How? Always!

I went to watch a movie with a friend tonight. We watched "Taken". It was quite good, really good, actually. Anyway, after I got out of the movie it was about 10 and a few friends from work called and asked if I wanted to go to a lounge. I reluctantly agreed. It sounded loud but being that it was a lounge I figured I'd try it out.

When I got there I almost wasn't allowed in due to dress code. I got there and it was REALLY loud. It was basically a club with some couches and ambient lighting. I wasn't a fan. Two of the people from work were fighting because one was jealous (they're dating) because their SO was "flirting" with one of the other guys. Cluster-fuck, really. I drove home shortly after arriving.

On the way back home there was a car going south on the northbound side of the Garden State Parkway. It was the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. He was in the left lane (his right) and I must've been doing 90 before I saw him. It's a good thing I was in the middle lane, as usual or I would've hit him and the combined speed would've been well over 120MPH.

I got home safely, obviously, and I'm off to bed. What a fucked up end to an otherwise ok day.

First Time in a While

Today I accepted the contract job offer. I really hope I get the other job though. In any case, that's not what I wanted to post about. For the first time in a while I actually worked my ass off. I not only fixed a few important bugs on a site that a high profile client wanted fixed tonight but I also finished my redesign of the Baby Phat site.

Keep your eyes peeled. The site will change from black/purple to white/gold/red at some point tomorrow. It actually came out quite good if you ask me. Very close to the designs given to me and I cleaned up a LOT of the code. It was terrible. I'm not saying it's perfect now because I didn't have enough time to do a complete overhaul but it's far better than it was before. I worked from 9am to 10pm tonight. Hell of a day but I got a bunch done.

I also gave my letter of resignation today. I'm free!

Nonsense Galore

This morning started off as any other but quickly changed. As I'm passing the parking lot this morning I see a construction crew in front of the entrance. I had to go around to the side entrance to the parking lot. I sit at my desk ready to start the morning. A little before 10am all internet functions cease. The whole company is unable to access the internet...at an e-commerce company. This is quite a problem. As it turns out, the construction crew was tearing up the street and had to cut some cables. They cut our fiberoptic line.

We were completely unable to do ANYTHING. Even testing on our development servers couldn't be done due to the need for images from the live servers. We all got in trouble, of course, because we weren't doing anything useful. Go figure. Somewhere around 2-3pm we got minimal connectivity through a satellite connection but everything crawled and productivity was at a stand-still.

On the bright side my phone interview went really well and they're looking to move forward. I was told by multiple people that I should accept the contract job offer and if the perm job turns out then I simply decline the contract job. Chances are if the perm job turns out it will be before I start the contract job anyway. And if it doesn't turn out I will have already accepted the contract job instead of losing out. There you have it, folks! That's my plan and we'll see what happens. I'll keep you all updated.

Jobs, Interviews, and Recruiters! Oh My!

I got the job I interviewed for! The recruiter called me this morning. I'm sure he was expecting much more enthusiasm from me but I also got a call from another recruiter saying I landed a phone interview at another company. This job would be permanent, not contract like the first one. If I get this one it'd be great. I'd be letting down the first recruiter but I'm not here to get jobs to make others feel better. I'm out to get paid and get paid well. Job stability would really be a plus and a contract job would mean I'd be looking for a new job as soon as I start, pretty much.

What do you guys think? I'll list the pros of each job are and you tell me what your thoughts are.

Contract:
I already got the job, I just have to accept
It's 30 minutes from home (perm is an hour or so)
I'd be well compensated (roughly $10K more than I make now)
I'd be focussing on new features to an already working system
Telecommuting would be allowed at will

Permanent:
Compensation should be about $2K more than the contract job, minimum (~$12-15K more than I make now)
Permanent means unless I get fired or laid off I've got job stability (contract is 3-6 months)
Larger company (or so it seems) means I'll be working as part of a team (I'd be the sole developer, pretty much, at the contract job)

Productivity is Relative

I spent all day on the phone with AT&T. I sat at my desk at work just fucking with my phone, really. I wanted to be able to send MMS. I bought a phone for $330 plus a 2 year contract, damn right I'm getting MMS! Hell, my VX9800 and VX6000 could send MMS! I called tech support a minimum of 5 times today just fucking with settings on my plan. Finally by around 9:30PM or so I was able to get MMS working. It took a long time but it was worth it.

Don't get me wrong, I worked today. I got everything done that was assigned to me. I just devoted most of my time to my phone. I was able to send and receive messages just a few minutes ago. I'm hoping I'll be able to still send and receive tomorrow, a week from now, a month from now, etc. I've heard this can be finecky and work for maybe only a day or work for a few months and then stop. We'll see.

All-in-all, it was a fun day. I got to be so many different people while on the phone. I gave one lady a brow-beating over the phone for telling me the iPhone can't MMS and I was the funniest, nicest guy with another lady. I was the "I know how you system works so just do this and don't ask questions" guy with 2 people, and the helpless customer with another. A great experiment in social engineering, really. Quite amusing to see how different people react to different personalities.

I guess I clean up well

I got a haircut this morning and then headed off to my interview. I bought new windshield wipers on my way back home and had lunch at a place I had wanted to go to for years but they closed too early for me to we get there on time. Apparently my aunt has some tickets to "Guys and Dolls" on Broadway tonight. I didn't want to go but if I don't then they'll go to waste so I'm going tonight.

The interview went very well. They seem to want me there and gave me a tour of the place and introduced me to some of the staff. I got a call from another recruiter this morning offering me another job. It's further away but it's full time, not contract. We'll see what he gets back to me with.

I'll leave you with a pic of me all spiffy for my interview.

Interview

It seems the phone interview went well enough to get me a personal interview on Wednesday. Let's see what happens then. I need to get a haircut on Wednesday before the interview...my hair is totally getting out of control and I can't show up like this. The scary part is that he didn't like one of my answers to his questions on Friday. It seems he's a fan of HTML Tables for layout and positioning. I don't have a problem with tables when they're being used for data, but using them for positioning is a rookie thing to do. That being said, if I get the job I won't walk in there and start tearing tables apart and replacing them, I'll work within my established parameters and get the job done.

Enough work talk. I woke up this morning and wasn't in as much pain as I expected to be. If it didn't cost so much money I'd go skiing next weekend again. Oh well, sometime soon I'll go again, just not yet.

Wish me luck on Wednesday. Let's hope I can wow them!

My God, the Pain

Ow. I just got home from skiing for 8 hours. Fuck, I'm tired. I'm going to bed. It didn't turn out like I thought. I expected the skill to rush back. It doesn't seem to work that way when you haven't gone skiing in ~8 years. I had a LOT of fun, don't get me wrong. Some really funny moments too. It was good to do something different. I need to get in shape so this won't hurt nearly as much. We'll see what kind of shape I'm in tomorrow morning. This ought to be fun.

Snowboarding/Skiing

I was invited to go snowboarding on Sunday. I don't think I will because the package includes a limited lift ticket so I'll not only be limited to the bunny slopes but falling flat on my ass most of the day anyway cuz I've never snowboarded before. Skiing, on the other hand, I've done before. Since I've been poked and prodded into going I figure I'll at least do that so I can actually have fun.

My boss went to a sale last night right by work and I asked her to pick me up a pair of snow pants. I had already made plans, otherwise I would've gone myself. The guy from work that got all of us together to go is lending me a jacket to wear so I should be set as long as I wear enough layers. This should be fun. It's been a while since I've gone skiing.

Also, for those of you wondering, the phone interview went quite well I think. It seems he didn't like my answer to one of his questions though. It seems he's a tables guy and as far as I'm concerned tables have no place on a web page except for tabular data. Oh well, I got all the JavaScript, PHP, and MySQL questions right so that should count for something.

Distracted

I've been terribly distracted while at work. My mind isn't there. I have my phone interview tomorrow at 10am, hopefully I'll be able to impress the guy.

Even though I'm distracted, though, I'm nearly done with my project. Hopefully I'll be done and move on to a new job shortly thereafter. That or by some miracle I'll get laid off and then I can dedicate myself to searching for a job.

That's about it. Nothing big going on.

Snow - Lots of It

It was snowing this morning when I went to work. It had only accumulated on my car and continued that way throughout the day. When I got out of work, however it was a different story. It's accumulating. Luckily I just got my new tires so I was doing fine.

I have a phone interview with a company on Friday. So far they seem impressed. I find that slightly shocking because My resume really only includes 1 job in my field though I have been there for about a year and a half. Apparently though my resume seems weak, the code samples I sent were good enough to get me the interview. The recruiter called me today to tell me about the interview and also told me my writing was impressive. I guess being a grammar nazi pays off :). I only hope I do well on the phone interview; I have no idea what he'll be asking.

I went to my uncle's on Saturday night. He called me on Saturday and asked me to come over and we'd watch the Super Bowl on Sunday. Oddly enough I ended up not watching it. I was having far too much fun playing Wii with my cousin. My boss called me up on Sunday and offered me the day off on Monday. I took it and stayed over an extra night. It was good because I got a few things done. I rewrote my resume and fixed a few things at my uncle's. My cousin then came home from school and I helped him with his homework.

I sometimes hate myself though for my lack of patience. We were working on his homework and for the math, he didn't want to focus. He doesn't like math. He's good at language (English, Spanish, French) and spelling, but doesn't like math. Being a math, grammar guy myself I sometimes forget it doesn't come as naturally to others. I found myself getting aggravated. Luckily I caught myself; I later apologized. He knew the steps he had to take and he knew the math, it was just that his head wasn't there. Once we moved on to the other subjects it was a breeze. He just needs a push for math and I can understand that. History and I didn't get along when I was in school and I'd just about fall asleep while doing the homework. He was getting that sleepy look on Monday while doing the math.

All in all, it was a good weekend. Though I think I'm getting sick.