me talking out loud

HOLY COW what a wild ride. I came to the conference thinking I would be kinda busy with the PHPWomen and Zend stuff I planned to do but it was crazier then I thought - and my severe jet lag did not help things. Luckily I still managed to make a number of the sessions but not nearly as many as I wanted - though I didn’t miss a single party

Hmm - now lets see what highlights I remember about the conference…
Day 1
opening keynote wasn’t bad but I slipped out a bit early to 1) find out where we would be setting up the PHPWomen’s booth and 2) try to sneak into Terry Chay’s talk early for a good seat (it ended up being in the room where the keynote was being given - D’uh). During this time Cal Evans (my sweetie) announces that it is my birthday in front of the ENTIRE assembly after the keynote… now everyone knows I am old . So all day I had people walking up to me telling me happy birthday. Oh and did I mention that I was sung Happy Birthday in the bar as well… if nothing else this birthday was memorable (fantastic too but we won’t mention that part).

Went to Terry Chay’s talk (fabulous) and then did a thing for Zend so missed Ben Ramsey’s talk (was bummed about that), the 3-4 sessions I was setting up the PHPWomen booth and handing out some advanced t-shirts to the women and some prominent PHP community members who we promised them to. Then went to Eli White’s talk and I am sad to say started falling asleep during it (jet lag really started kicking in). And after that was very busy handing out PHPWomen t-shirts to the conference attendees for the rest of the night from our booth (forgot to take a picture of all of us with the booth babes)… then on to the parties afterward. I ended up sleeping at night for the rest of the conference in Curt’s room rather then my own since I was sharing it with 3 other people and I admit it… I needed more quiet to recover then our room could provide. Thanks Curt!

Day 2
Slept late this day (jet lag still killing me) and missed breakfast and the keynote. Came down to find a sea of purple shirts… all for PHP Women. Whomever says the community doesn’t support it’s women needed to see this. We easily had the number of Zend t-shirts beat (3-1).

Went to Andrei’s unicode session and again had to run out early to do some more of the Zend thing. Missed most of lunch trying to find all the phpc’ers to make sure they had their PHPC shirts with nick iron ons for the next day. Make it to Joel Spolsky’s keynote (excellant by the way), Elizabeth Naramore’s session on e-commerce (very good) and Laura Thomson’s session (again very good). By now I am once more exhausted from jet lag and go to take a nap so I can be awake for Jay Pipes talk… and manage never to wake up for it. That was the one session I absolutely wanted to attend and I sleep through it… LOL - I kill myself some days.

Day 3
This is the day I pretty much played hookie on. slept late again (never did make it to bed before 2:30 on any given night) missing everything except the closing keynote. Granted I was around before then but nothing really caught my eye and I was too busy talking to all the wonderful people I had met during the conference.

All in all a wonderful time though I will never over book myself like that again. I should have considered how much the jet lag would affect me (I was literally on the opposite time schedule - night was day and day was night) but one must live and learn.

To all the wonderful people I met at the conference (old and new friends) I only want to say - WE HAVE GOT TO DO THIS AGAIN!

Well I have been attending the phparch RIA class for a little bit now and I have to say I like it. Without giving too much away I will say the class is informative and relaxed, Paul works hard to interact with the class on an individual basis, and we cover some really cool stuff. The code we write for examples and homework is relevant and scary as it sounds - fun. Paul stresses security and shows us where to watch for potential performance problems saving us from making the beginners mistakes.

I am almost done with the class and while I will not miss the 2AM wake up (I am on the other side of the world - hate those timezones) when it is finished I will be glad that I did it. Thank you Paul for making learning and experimenting with something so new to me this easy and enjoyable.

So while I didn’t pay for the class out of my own pocket (work did) - for me it is well worth the money and I know I will not hesitate in the future about taking another one on my own dime.

Well it is now official - I will be changing jobs. I will be starting at GuamCell Communications as a Systems Analyst in their MIS Department in 2 weeks.

Figure on me disappearing for a while while I get organized and settled - but have no fear - I will be back. You can’t get rid of me that easily. Actually expect me back big and bold to pick your brains since much of the stuff they will have me working on - I have never messed with.

With this move I will probably have less time to fart around with (they actually expect me to work - Sheesh ) but I will be doing more coding and will also be playing/learning more with the database. All good stuff to my mind.

Is it me - or does it seem like a number of people are moving around lately… Hmm.

Yahoo, eBay join forces in defense against Google

Hmm.. Interesting how the Internet biggies are positioning themselves.

Well most of this week so far has been dedicated to creating a LAN in a new office my company is opening. Basically I was told Monday at noon that I am supposed to put the network in on Tuesday… Only no one bothered to inform me of this before hand… so off I go Monday afternoon hitting all the computer stores on island looking for parts and estimates (DSL modem, Min 8 port router with a firewall, various cables and a surge protector). None of the computer companies had everything I needed on hand so I pieced and parted the thing on Tuesday from the various stores.

Tuesday and today was spent running the various cables (they layed these little conduits (like 3/4 or 1 inch) that no one knew where they went or where they came out… turned out they were basically useless to me and I ended up running the cables in the ceiling. Oh and them needing it by Tuesday - change revision 1 . It is now needed by next week, but again I wasn’t told this until Tuesday evening. So the basic cables are run, but no electronics will go in until after they move in… and I still need to go find the things that hold the cables to the wall and look nice and pretty…

Well I have taken the plunge and scheduled my test for the MySQL Core Certification. It is on March 22nd at 10:45… and I am so nervous. The company is reimbusing me for the test - though truthfully I would have paid for it myself. It’s only $200 USD.

Cross your fingers and wish me luck - I really hope I pass.

While reading through Perl Monks a while ago I found this thread. It deals with who exactly owns the code your write - on and OFF working hours. Reading it REALLY made me nervous. Granted I haven’t written anything worthwhile - but the idea that my company can own EVERYTHING I have EVER written while employed is just plain old wrong. I think I need to talk to my boss about this and get it straightened out and on paper.

Ever have your work computer harddrive crash on you? That happened to me on Tuesday morning. So what do I do - I take the computer to the shop… have them try to save whatever they can (which turned out to be nothing), wipe out the slave harddrive and reload the OS. It only took them until Friday afternoon to do it (I read a lot and answered phones in the office). Figure - OK I can bring in my laptop and use that - right… Nope. Seems my office is rather hexed right now.

The laptop worked perfectly fine at home… take it to the office… won’t boot up. And before you say it - no there is nothing wrong with my connection… just bad juju.

Anyway - I am back up and running - and downloading, installing and configuring like a big dog. Figure it will take ~ a week to get everything back up and running again. Have a list of over 20 programs to install and that isn’t even a complete listing - just the big stuff. Oh well.

Well I finally got my project site xhtml transitional compliant. Since I am adding another page to it - I have to alter the templates. Since I was doing that (and I would eventually have to make the site compliant) I figured I might as well get it over with. So the CSS went through a complete rewrite and the templates were altered to account for it. Note the ease of the change in presentation while not touching the logic. Pretty cool. Smarty just proved how good it is.

Learned alot about CSS - though not as much as I would have liked. Discussed with the guys (well faw actually) the merits of going tableless and following xhtml strict, but I really just don’t have the time to learn and code it. For now just being compliant is enough - after all as far as I know I am the only one on my team who is trying to be. Only have 2 test browsers (IE and Mozilla) so hoping the compliance will help with cross-browser compatability.

Found it interesting that it is normally a 3 person job to create a project like this. Another one of the guys on phpc noted that in his company they has three people doing what I am (the graphics artist, the designer, and the developer). Now granted I know I don’t do as good a job as those 3 would - but it was humorous that my company pays 1 to do the same thing.

Had a job interview today at the local university. Thought it went pretty well - though I think I am the first person they interviewed. Would really like to have this job - not just for the money (though it will be a significant increase) but because - as much as I truly enjoy my current position - I am very limited in my growth. I have no other person in the office to bounce ideas off of, or check to see if I am doing something completely hare-brained, or ask if there is a better/ alternate method of doing something. Granted I have the guys at phpcommuninty to ask for help (and I have NEVER not gotten it) but having someone right there is something I am sorely lacking.

Now don’t get me wrong - I am very happy working independantly learning as I go - but I can’t help but feel as if I could be learning/doing more. Not knowing the right questions to ask can be frustrating. I guess I’m saying that I have outgrown my current job and am ready to expand myself. Now if only I have convinced the interviewers of that and get the job.

Wish me luck.

Life has been pretty good to me today. I have managed to get a couple of reports to work and lunatech sent me an invite to the Y! 360 network. Haven’t had much time to play with it but that is OK. There is always tomarrow.

Well I finally got around to making an up to date resume. Just follow the link on the side. And don’t forget to tell me what you think about it.

Went to Siapan for work and discussed all the thins we needed to. Even came to a few final decisions - so it was a good trip. The guys (and gals) took me around the island and showed me some beautiful areas. I, of course, didn’t have a camera so there are no pictures. And next time I have to remember to bring my snorkel and fins - the reefs are supposed to be spectacular.

Hopefully next time we can sit down again and hammer out how we are all going to handle errors - right now it is a free for all. Oh and one of the Siapan programmers stepped up to the plate (MiGs) as the project lead so hopefully everything will work together now - yeah - right. Just those bumps in the road to worry about.

Unfortunately the person who was translating my site no longer works for my company. She has moved on to another job. Unfortuanely the project manager of my project has also left (no notice - just stopped showing up) so we are currently very short of leadership.

Will be flying to Siapan this weekend to have a round table with the other programmers. Hopefully we will be able to figure out what is going on with our individual projects and also figure out how and where all the parts are to fit together as a whole. I personally think we need to elect/assign/designate a person to be the project lead (but then I am military trained). They will then be in charge of making sure all the parts and pieces come together as a whole and guiding the various teams. Basically having at least 1 person with their eye on the big picture. I would volunteer for it (I’m really interested in project managment) but since I am all alone on Guam and everyone else is in Siapan…. it just would not be a feasible option (can’t move - husband is US military and must be here). Someone in Siapan has to step up.

What is going to happen to the project? Unknown. Who will be running the show - supposedly someone from Japan will be chosen, but then they will still be in Japan and we will still be here. Guess I should get back to my code and worry about all that later.

Well this past week I have had to suspend all work on the IntSmarty project…. Just have too many other things to do before I go stateside for a month. With the problems I’m having with the IntSmarty handling the Japanese and the work required to straighten it out… I can’t take the time right now. *sigh* Have been catching up on all my other projects and duties (and unfortunately my paperwork). Hope to restart work on the IntSmarty next week.

Well I had to go to Siapan this weekend for business. Arrived ~10 AM and didn’t get to see my room until 9 PM ( ). Meetings/explainations/introduction and socializing the whole time. All in all it was a very good day.

Everyone was VERY interested in the IntSmarty and what it was, how it worked, and how it was going. Most of the developers I met and am now working with had never heard of or used Smarty so I also had to explain how that worked so I could then explain how the Intsmarty worked. It was fun talking about (and at times arguing about) error handling, the security I am using for the site and it’s database, coding/DB naming conventions to be followed (I managed to win some fights and lose some - so I guess it all worked out right ), what they were working on and how and if it may connect to my site, Smarty and IntSmarty, and finally the databases and database designs .

All in all it was a very good time (though I would have liked to talk more about what they were doing - it looked interesting). And I am very pleased that the Software Engineer likes my coding style. I always thought I coded well and clearly, but it is nice to have someone else verify it. Went to dinner with Jun (the Marianas Resort and Spa programmer) and had a lot of fun. The restaurant he took me to was excellant and we sat and catched up with each other.

It is interesting and at times frustrating to be working with such an international group of programmers and engineers. With the language and custom barriers we sometimes run into, we all definately have to remember to relax and go slowly. This whole project is teaching me alot - in coding, in working with a team, and in working with others from a different country and culture. I still do not know the proper way to be introduced to someone from Japan. From what have observed - I am to hand the person my business card with 2 hands (holding only the top corners) so the card faces the person and bow. If I am receiving the card - I am to grasp their card with 2 hands (touching only the bottom 2 corners) and bow in return. *Sigh* There is so much to learn.

paperwork, paperwork everywhere and not a line of code in sight. I have been doing paperwork for a week and a half now and still have tons more to do. When will I be able to write code next? Unknown. I am falling behind with my project and I know it but the paperwork also needs to be done. *sigh* Time to go back to my paperwork or it will breed more.