Jared’s Blog

Looking at my blog, I haven’t written here for over 2 weeks. Has it really been that long? It sure doesn’t feel like it.

Part of the reason I haven’t been blogging may be because I’ve had my head buried in a new language lately, Ruby. For those in the know, I’ve succumb to the buzzwords and taken the plunge into Ruby on Rails.

I guess I should be thanking (blaming?) Jeff, TheHoneymoon’s lead developer for pushing me over the edge. I’d opened the door to Ruby on Rails and poked my head around, but that was as far as I’d taken things. Recently, Jeff (and the other dev types at TheHoneymoon) have been mulling over leaving Java for Ruby on Rails and the last two weeks saw us jump ship entirely.

Two weeks ago, I was given Agile Web Development with Rails and so I set off working my way through building the book’s sample application. When I had finished, I didn’t feel like a Rubyist yet, but I had gained enough knowledge to do some damage.

If anything, I learned that I don’t care if I ever see another line of Java again. I’d even say it takes my preference over PHP. I figured out the reason I really liked PHP was because it reinforced my bad programming habits. I was never all that good at Java which at least enforced object-oriented principles on me. PHP, on the other hand, let me be lazy and code things I pretty much already knew how to do. Sure, you can do OO-PHP, but for me that would require a lot of relearning. Not efficient in the least.
While I was reading, I even tried to take a stab at developing Decoymusic in Rails. I’ve stopped, scraped what I had, and restarted a couple times already (because I keep learning better ways to do things), but I think my decision will still be to rewrite the entire thing in Rails when I get the chance. The current site is pretty hacked together. It works, but it’s got many shortcomings. I think if I can present a core set of features to a few people, it won’t be too hard to convince them this is where we need to go. The hardest thing I’ll probably have to do is convince our web hosting guys to install Rails on our server. Frankly, if I used OO-PHP it would probably be just as good, but this gives me an excuse to further learn Ruby on Rails.

To go with the new programming language, I should be receiving a Macbook Pro in the mail tomorrow. It’s a first generation (Core Duo, not Core 2 Duo) model, but I can’t complain because work bought it for me. We also ordered 2GB of memory from another vendor to max the thing out, but that probably won’t get here for a few more days. I can’t wait. Tomorrow will be like Christmas morning when I was eight years old. It’s funny how the only thing that’s really changed is the pricetag of my toys. Once a gadget-nut, always a gadget-nut.

Last week, Julie brought a little jar of pistachios into the office for all to enjoy (it is a Halloween themed jar!). I really love pistachios, but inevitably I never remember this while I’m at a grocery store.

There I was sipping my tea and crunching away on nuts when I noticed something strange. The nut I’d just cracked open wasn’t separating from it’s husk. I also noticed it was a very dark, almost black. Normally, the nuts are purple, green, and brown in color. I got the nut dislodged to find some sort of dead insect had made it’s home inside the pistachio. I kind of chuckled to myself and went on eating the rest of the nuts taking extra care not to get any extra doses of protein.

After Caroline got off her phone call, I showed it to her and she promptly freaked out. I know it wasn’t intentional, but thanks for the laugh Julie. Happy Halloween all!

Online shopping rules! Why? Part of it is not having to go out and find whatever it is I’m buying. Part of it has to do with me being OCD about privacy. Unfortunately, I can also be an impatient bastard. I hate waiting for my shiny new toys to show up in my mailbox.

Recently, I’ve been ordering a lot of computer parts online through the always solid NewEgg.com and ZipZoomFly.com (formerly GoogleGear.com). First I just had the itch to buy some new parts, then my computer died on me and last night I had to order a part for a machine I’m doing some work on.

One reason I always go back to those sites is because of the service I get. Both companies are great about order processing and returns. It’s impressive when I place an order late one day and it gets shipped the next. However, I have noticed of late how their shipping has gone downhill.

It used to be almost everything on NewEgg had free 3-day shipping. Mostly it was the cheaper, smaller items that cost less than the shipping would. Anything over $30 definitely had free shipping. ZZF was even better. Most of their items had free 2-day shipping. The hard drive I ordered yesterday (from NewEgg) had an additional $6 tacked on for shipping. While I was comparing prices at ZZF, I found many of their items no longer had that 2-day shipping. It was still free at least, but that 2-day shipping was almost always a deal maker for me.

Despite my gripe, these are still two excellent companies even if you do have to pay a few bucks for shipping and wait a week to get your goods.

So what gives? Are rising gas prices to blame? Have NE and ZZF just gotten greedy? Plenty of ecommerce sites have free shipping on orders over $20. Couldn’t these sites do the same?

I’d almost go so far to say as you could build a whole business around the fact that you have fast and free shipping. I’d certainly be more apt to buy something from a site where I knew the product would be on my doorstep by the next day or two. I think others would too.

It’s been one hell of a week at work. After the launch last week, we unveiled a truckload of problems with our backend admin area. The non-tech people didn’t quite understand the meaning of “test” until it was too late it seems. So this week has been full of me trying it put out various small fires; sometimes more than one at a time.

I promised the bosses wife (who is also an employee) that we’d have things fixed by the end of the week and by golly, I think we did it. There is, of course, still some tweaking to be done, but for the most part, we have a functional application that is head over heels above the previous version.

We got the go ahead on a public IP for our self-hosted staging server today, so if things work out by the end of the day, things will be back to order on the development side of things too.

I am really getting comfortable in this company and I can see myself sticking with these people for a long time. Just today, Neal, one of my bosses, walks in and announces he bought us all a massage this afternoon. I think the overall response from all of us was a collective “Whoohoo!” I guess they have a masseuse come in every couple of weeks for the travel agency and Neal decided since we’d all been working hard on the launch that we deserved a massage. I may have to start scheduling regular visits, because I really could benefit. I guess sitting at a comptuer all day (in a chair without armrests at work) is torture for your back. Go figure.

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.

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.