Russellmania 2015 - Finally

06.25.2015

After nearly 3 months of nothing going on, the new and improved Russellmania is now available with less content!

Why less content? The last version of the site had been live for almost 6 years. There was a lot of bloated content. I had made my own content management system. Over the course of those 6 years I both forgot a lot of what was going on in my head when I wrote that code - to the point it was a pain to add anything new - as well as learned better ways to write that old code. The problem there was the code was so twisted about to make the site properly work, I knew trying to tweak anything would probably break the whole site. For the past year I've been meaning to start over. So I did.

Instead of making everything from scratch I based the layout on a responsive template. For once, I'm using a white background - that freaks me out a little. I went back and had to tweak old blog entries to make them layout properly in HTML5. There will still be some weird styling issues with old posts, but everything should be readable. Old links may be broken (well, that's always the case). Internal links to gaming stuff won't work unless it's a Zombie Mall post. I'm not hand-writing HTML in my blog post entries anymore. Instead I'm using an editor that's smarter than I am and converts all of this plain text properly. No more fancy layouts in my blog posts! This also affects the old posts, as the pop up gallery viewer I was using is no more.

Enjoy the new Russellmania. Don't be surprised as little things change as I notice them, probably right after you, the public, get annoyed by something and have a deep desire to bring it to my attention.

Permalink programming/interweb

Workshop Games Begone

02.10.2015

For some reason it's hard to let old websites die. Once you go through the impossible task of finding a domain name that isn't taken, but still close to a combination of words you want, there's a certain pride in ownership of that name. Plus, if I thought of a name it's only a matter of time before someone else thinks of it, and I hate being the person that thinks of a name after it's been taken.

I registered russellmania.com in August of 1999. Most of the search engine hits are looking for

• Russell Wilson - since winning the Super Bowl in 2014.
• Russell Crowe - I guess it'd make a perfect fan site.
• Jack Russell Terriers - at one time they had russellmania.org.
• A 2001 episode of NYPD Blue.

When I've had a domain for 15+ years, the odds are good I'm going to hold on to it until I will it on to WWE Jason. Honestly, he asked for it.

In Feb 2013 I started another website on a lark. I had been working on my Zombie Mall boardgame and wondering where to host the files. Over on Board Game Geek a flame war (of sorts) had started thanks to Games Workshop trying to enforce their copyright of the term "Space Marine" against an author who was using the term in a way which had nothing to do with the Games Workshop universe. Games Workshop is universally hated among the hardcore board gaming sect that doesn't play Games Workshop games because they're quick to jump on anyone close to threatening, abusing, or using their intellectual property. Intellectual property is how they make money, so you can't really blame them - Steve Jackson does it all the time.

The smart ass in me was poking around and noticed the hyphen in the http://www.games-workshop.com/ domain. I wondered if "workshop-games" was taken. It wasn't! $15 later I had a new domain name with which to host my Zombie Mall files. I made sure that the website in no way resembled the Games Workshop site, not did it even mention them. Now I could wave my finger in the face of he British gaming jugernaut when they claimed I was infringing on their name.

They never showed their face. Poopheads.

In the interim I played around with some more up-to-date design methods than I had been using at work (or even on this site). I added a download tracker so I could see what files were be downloaded, and to what countries!

Over time, the site became more of a chore and infringed on the fun I was having putting together my boardgame rules and pieces. After enough time, I got to the point where I didn't really want to make more game rules. It was becoming a chore I didn't even want to do.

When the domain came up for renewal in 2015 I decided to let it lapse. I moved the files to Dropbox where anyone interested could still download the files, the files I hand't touched in almost a year. I updated links on Board Game Geek to point to the new locations. And now I've no longer got a domain to worry about keeping up to date or hogging up loads of bandwidth.

But it's not easy to just let it go. Even though I've left it alone for a year. Maybe this is what it's like when the kids move out?

Permalink programming/interweb

Work Week 1.5

12.21.2014

Thus far I've been working a week and a half at Dealnews. My contribution has consisted of the following code being rolled into production:

&& !Browser::is_mobile()

A month ago I didn't even know the above was a valid way of referencing a PHP method. I've been writing PHP since ~2001. Granted, I've never gotten deep into PHP objects and how to properly use them. I knew a big part of this job would be learning both the right way to do things I've taken for granted once I learned a way that worked, as well as how many different ways something works now versus how I hacked something together back in 2001.

But after a week and a half I've managed 22 characters of usable code. That will humble you when you're a senior level programmer with 15+ years of experience.

Most of my past week has been navigating existing code a learning where things are done & then how they're done. To add to my humbling, I've been ramping up on the Yahoo JavaScript library that they use, which has loads more depth that the simple JavaScript I can claim to know.

My saving grace for what seems to be my slow development progress is that I'm touching lots of different places with my code. Multiple databases, JavaScript, PHP, some CSS. I'm over thinking my task, which is a combination of not wanting to break anything along with poking around where this code is touched to see how it works over there, and then over there.

All of that experience I'm supposed to have tends to get me to think of the big picture, so instead of excitedly typing away at what I've been assigned I instead poke around and see what all might break if I started blindly typing. That's led me to 2 big "what if" questions so far that have hopefully kept me from doing something stupid. I hate doing something stupid.

With any luck I can wrap up my little over-thought task before Christmas. If I knew what I was doing it would take a couple of hours to get everything coded and working instead of the 2 weeks I seem to be taking. But I can be sure that this little bad boy is going to work like a charm once I claim to be done with it.

Permalink programming/interweb

DealNews Day 1

12.10.2014

Today was day 1 of employment at DealNews, my first job with a commercial (non-government contracted) job since 2003. I was ready for a non-government contracted job, at least in spirit. Today was not a typical sit around filling out paperwork and reading day. Today was instead a hands-on, this is how things work day. The job description advertises that you'll likely roll out code to the production site on your first day, and that's just what happened. Granted, the code consisted of 2 lines that I basically copied from another file, but the meat of this was learning the process by which to to make the change, commit the file(s), and have everything smoothly go live.

Smoothly may not have been the best word choice, but nothing broke on the live site!

The hard part of this job, at least from my first-day perspective, will be getting used to navigating using a Mac and running command line Linux again. For the first time since 1997 I ran vi to edit a file and after a couple of foggy attempts at how to enable editing the text file and saving changes, I slowly remembered a couple of commands. Granted, I'll seldom use vi, but I had to edit a 4-line file on a server that I'm not real sure how I was connected, so my gui options for getting to the file were limited.

I'll most likely forget a lot of what I learned today by the time I wake up. Instead of taking the detailed notes that I enjoy referring back to, I was instead following along and blindly typing to keep up most of the time. near the end of the afternoon things slowed down enough I could ask my stupid questions about how some things worked, and those answers will likely keep a little longer. Still, I took in a whooooole lot of info today.

I liked today though. It was a long day (I haven't worked a 8-9 hour work day in a long time!), but I enjoyed it. More importantly, I'm looking forward to going back in the morning.

I've gotta fit in some note taking so I can remember more of this stuff though.

Permalink programming/interweb

Job Search 2014

12.03.2014

For 4 months I was unemployed. Oddly enough, I guessed I would be unemployed for 4 months, which sounded about the average from what I've heard as far as what I do and the experience I have in doing it. I loved working for Spiritus, the company. I had a great boss that took care of everybody, I got to work with my best friend (who technically was my supervisor in the org chart, which we both made fun of). The drawback was that I hated my day-to-day job of going out on the Arsenal and the work environment that came with it. After almost 3 years of driving out there, plus around 7 of working on the same project that had evolved into a completely different project, I was ready for a change. When the project was transferred to another contract and company I decided to not pursue the position I held - it might be too easy to stick with what I was doing out of security and try to overlook that I no longer liked what I was doing. Instead I depended on Gina and the good people that pay Alabama taxes to support me while I tried to find something else.

Since the last time I was unemployed, all job listings for what I do are only listed online, so no more looking through newspapers for want-ads. Now it's a daily grind through job search engines. I had 16 bookmarks for job searches, although some were duplicates to differentiate between "php developer" and "web developer". Most sites listed the same jobs but there were enough differences to keep me looking at them all.

In the beginning my goal was to find a job in a work environment I liked with people I enjoyed working with (mark the Arsenal off the list) along with a programming language I'm comfortable enough with that I think I'm actually good (enter PHP web development, vs the C# I've been hacking away at for 3 years). I knew I would have to take a cut in salary from what I was used to making, but that's due mostly to Spiritus taking extremely good care of everyone. My goal was to try and not take more than a 31% cut, but I was realistically able to accept a 40% hit for something I liked and still be able to pay my bills.

I started out applying for the jobs that sounded good and for which I thought I was qualified. I heard nothing back. In the second month I got called in for 1 interview doing PHP development for a company that does streaming video conferencing. After the 30 minute interview that they said they would get back to me I never heard anything from them again.

I applied for lots of jobs. After 4 months I started applying for the government contractor jobs I didn't really want - the ones I really only felt marginally qualified for, but my resume showed my experience. I had phone screenings/interviews, some of which I could tell that I was in no way really a match for. In the fourth month I had my second face-to-face interview, this time for a job doing government sub-contracting where I only matched half the skills they were looking for. I nice enough interview, but I could tell at the end I didn't have enough of what they were looking for.

I applied at Dealnews, where Keith works. This was the best match of them all. Thanks to gaming with some of the Dealnews crew I had a good idea of the environment as well as the people. It's a PHP shop, albeit with more advanced programming techniques than I'm used to (mainly because my PHP experience has been me, Google, and Jerry's brain). It took some time, but I eventually had a phone interview with them.

Then things got interesting.

On a Friday morning I got a call from a company that had gotten my resume from the person I talked to at Interview #2. This company supported the one I interviewed with and in talking together they thought I would be a great fit for this position. The guy on the phone goes on and asks me a couple of questions.
Do you program in Java? No.
Do you have any Android Mobile Development experience? I've made websites that are mobile compatible, but not anything native to Android.
Have you made test plans?
At this point I've noticed I've been basically answering no to all of his questions. In addition, he's gotten my resume from someone who I interviewed with and he's hitting the key points I was lacking in that interview. Instead of saying no again, I decide to stretch the truth and fall back on Google tutorials later if it comes to it.
I've made test plan documentation, but not written code to automatically test code modules. Sounds like I know what I'm talking about, doesn't it?

He asked a few more questions and told me someone from HR would call later. He stressed how they were looking to fill this position immediately, and that seemed to be a big deal. 15 minutes later, a girl from HR called. She asked some HR questions and asked me to go onto their website and fill out an application. That's fine, I've got a version on my resume that's copy/paste friendly for most places and how they want their input formatted. I went and filled it out, surprised it was as easy as 4 steps and just needed me to upload my resume.

Around 3:30 Friday afternoon I get a phone call from the HR girl that my application isn't complete, which seems to happen a lot. It seems the application process changes after uploading your resume to where it's not intuitive that there's still 7 more steps. Ok, fair enough, I can copy and paste stuff like I was expecting. The HR girl tells me to finish that, but that the person that will look it over probably won't get to it until Monday. Hopefully things will go fast and they'll get an offer letter out to me the first part of the week.

After getting off the phone it hit me she said offer letter where I was expecting set up an interview. Plus, I didn't really know what this job that I applied for entailed, since I basically answered no to 75% of the questions I was asked on the phone. Oh well, we'll see what happens.

Come the following Monday I got a call from Vanderbilt in Nashville. Thanks to Dr Blondie moving and taking a job there, I applied for a PHP position mostly for fun and partially as an extreme backup (it's a heck of a commute). They wanted to interview me, so I set up and interview for Friday afternoon, the next day. Mainly this was my excuse to visit Dr Blondie and her new digs. It would also get me my 3rd face-to-face interview and if nothing else I thought I needed the practice.

Since things were moving on the job front I decided to bug Keith about Dealnews. The following week was Thanksgiving, so I figured nothing would happen until after the holiday - probably nothing until after Christmas. Keith told me he heard they were planning on setting up interviews early in the week before Thanksgiving. Well that was a surprise! I wonder if I'll get called in? I sure hope so.

Tuesday and Wednesday go by without interest, and on Thursday I start thinking about my trip to Nashville the next day. Then the phone rings and it's the HR girl from last week. Sorry it's taken this long to get back to you. We're getting the final 2 signatures on your offer letter and then I'll get it sent out to you.. Offer letter? From a phone interview. Really? Ok.

A couple of hours later I get the offer letter emailed to me. It's a nice salary - only a 20% cut from what I used to make. The letter only states position title (Engineer/Scientist IV) and bi-weekly salary. No mention of what I'll be doing. Or where. Also they want an answer by Monday.

Even though I have no idea what this job really is, it's the first offer I've had in 4 months. 4 months was my "oh shit I've got to start looking for any job" start point. I called the HR girl and asked about a start date. Since next week was Thanksgiving I was expecting her to say the following Monday. Oh these guys wanted you to start last Sunday so the sooner the better. Really? How about Monday, before Thanksgiving, would that be ok?

It was. We set everything up to start on Monday. But before then, I took a trip to Nashville to see Dr Blondie. And have an interview.

On the trip to Nashville Friday morning I got 3 calls from the job I just accepted and was starting on Monday. There were confirmations that paperwork was going back and forth along with setting up times and places for me to be Monday morning. As I was pulling into the Vandy parking garage I got a different phone call. From Dealnews. To set up an interview on Tuesday.

I smiled. I smiled big.

We set up the interview for Tuesday and I went to my interview at Vandy. The Vandy guys are nice and the interview went well, but I could tell I'm too old-fashioned for them in my programming mentality. Best of all I got to hang out with Dr Blondie afterwards, and I managed not to embarrass her at work like she was afraid I would do.

Come Monday I started the new job and did paperwork and reviewed documentation all day. At the end of the day I still didn't know what I was supposed to be doing. The next day I went to work, then in the afternoon I went to Dealnews and had my interview. I think it was an interview. Mainly I felt like I was hanging out and telling a couple of guys, 2/3 of which I had never met before, about some of the stuff I had done and people I had known. Then I went back to work and read more paperwork.

After the first week of work I felt like I was once again in a government contracting job, and it was just a 3-day week thanks to Thanksgiving! The people were better than the batch I was stuck with on the Arsenal. The daily environment wasn't as depressing as the Arsenal. Good lord but there's a bunch of politics going on within this project though. There are 2 sub-contractors that it seems secretly don't get along, and they have to share resources. That's the short version. From what I had heard about the contract I had a bad feeling long term. Maybe it was because I've gotten laid off twice due to government contract changes? I could be contract gun- shy!

Monday after Thanksgiving I get back to the grind. More documentation. 3 meetings amongst the 2 companies I'm involved with. In the morning I get a call from Dealnews HR that they're going to call my references in case I want to warn them (that's exactly how she said it!). Well I guess they wouldn't go to this trouble if they weren't going to go forward with me. Call away! I quickly txt all my references to warn them of the glowing recommendations they're about to have to make up, which they all do.

At this point I get a txt from Jerry who asks what I'm going to do if they make me an offer. This is the place that I feel I want to work at, that's a good fit. I'm not sure if I've been intentionally picking out the negatives of the job I started last Monday to make it easier to switch in case the offer is substantially less. But I tell him unless the offer it below X (which is $15K below the new job), I'll take it and not think twice. He then asks me when I think I'll hear back about an offer and what I think it'll be.

I smile again, which he doesn't know because we're texting. When everything happened at once with all the interviews and original job offer I got the feeling that Mom was behind it all. She's been gone almost 7 years but I still admit she looks after me. At this point Tuesday, the next day, would be the 6th anniversary of the day she died. "They're going to make me an offer tomorrow for Y (I picked $10K below the new job)" He asked if I would take that? Yep, without thinking twice.

Tuesday, the next day, at 9:30 in the morning, I got the phone call telling me the offer. It was for $10K more than the new job I just started, which was only 12% less than I used to make at Spiritus. Mom's still looking after me, and I start Dec. 10!

Now I've got a job to go quit.

---

Throughout the job search I kept up with where I applied to (so I wouldn't apply for the same job over and over) as well as what happened afterward.

• Total Jobs Applied For: 55
• Phone Interview/Screenings: 8
• Face-to-face interviews: 3
• Rejection Emails: 10
• Never heard anything after applying: 33
• Job listing went away (some of the jobs I never heard back from are still listed): 15
• Job Offers: 2
• Job offers from people I never met: 1

Permalink mom programming/interweb