" So, we eat a lot of rice cereal, share Daddy's mashed potatoes from time to time, and luckily we've added oatmeal to the list of things we'll eat as well. I'm thinking he is just going to go straight from the rice cereal to the real people food, sort of like Cymbre did back in the day.

I guess that is enough rambling for one day, I'll try to get some new pictures of Jack up sometime soon for everyone who likes to see those. Maybe some from our recent trip to the zoo or something.

The Job Hunt

I'm not looking for much, just a solid job for either part-time or full-time somewhere in the web programming field. I know I don't know every single programming language out there, but if I can find a few open positions that are pretty close to what I know I think I can learn whatever else is needed fairly quickly.

The one job I had hoped to get because I was pretty sure my skills were either on par with or far beyond what they needed was at Heritage Web Solutions, but they refuse to return calls and have "misplaced" my resume and application twice now. I guess that option is out. It would have been the most convenient by a long shot though.

I found a few new jobs to apply or at least research a little more yesterday, one in Sandy and one with the Provo Daily Herald that seems like it might be promising. I also put in a call in response to an advertisement on Craigslist to someone who was looking to pay to have their small business site reworked into something more professional looking. That one would be a freelance job, but could net a little bit of money and experience as well.

Mostly I wish I had time to learn new programming languages more quickly, but with school, my current job, and taking care of the family there isn't much time for that sort of thing. The catch is that without some of the new languages I worry I might not be all that marketable while looking for better employment. Steep hill to climb I guess.

If anyone has any leads on jobs or freelance projects, let me know as I'd certainly be interested.

A Brief Recap

Holly is down in Redlands with her family for the next few weeks while one of her sisters graduates from high school and several other events take place. She took Jack with her since I can't keep track of him while I'm at work all day each day.

That means I'm home alone living the bachelor life for a little bit. It's not as much fun as you would think, but I am hoping to get lots of stuff done while she is gone. I'll probably go see a couple of movies that Holly never would have wanted to see, I'll give Shawn Saunders a call and see if he wants to do something once or twice, and I'll probably do some stuff with Gerald Smith as well to pass the time, but he doesn't get back in town until the 11th.

I also want to finish off some websites, read several books, clean up some cupboards and closets in the apartment and maybe wash out the car and the FoJ if I have time. Mostly I'm just going to try and be productive but relaxed at the same time so that I can make the best use of the time I have distraction free.

Luckily with Holly's new computer she has a webcam so before she left I got her set up on Skype to video chat every couple of days so I can see Jack and her a little bit while they are gone. We did the first chat last night and now Holly is apparently addicted to Skyping.

Wish me luck in my life of bachelorhood!

Promotion: Operations Manager

It wasn't that long ago that I was expounding right here on this very blog about my excitement regarding being hired as the new Volunteer Coordinator for Conquer Club. Now, I have reason to expound a little more because yesterday I was promoted from Volunteer Coordinator to a new position of Operations Manager.

The Community Manager, Hyasri, who was hired at the same time I was has left for other employment opportunities and so that left the owner of Conquer Club with the predicament of having to fill the role and not really having anyone he wanted to give it to. So, instead he decided to split the two main areas that the Community Manager worked in and give one to me and the other to one of the other admins, AndyDufresne.

So, I have all my job duties from before, and added to that I have all of the projects, activities, and site improvement work that the Community Manager was doing. AndyDufresne is picking up the role of Chief Moderator and dealing directly with the public to ease concerns, put out fires, and be a public face for the site. He'll do a great job at that as he is easily the most level-headed of all the admins. I get a little too fiesty from time to time.

I'm really excited about the opportunity because it fits right into one of my personal skill sets of organization and planning. It also gives me five more hours of work each week which offsets some of my stress over increased expenses with a new baby arriving at the end of the year at least a little bit.

There are some big things planned for Conquer Club in the coming weeks (which I hope I can get the go-ahead on rather quickly), and hopefully they will improve the site for the better.

My Perfect Workspace

I often go on and on about how I wish I had this amazing dream office that was filled with all sorts of wonderful things like a massive desk, four computer monitors, picture windows, and huge bookcases, but if I am 100% honest with myself, I really need much less to be happy when I am working on anything from paying the bills to writing code for a website and everything in between.

Today is a slow day here at the office and I'm trying to keep up to speed with my blogging goals for this year, so I thought it might be fun to expound on my perfect "workspace" for a little while, using the constraints of the small apartment that I currently share with my wife, son, and soon to be second child. Obviously that means I don't have much space, perhaps barely a corner of a room to work with, so lets see what I can come up with that seems reasonable.

Computer: I currently own a nice 13" Macbook, which is more than capable of meeting my computing needs. If I need to upgrade my RAM or my hard drive capacity I can do so for a relatively small amount of money in the future without needing to replace the computer altogether.

Computer Monitor: The laptop I own has a very small screen which is fine for when I am on campus or working away from home, but when I need to really buckle down and be productive a bigger portion of real estate is much appreciated. For this last Christmas my parents gifted me a great 22" flat screen monitor which works like a charm and when connected to my laptop gives me plenty of space to work. Many days I will use just the external monitor, but sometime the dual screen is nice for whatever I'm working on at the time.

Printer: Doesn't need to be anything fancy. All I need is black and white printing mostly with the occasional color print, so the basic inkjet that we currently own works like a charm, no need to change anything in this category.

Desk Chair: I like a comfortable desk chair, especially since I spend a lot of time sitting in it. Right now I have a great chair that I received as a birthday present a couple of years ago, and it works like a charm, the only problem is that it is a bit on the big side and as more children keep arriving I'm a bit concerned it might be taking up too much space at the moment. Mostly my chair just needs to be good enough that I don't get sore sitting in it for long periods of time.

External Keyboard & Mouse: Already have both of these and don't plan on replacing them anytime soon. I like wireless for my mouse, and would prefer wireless for my keyboard, but the wireless keyboard available from Apple isn't full sized yet, so I'm current wired in that regard.

Filing Cabinet: I have enough papers and records that I need to keep on file that a filing cabinet would be a wonderful addition that I don't have at the moment. I don't need a large one by any means. One of those small two-drawer types would work just fine, or even one that has a small drawer for office supplies on top and a filing drawer below would work well.

Shelving: I am not sure that I need an entire bookshelf, especially not if I have a filing cabinet or a desk drawer of some type, but one or two medium sized shelves of some type would be nice. Just enough room to keep my reference books and perhaps some other random items that I use on a regular basis.

Desk: Right now I'm working with a $5 desk that I bought from the BYU auction when I first got married, but if I'm honest it is about twice as big as I need it to be and if I could find something smaller that had just enough room to hold my monitor and keyboard/mouse I would be alright. I don't do a lot of writing or "open desk" work so extra desktop space is not a necessity for me right now, if ever.

Office Supplies: There are a few things that I like having on hand so I don't have to go searching for them. They include: Pens, Scissors, Ruler, Three Hole Punch, Printer Paper, Rubber Bands, Paper Clips, Stapler, Lined Paper, Manila Folders, Highlighters, Mechanical Pencils, Labels, and a few other random things I can't think of off the top of my head.

So, I think that is a reasonable list of things, and the great thing is that I already own most of it, excluding the cabinet or a smaller desk. The only problem I'm facing at the moment is where to put my workspace because the apartment isn't all that conducive to me keeping it in the same room as the babies, especially not when the second one arrives, and I'm not a very big fan of having it out in the living room with everything else.

One idea I have been tossing around lately is to reorganize the oversized storage closet we have into a sort of makeshift office/workspace if I can find a table or desk small enough to fit. I think I could make it work for the time remaining that we have here in Provo, and it would allow me to shut myself off from the party crowd as well because of the small door it has. The only thing I'm worried about is whether it is too cramped, but when Holly is gone in June to visit her family in Redlands I think I may give it a test drive and see if I can find a way to make it work somehow.

Post #300

Well, would you look at that, I have reached the 300 post mark in my blogging career. It only took several years and several blogs to get to this point, but I got here nonetheless. In celebration I would like to share some pictures of how I get to work nowadays with my new job. Yes, my new job is that cool.

Conquer Club Volunteer Coordinator

Well, remember that job I was talking about a week or so ago? It's finally been announced to the public and so now I can inform everyone that I have taken a job with my favorite website (Conquer Club) to be the Volunteer Coordinator.

The position is an "admin" position, which means my name is now red on the forums, and I have to work closely with the other admin, including the website owner, to help Conquer Club improve and grow moving forward.

My specific job responsibilities include the following:

• Conduct moderator team meetings
• Train new moderators
• Develop new policies as needed
• Organize and implement various site projects
• Manage forum permissions and forum settings
• Support site moderators in their work
• Perform quality checks on moderation team

On top of that, I will be working on any other stuff that the owner decides to throw my way. There is a lot of work to do that has been on hold for a long time. I've been working for about a week now and am loving every minute of it. The job allows me to enjoy the site I love while being paid, and it also lets me use my talents for organization and project management.

Also along those lines is that the job is online, which means it is far closer to my career of choice than sitting in a department office on campus answering the phone each day. I don't do any web development with this position, but there is potential for it down the road, and it is the type of job that helps build a lot of contacts for things in the future. Who knows, if the site continues to grow perhaps it could turn into a career all of its own.

Holly just shook her head when she found out I had gotten the job because way back when I first started playing games on CC I told her something along the lines of, "If I ever get the chance to work for this place and actually get paid I'm going to take the job without even asking you first, even if it means we have to move to Canada." She laughed then, but now she enjoys the fact that I can work my shifts from home and help out with Jack if she needs me to out of the blue.

I'm thrilled, and I don't know how many people can truly appreciate that, but I'm thrilled nonetheless.

Excellent News!!!

Remember that job I was talking about yesterday? Turns out that I was officially offered it this afternoon, but I don't think I'm allowed to reveal details yet, so that will have to come later.

I'm pretty excited though.

New Employment Opportunity

I had a very unexpected phone interview last night for a new job I'm hoping to get. I don't want to go into the details at the moment, just in case it doesn't pan out, but I'm really, really, really hoping that it does. It would mean greater flexibility to my schedule, a higher pay rate, and the opportunity to work more from home in a field much closer to my chosen career path.

Wish me luck! I'll update if I get the job.

Graduation: April 2010

Well, after a long time of not really being sure as to exactly when I would graduate I finally bit the bullet and went to talk to the academic advisor in the Humanities Department today. After going over all of my information we discovered that I have 23 credits remaining between my English major and the GE requirements at BYU.

I still need to finish 2 classes of German, 2 electives in English literature, the Senior Course, an Advanced Writing, and a History class.

That puts me at just too much to do in one semester, so I'm going to need two semesters, and with my hope of finding full-time work in web programming this spring and summer, I believe the best course of action for me is to graduate in April 2010 instead of trying to cram, cram, cram it all in before December gets here.

That puts me 1 year behind Shyla, which I suppose isn't too bad since I took 2 years off.

Life as a Teaching Assistant

As I've mentioned previously, I'm the new teaching assistant for the CHum 250 web design class here at BYU. The job is pretty low key so far as we haven't gotten to anything that really needs to be graded or reviewed yet.

The funny thing about this job is that they pay me (quite well) to sit around and do just about nothing most of the time. I go to class and am on hand for questions during the lecture, of which there are only a handful on any given day, and then I have office hours twice a week for a couple of hours.

What is so interesting about that is that I have yet to have anyone come to the office hours for help. I'm not all that surprised as when I was taking these classes very few people ever showed up to office hours for extra help. I did though, I figured why not, it was worth it. I got at least 20 hours of one on one time with my TA when I was in CHum 250 and learned all sorts of new stuff that wasn't covered in class. I also did extremely well on all of the assignments.

When I was in Russell's class I went to his office hours once every week with very few exceptions to ask questions, get clarification, and learn something new. Most of the time there was nobody there but me and I got all sorts of extra info crammed into my skull. I guess that is why I did alright in his class in the end even when I thought I was never going to remember anything.

In the end, I can't complain too much because I'm getting paid to be here in this lab right now just in case someone shows up and I can get all sorts of my own work done if nobody does. It's sort of a win-win situation I suppose.

Crunch Time

I go through this same situation every single semester. The first couple of days there is nothing of consequence to do because everyone is still adding and dropping classes, shuffling their schedules, and learning about the course syllabus. The next couple of days you start to learn some stuff, but the teachers don't really assign much in the way of homework just in case half the class changes from one day to the next. It really isn't until after the add/drop deadline about 12 days into the semester that things really start to settle down.

That is when crunch time hits. You finally have to start paying attention to the assignments that are due and the things the professors say in class.

Crunch time was today as I started looking ahead to the things I need to get done in the next 10-14 days and planning out how I was going to make it happen with a little baby boy at home that I need to help take care of each evening after I return from campus.

I've been very diligent so far this semester in staying on top of my reading assignments and doing things a day or two early, perhaps more diligent than I have ever been before, but despite all of that, I still feel like there is some sort of impending pressure that is going to be piled onto my shoulders at any moment, most likely when I least expect it.

I don't really like that feeling.

2 Hour Work Schedule

For a long time now I have never worked a shift shorter than four hours here at the English Composition Office, which was always quite nice because it meant I had a little time to do personal things, but also time to get some schoolwork done as well once the work around the office was finished.

Now, due to taking a position as a teaching assistant for the beginning web programming class on campus I have a much different schedule. I work in two hour chunks beginning at 8:00am or 10:00am depending on the day for the composition office, and then I work in two hour chunks either in class or in office hours for the teaching assistant job.

I still get just as many hours during the week, and the teaching assistant job is a much better paying job so I'm coming out ahead that way, but it has sort of thrown off my groove a little bit. There is not nearly as much time to get ramped up and working on something before I have to pack it away and go to class or leave for the other job. I think it may take a little getting used to and force me to alter a couple of my habits a little bit.

Ah Yes, School Again

It's the first day of school again, just like it has been far too many times over the past couple of years for me. How awesome were the days when each year only had one "first day of school" and not two or three. I miss those days, I really do.

I got to work nice and early this morning because I knew the Graduate Instructors were going to have copies they needed of their syllabi and other things, but much to my instant dismay, I was locked out of my desktop at work with usernames and passwords that were no longer valid. Apparently the IT guys from the Humanities Department decided it would be fun to remotely update my computer over New Year's and accidentally reset my login information. Not good, not at all. Now I have to play catch-up for the rest of the morning, and Roxy is going to have a lot more work than I had hoped she would have on her first day back to campus.

In other news, I gave the old blog a new and fresh look again as it has been a little while since I made any changes, and I was a little bored with the white space in the old design. This is just one of the normal templates from Blogger, but with a couple of color tweaks here and there. I also did some trimming of my blog list and kept mostly just family blogs and the ones I took off are now in my Google Reader so I can still see what is happening with folks.

You'll notice in the archive over on the right side that I made 10 posts in 2006, 84 in 2007 and 160 in 2008. I think my blogging goal for this year is going to be to beat my mark from 2008 and try to surpass 200 posts in 2009. That means I need to write 17 posts per month for the year, which translates into roughly 1 post every other day. I think that is a reasonable and achievable goal, especially with all of the new things in my life with Jack and impending graduation.

This semester should be smooth sailing, but I've said that before, haven't I?

otissito.com

Today I finally put the finishing touches on otissito.com, which I hope will be a way to slowly start finding some freelance work for myself as a web programmer. I know it isn't very flashy, but that is the look I was trying to achieve. Something that was simply and elegant and presented the information in a professional manner.

I'm not sure how quickly I can get some side projects from other individuals, but I'm hoping that with my cards that Shawn Saunders made for me, and this website, as well as the couple of example websites I have in my portfolio, that I can start making some money doing this rather than just playing around in my free time.

Before I get anything started I owe Russell a great big thank you for helping me along the way the past year as I learned new skills and started to really grasp the things I was trying to do. His class is what really started to give me confidence that I could do this for work, and not just for play.

The site is ready to use, and I'm excited to see how long it takes for someone to contact me with an interest in having some work done.

I'm Officially a CHum 250 Teaching Assistant

I wandered down to the CHum department offices this morning to finalize things because Matt Gibbons told me he wanted me to figure it all out well before the start of semester. I just had to go give them my information and some other stuff so they could know I was going to be working as a TA.

Turns out that for the 10 hours each week I'll get through that department I'll be paid $10.90 which is $3.40 more per hour than I currently get paid at my job as the English Composition Department secretary.

So, where can I find a second job that pays me as much as the TA job to make up my extra ten hours per week? That's what I really want to know.

New Job: Teaching Assistant

This week I officially was chosen by my previous CHum 250 instructor to be his new TA for the upcoming semester. I'm pretty excited about that because it means I can continue to hone my CSS skills and freshen up on Javascript even more. It also means I don't have to sit in an office all day doing nothing.

Best of both worlds really.

ChaCha Rejection

Well, I guess it wasn't really a rejection to be honest, but it was sort of funny. Hunter Anderson, who works over in the Humanities Copy Center next door to my office told me about this company called ChaCha which answers questions via text messages. Apparently if you sign up to be a "guide" you can earn 10 cents for each answer that you give out.

It's a pretty simple job really, they have a site you log into and answer questions as they hand them out to you. No obligation for hours, no set number you have to meet, you just sort of make a few extra bucks whenever you feel like it.

After learning a little more about it I figured there was no harm in going through the short training because if it worked out I could make a little cash to help offset costs of having a new baby and such, and Holly could have done it too if she had wanted. Anyways, I went through the little training program and did my "test questions" to see if I was ready. Then all I had to do was wait for an email from ChaCha saying if I was approved or not.

Well, I didn't get approved, which made me laugh a little bit because the test questions weren't hard at all, and I know I had the right answers. After talking to Hunter about it this morning he thinks it is because they are restructuring a lot of things and how they do them and because of that they aren't hiring new guides at the moment. He says he thinks I'll get an email later on asking if I'm still interested or not.

If that happens, I'll probably take them up on it. Convenient money made in my free time is always a good thing I suppose.

Internship Opportunity

For a long time I've thought I had little chance of landing some kind of internship in my field of choice so that I could gain a little bit of experience before graduating. It's always seemed like I settled on my choice of occupation a little late in the game and needed to focus more on learning how to actually do it to begin with, and that I didn't really have time to get some real-life experience prior to jumping into the job market.

However, that all changed yesterday when I took a little jaunt over to the Museum of Art here at BYU to talk to Herman Du Toit about a Technology Internship that is available. Russell pointed me towards this one by giving me the flyer in class on Monday and after thinking about it I decided it was at least worth going to talk to the folks at the museum. I took the flyer with me and went over in the gap between my classes.

As it turns out, they are pretty desparate over at the museum and in all honesty could probably use about 10 interns to all work on the same set of projects. Apparently they are severely lacking in help that knows that it is doing, and have just sort of been using band-aids of stuff to keep things operational as best they could.

So, I had a nice chat with Herman Du Toit about what the museum was hoping to do in the future with catching up to the technology available, how their database is ancient, that they need to design an entire museum website from scratch, that they have no workers, etc. I had the chance to tell him that I'm pretty proficient with HTML, CSS, and overall website organization and that I'm currently finishing a class on PHP, AJAX, mySQL, and other random things. His eyes lit up as I went down the list of different features that I thought I could build into a website with a little time to work and such.

Eventually he took me upstairs to meet another guy, Chris Wilson, who I think is the man in charge of the technology aspect of the museum, and we sat down to continue our discussion. Chris asked me a few more things about what types of things I knew how to do, what I'd be willing to learn, and what I wanted to do in the future.

Things wrapped up after a bit and they told me to finish off the application, bring it back, and they'd get back to me within a week after that. The overall impression I got from Herman was that the internship is basically mine for the taking if I want to, and he even offered the idea that I could do the internship next semester and then translate that into a paying job for the summer after school is over. That was sort of cool too.

So, anyways, I guess we'll see where all of this goes, and if it can be helpful to me in the future. I do need to figure out the basics of Flash before January if I do get the internship, and I need to look into some content management software known as Typo, which I've never heard of before, so that could be interesting.

Learning PHP, or at Least Trying To

Some days I'm pretty sure I'll never get down the intricacies of PHP or Javascript, and other days it makes a little more sense. One of these days I'm hoping some kind of switch is going to click inside my head and I'll finally grasp what exactly I'm supposed to be doing without looking it up seven times at each step along the road.

I think what frustrates me the most is when I can identify that I have a problem, perhaps even narrow the problem down to a specific portion of code, but then no matter how many things I switch around, double-check, or re-work it just refuses to work. If I can figure things out the right way the first time, I'm good to go, but unfortunately that rarely, if ever, happens to me.

The biggest problem I have right now is the worry that I'll get a job doing this type of stuff, and then show up the first day and not be able to keep up, do things properly, or even know what is going on. That is a scary concept to be worried about with just over 12 months to go before school is finished.