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When I was first hired at Expedient Communications, I had a feeling of excitement, and uncertainty. I had absolutely no idea what I was in for, and I had relatively little experience in the corporate world. I had worked at United States Steel for about 3 months as an intern, but I hated that experience because I was literally given nothing to do except for bits and scraps of projects. I mostly ran queries on Oracle databases for an Information Architect and wrote JSP pages. I don’t remember any JSP anymore.
At Expedient, things were different. I had lots to do pretty much the entire time I was there. I was introduced to a world of change control, tickets, SVN, and feedback meetings. It was basically what I had been desiring for a long time in terms of a professional environment. One of my biggest regrets I have about what I could have done at SAI was how unstructured all the project management was. Literally nothing was really planned, it was all mapped out on the fly with little to no documentation, or accountability as to when it would be done or by whom. I should have taken that responsibility and I didn’t.
At Expedient, my boss was 2 years new to the company and they had already given him control of our department, Systems Development. He was very good at his job, a programmer of extreme caliber who almost seemed to miss nothing when it came to planning a project or writing code. He gave me a great idea of what project life-cycles are like in the real world.
About two weeks into the job, I had a personal meltdown. For reasons unknown, I asked myself if this was really what I wanted to do. I was so freaked out about it that I almost couldn’t work for an hour. I had to talk to Lauren to calm myself down. I ended up being obsessed with it for another week and a half. I came to the conclusion that while I enjoyed the work I did at Expedient, my desired career would be to end up at a company whose business was web development.
I had been interested in a specific company for a long time. I had the benefit and pleasure of working with BarkleyREI when Cal U was getting a new website. They are an interactive media company located in the Strip District of Pittsburgh. I was so impressed by their work that I had always wanted to work for them, even while I was at Cal U. In fact, when I was planning to leave SAI, BarkleyREI was the first company I applied to. They didn’t have any positions open, so I simply sent them a resume to consider. I never got a response from them and ended up getting the job at Expedient about a month after I started looking. I was hired and started on Feb. 14th, 2011.
After 2 months of Expedient, I decided (on a whim) to check if Barkley was hiring. It was the following weekend after Easter weekend. It was strange that over the weekend I had expressed to my family my feelings about Expedient, and how I admired Barkley and wanted to ultimately work there. It almost seemed like fate when I pulled up their careers page and found an opening for a Front End Web Developer/Interface Programmer that had literally been posted that day. I immediately whipped up a current resume, pounded out a cover letter that basically gushed my love for their company, and sent them an e-mail. The following Monday, I got a call from someone asking to schedule a phone interview!
They ended up scheduling my interview for the following Monday. I was busy that whole week so that was the only day I could do it. I sat in the parking lot of a Taco Bell, racking my brain as they asked me questions about HTML, CSS, jQuery, web standards, and other things technical. They were extremely pleased with my answers, and as soon as I hung up the phone I started crying. I was ecstatic about how well it went. The very next day, I got an e-mail from Barkley to schedule a face to face interview. I told them I could do any day except Mondays after 4 PM. They said “how about today?” After a “Go for it!” from Lauren, I left work early to speed downtown and got there at 4:00 on the dot. I talked to about 5 different people, but they didn’t ask anything technical. I didn’t expect them to. They had already grilled me over the phone and this was just them having me come in so they could gauge me on a personal level and ask me some basic questions about what I expected from the job. I was totally honest about what I wanted my career to be, and they were all suprised about how I had found out about the job, and how I knew about Barkley from Cal U. Also, while I was there I saw someone whom I had met during the Cal U project, Chris Cox, who recognized me and wished me luck after saying hi.
I was sent home with instructions that I would be getting a coder test in my e-mail. I got it late that night due to their network giving them problems and my Gmail sending it to Spam. I opened the test and it was three assignments.
1. Take a flat image and turn it into a valid HTML + CSS file. It has to work in all modern and semi-modern browsers.
2. Create a calculator from javascript. I can use jQuery if I want.
3. Extend an XSLT file to include a for loop through any nodes I want in a corresponding XML file.
When I got this test, I was so nervous and intimidated by it that I threw up, and the next three days I was nearly crippled from stress. I even missed a few days of work because I was so messed up that I got really really sick and had to stay in bed. I barely ate anything for three days. I was so weak I could barely move. I got the test on Tuesday, and I completed it on Wednesday and sent it in. On Friday, I got a call from Barkley saying they got my test, it looked great, but I needed to do one more thing. I took a test called the Caliper test, which was a mix between a personality test and the SATs. It was really weird. Also, on Thursday, someone called me to talk to me about the benefits and ask if I had any questions. Things were looking good.
[ I have removed my salary and benefits from this post. ]
I’m so psyched for this job I can hardly wait. Today was my last day at Expedient and Tuesday is my first day at BarkleyREI. The future seems bright for me!
TL;DR I worked at Expedient for 3 months, then landed my dream job at Barkley REI. I start on Tuesday.
Hopefully the SEO magic of my title will help some other people searching for this.
I spent the last day or two looking for a solution to send a command to a screen in unix. A screen is basically a backgrounded session that you can run programs in. It’s a shoddy explanation, so go google what it REALLY is.
Anyway, a really simple way to send a command to a screen is this:
First, create the screen and detach it:
screen -dmS nameofscreen
Now we can send commands to it!
screen -S nameofscreen -X eval “stuff ‘COMMAND’\015”
This is a super basic way to send a command and “hit enter” after it, and the screen will run whatever you put in. This was seriously the only way that worked for me, so let me know if there is something more simple. EnjoyThis all started with my catalytic converter. I ended up getting that replaced for free, but there were numerous other things fixed.
Here’s what they did:
Something involving my brakes (it says “BRAKES F 8B R 3B TIRES 2/32”)
Replaced the rear wheel cylinders
Replaced both tie rod ends
Replaced the front control arm bushings
Multipoint inspection
PA State Safety Inspection ( I did not have to do emissions, because of where I live )
Replaced the Exhaust Manifold (My converter, but it was covered under warranty)
Fixed the Flex Pipe
The men at the dealer were probably the nicest men I’ve ever dealt with anywhere, and the service manager, Jim Downs, is a friend of my uncle and is probably my hero right now. Despite the price it turned out to be, he still saved me hundreds of dollars in other areas.
They waved me in when I arrived, greeted me by name, had my car all warmed up already, washed, and waiting for me to go.
It cost me 750 bucks. A bad bill to get at Christmas time, but it’s better than paying a car payment AND having to pay for repairs.
It’s all over now. My car works, is quieter than it used to be, and I’m finally home at my computer, waiting for my girlfriend to arrive.
So, last Thursday, I decided that with my paycheck, I would be a good little borrower and pay my student loans early this month.
NOPE.
According to the ancient machinery that runs my lender, they don’t bill your bank account automatically because your bill is due. They do it because the calendar says so.
On the lighter side of things, I will pay off my loans a month earlier than planned.
I’ve come to the conclusion that I hate all the shows on the food network that follow this formula:
1. Three head bakers from three bakeries around the country.
2. Two judges that are the best in their “cake field”, sometimes a third judge, and the client.
3. They have 6 - 9 hours to make one cake themed a certain way.
I think this formula is BULLSHIT. I highly doubt that even the best baker on Earth could make a prestine cake in any theme with limited resources and staff in 6 - 9 hours. They basically give them a fridge, a conventional oven, a tray of ingredients, and an airbrush. Thats it. Here, make a 300 pound, 6 foot high cake about monkeys in 6 hours.
And then, it gets hilarious. All the judges wander around and criticize (not critique) all the bakers about how shitty of a job they are doing. They should just skip the BS artsy fartsy language and say “This cake sucks. Your fondant looks like a vagina. I don’t even want to eat the cereal treats you used.” All their criticism is vague and bland, like “you really didn’t take this seriously and show the style I’m sure you are capable of.” Well excuuuuuuse me Mr. Fantastic Cupcake Maker. Let me go and read some philosophy on art.
Next is another kicker. Usually each team has to overcome some ridiculous feat of strength or finesse to move their cake to the show room. Sometimes it’s as simple as carrying it to a table. Other times they make you wheel a cart up a 30 degree, 8 foot long incline and hope you don’t drop it or knock it over.
Usually the cake that wins is the one that sucks ass the least, unless of course, as portrayed by an episode I saw last night of some stupid cake competition, you whine about not winning the past 5 contests you were a part of. Then you can win. Hooray for you.
The prize was 10,000 bucks. I bet Buddy Valestro makes that in a day from cake sales. He’d probably beat the shit out of them anyway if he even dreamed about competing.
Anyway, I hate cake competition shows.
Our Dave, who art in podcast, hallowed be thy intro. Thy edits done, exporting one, to osx from garageband. give us this day our usual sound clips, and forgive us of swear words, as we are not marked explicit in iTunes. And lead us not beyond one hour, but give us some topics, for thine is the itunes store, and the website, and the subscribe link forever. Steve has friends.
I see more and more on Forrst all these youngins that start up companies while still in middle school, and people who quit their jobs to work from their bedroom.
I love the web, but I’ve honestly never been interested in doing any sort of freelance or independent work whatsoever. I’ve only ever done web projects or work while being employed by someone, and have every intention of working for someone until I retire.
What’s your opinion on this? Anyone with me?
I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to design myself a decent looking blog.
So, I’ve decided to do a couple things.
1. Redirect the home page of nessthehero.com to my Tumblr blog.
2. Completely eradicate my wordpress.
3. Use the theme I have set up right now, but modify it to my liking.
I plan on writing some neat code tidbits to spiff up my pages and show off my programming skills, but I cannot lie about myself by designing anything. I can’t design shit.
I tried to make a template for the longest time, and you can find evidence of that on Forrst and even a post or two back from this post! I just can’t visualize what I want, so for now, I’ve stopped designing and now I’m gonna start coding.
So, is there anything you think I should show off on nessthehero.com?
