Jared’s Blog

One thing I escaped while working a later shift at Target was traffic. Rarely did I ever run into anything considered bad. Now it is just a daily occurance that I have to sit though for about 30 - 45 min a day.

Yesterday, while sitting in traffic behind a dark green Taurus, I noticed the driver making signals with his hand just above the side mirror. I then noticed the white Malibu 2 cars infront of me with the distinct silhouette of a ponytail. Then I figured it out. They had a sign language. I’m not sure if if was real sign language or not, but they had a good 8-10 different ones which I’m sure all had a predetermined meaning.

What I really love about this situation is most people would just crank up their radio or get on their cell phone if they were stuck in traffic. It just so happened this pair had found a more interesting way to occupy the time and I’d like to think I had too. I stumbled into Communications as a minor in college and it is all making sense why I did now. I’ve always got a kick out of observing people.

The 2006 edition of the Vans Warped Tour rolled through Minneapolis last Sunday (yes, that was Father’s Day and yes, I called my father). Ten solid hours of music and fun in the sun! Well, except that all your favorite bands only play for 20 min, food costs a fortune, and you’re tired and sunburnt by lunchtime.

No really, I enjoy going every year that I can and this year was no different. Rick was supposed to drop by my place about 10, but he was delayed by too many drinks from the night before. After planning to meet up later, I decided to take off for downtown. A little disclaimer: Warped Tour is a long day. I’m sure there’s stuff I’m forgetting. If you were there, feel free to rip me a new one in the comments.
Once I got parked, I made my way to the line only to find Will Call was around the other side of the building. Now being that I was at gate D, I decided to head towards gates A, B, and C thinking that it’d be a shorter walk then if I walked all the way around the other way. Wrong! Turns out the way they had things set up, you couldn’t get around that way without walking around the entire Warped Tour area. I made it about 1/3 the way before I realized this.

Just after I walked up to the line, Birhanzel just about jumped me. I was jealous because he was set up with a photo pass and I wasn’t (I also later found out he interviewed The Bled and Thursday which made me more jealous).  I also connected up with Andy before going inside, but there was no sign of Rick and no answer on his cell phone.

The first thing you do when you get inside Warped is check out the big blow up set list thing. To my surprise Every Time I Die was playing first thing, but I guess they rotate slots on the stages so everyone gets their turn. I didn’t really watch their set though. With some time to kill before the next band I wanted to see, I got a feeling for where each of the stages were and sometime during that, I found Rick.

The first band we went to see was Greeley Estates. I had missed them at Taste of Chaos, so I was excited to see their live show. To make it even better, we were able to be right on the rail. I couldn’t have asked for a better spot to take photos from. Greeley played mostly newer material which I wasn’t quite as familiar with, so that was kind of a bummer, but they were still pretty good.

Next in the day’s sets was The Casualties. I’m not really a fan at all, but I dig any band who’s as hardcore punk as these guys. They’re straight out of 1983. At some point between their set and whoever was playing afterwards on the other main stage, I went and grabbed a $6 gyro from Dino’s. Damn, was that worth $6 in tickets! Though it had a little too much sauce on it and as I was ridding the excess from my food, some girl walked right in front of me and I squeezed some on her. The funny thing was she didn’t notice, and didn’t even turn around. She just kept walking and every step she took I started laughing harder and harder.

The next 2 hours were the best of the day. Anti-Flag, Rise Against, Underoath and Protest the Hero all right in a row. Somewhere in there I walked by the Volcom stage and Amber Pacific was playing. I was only there long enough to snap a few shots and run back to the other stages.

I don’t know what it was about Anti-flag, but they just weren’t as good this year as in years past that I’ve seen them. Consequently, I think they’ve been at all 3 times I went to the Warped Tour. They’re always a good show regardless though.

Rise Against was the next band I saw. Out of every band on that bill, I was most excited to see them and they didn’t disappoint one bit. My only qualm with their set was they played 1 new song. I wanted to hear Chamber the Cartridge, but they only played their latest single, “Ready to Fall.” It’d be really great to see them headlining some time.

Underoath was just as impressive as Rise Against and they played a couple of new songs. To tell the truth, I was fighting the crowd most of their set trying to get some good shots, but they didn’t really work out. I couldn’t make it very close to the front and there was too much movement to get a clear shot of the stage. Finally, I just gave up on the camera and enjoyed their set, which was absoultely stunning.

As I said, things just kept going and Protest the Hero was no let down. I thouroughly enjoy this band and they are a treat to see live. Protest wins the prize for highest rolled up pants. Their bassist Arif was sporting these white pants that were rolled all the way up. They looked kind of like a cross between boxers and a big diaper. To top it all off the dude is rockin a Dragonforce shirt. How can you not like these guys? Oh, did I mention they shred? My best shots of the day came from Protest. I guess I hit my stride early in the day.

Again there was a short break in the day, so Rick and I decided to go find some shade to chill in. As we were sitting there, a dude came up to us with an iPod and a box of CDs. As it turns, out he was from the band Nural. A band which Rick had reviewed on Decoy and liked. Surprised, the guy stopped trying to sell us CD’s and instead we had a short chat about Decoy and his band. I can’t blame him for doing what he could to get his band out there, but at the same time I hate pushy people like that.

After that I started browsing through the set lists again. I swore my eyes were decieving me because as I was browsing, I see No Trigger, this awesome band from MA. They sort of sound like A Wilhelm Scream and are on the same label. Well it turns out they were on one of the small side stages and we had time to see them. That made my day right there. 20 people rocking out to a really good band that really deserves more attention. Without the crowd to get in the way, I could really take my time with photos and I grabbed a bunch of great ones from No Trigger.

Things were pretty much winding down around this time and I had seen pretty much all the bands I wanted to see. Rick and I caught sets by Over It, From Autumn to Ashes, and part of Thursday’s, none of which were all that memorable.
Things finished up with The Bled and NOFX. The Bled was stellar as usual. This was the third time I’d seen them, but they were entertaining nonetheless. As much as I grew up on punk, I was never a NOFX fan. I’m getting to like them more now, but there’s a dozen other punk bands I’d rather listen to. That aside, these guys are hilarious, especially Fat Mike. Every time they’d be about to start a song, the drummer would count them off and then Fat Mike would say something or just mess up and not start the song.  They started one song a total of 4 times. The entire set, he was ripping into Underoath for having a bible study after the tour. As a non-Christian I found the ribbing pretty funny, but I could see a lot of people getting pissed off. For anyone else playing, this would’ve been a terrible set, but because this is the almighty NOFX, they can get away with making it great.

And now is where I would normally post all my pictures from the show. Instead, I’m going to be lazy and just link to my Decoy album for Warped Tour instead..

I made it though my first day at my new job. It was relatively boring as far as days go. I came in bright and early, but no one was in the office yet. I talked to the receptionist, Joyce, for a little bit until someone came to let me into my office. I should say, don’t take that to mean I have my own office. We essentially have a suite in an office-type building. There’s a bank, the Richfield Commerce Center offices, a restaurant named Hoolihan’s, some kind of clinic, and of course Carrousel Travel.

I’m not sure if I mentioned it yet, but Carrousel is kind of our parent company. Moreso that the main travel agent, Neal, is half-owner of The Honeymoon Registry. So we kind of have 2 offices in this building. A lot of resources are shared between the businesses too like the computer network and some servers.

The office is very quiet. It was only Brian, the summer intern, and I in the office for awhile and then Julie, who is the owner, Scott’s wife, came in to do some paperwork. There’s a new woman that’s taking over her job soon as I understand it though and she is going to focus more on the marketing aspects of the business. Everyone seems to be pretty quiet, so I just keep quiet too.
I couldn’t really do much on the computer as I wasn’t given a login until later in the day and up until about 20min before I was leaving I didn’t have the proper rights to get things installed that I needed. So, most of the day I spent just familiarizing myself with their website frontend and backend.

Today is day 2, and it’s been much more eventful. I have a key now so I can come in any time I want. I also have a working login, so I got right to getting a development environment set up. I even got to come in really late today because Scott is meeting with Brian and I to go over some things later tonight and we anticipated sticking around late.

Shockingly, I was also handed a check today for my 2 days work. I wasn’t expecting that, but hey, it’s money. I’m not going to state exactly how much, but I’ll just say it wasn’t much less than I’d make at Target in a full week. That just goes to show how little I was actually living on (and still am living on for a little bit).
I haven’t gotten to jump in and do any actual programming yet. I still am afraid there’s going to be a lot of learning to do before I really feel comfortable. Now I just need to finish setting up my tools, which I’m going to get to right now.

Wasting away… Those are the only words I can describe the feeling of having to come to Target for work everyday since I was hired by The Honeymoon Registry a week ago. Initially, I was a little excited last week just because I got to go in and tell them I quit.

Monday I made sure to send off my letter of resignation right away to my contract rep at TEKSystems. I waited all day and no response. So Tuesday I came in and still nothing, no reply in my inbox, no phone messages, nothing. I decided to call the office and speak to my rep who I’d never once spoken to before (long story made short, he took over me in the middle of my contract). The guy had never called me. Well, no luck no answer. I did leave a message though and a few hours later he called back.

After talking to Mike, I had basically set the ball rolling. He had me notify Target because our Target rep was gone for the day. I shoot off another email to my manager letting him know. He came by later to talk to me. Unfortunately, I wasn’t going to be released immediately like I thought. I figured they wouldn’t care about some contractor who decided to leave. Well, it turns out they were much more understaffed than I thought. Brian couldn’t really tell me much other than that he’d talk to his supervisor so we could settle on a final date.

Wednesday, I met with my supervisor right away was told they are so understaffed they’d like me to stay until the next Friday. He also said that he understood if I didn’t want to stay and he didn’t want to keep me from what I wanted to be doing, which was a very nice thing to say in his position. I took some pity and agreed to stay through this Sunday (tomorrow).

Some might find it weird having your last day on a Sunday. Immediately I was too, but the more I thought about it, the better it sounded. My last days are a weekend which tends to be less busy. I don’t have to bother with all the goodbyes, because really, I’ve said my goodbyes to those I care about. I’d rather not have another akward conversation about how I’m leaving with another manager. I’m pretty much just going to finish my shift (of course no one will be around because it’s the late shift) and then just drop my badge off at the guard desk on the way out never to set foot in this place again.

I’m also really glad because Scott has allowed me to take a couple days off before I start. I told him I would be ready to go bright and early Monday morning, but he suggested time off to “recharge the batteries.” I took him up on the offer and decided to take Monday off. I was encouraged to take more than that though and finally settled on taking both Monday and Tuesday off before starting. So, Wednesday next week is going to be the big day. I’ve already got the job, now it’s time to do it.

I’m a little nervous as to how my coding skills will stack up with this. It seems like it’s been ages since I did any formalized programming. And I’ve never done any enterprise programming. I anticipate quite a bit of learning going on in the first 2-3 months. I’m pretty good with learning things on my own and having the programming background I do now, it should work out. I know from going back to some of my early coding projects in college that that stuff now is just simple stuff. I’m hoping the same will happen with this new job. In no time I’ll be flying around this app like I’ve known it for years.

Still, having to relearn Java in an enterprise setting in addition to all the other frameworks and stuff they use is going to be a task. Then at the same time I’m trying to get a grasp on Ruby on Rails because that’s what we’re going to be moving to. I guess thinking about things now, this is what I wanted. I’m going to be a programmer!

FINALLY! It’s about the only word that sums this up. I was offered a job doing web development, something I love, for an online company. Part of my job is to know what is hot on the web and in web development and how to integrate it into our site. The rest of my job will involve coding Java with Hibernate and some UI design. I really don’t know what percentages of my job each of those primary tasks will be, but any way it works out is cool with me.

When I first read this job posting, I think my jaw hit the floor. I couldn’t believe there was a job that would pay me for just being me, a dork. Keeping with with what’s hot on the web and in web development is something I do a lot of the time anyway.

I’m going to call this company “Web 2.0 friendly.” Scott, the owner, has been encouraging me to learn Ruby on Rails, and I’m up to the task. I’m essentially going help make this site next generation. We’re going to work on using as much of the cutting edge tools out there to make our site the best. He also told me he’s considered allowing me to work on a personal project during work hours. I would love that. I could devote time to Decoy and really push it. Maybe if I didn’t work on Decoy directly though. Maybe I developed my own backend for the site or something. Like a zine CMS or something.
The business is honeymoons. The idea is a couple would go to thehoneymoon.com and register (by the way it’s free). Then they would get set up with a package. These are usually all-inclusive trips. They’re pretty nice from what I hear. Then their wedding guests can purchase shares of their honeymoon. We charge a fee to cover our services. The idea really is brilliant. My mom mentioned it is perfect for older couples or people who are getting married for a 2nd or 3rd time. They don’t need all the stuff to start a home like a pair of young newlyweds does. They would much rather go on a nice trip. It’s so obvious!

I was informed tonight that the position has been offered to me and I plan to gladly accept. I was also given the chance to do something interesting: give myself a title. I can pick any title I want. Anything! I’m leaning towards something like Web Development Analyst or Web Technologies Specialist. It has to say something about the fact that I’ll be doing web development and design and then I also want to incorporate something that reflects the cutting edge web development tools I’ll be analyzing. I have to get back to Scott by tomorrow so reply quick!