Dav's Rants and Random Thoughts

Tonight I have phone interviews with both Yahoo! and Google. Those are interesting, but I don't think I would like to relocate to their areas, the cost of living would be a great deal higher that what I would like. Don't get me wrong, I would love to work for either one of them. But I have a family to worry about & I can't risk losing anything that I already have. The more that I think about it, the more I really like the idea of moving to the South West. We love to go hiking & the thought of the Grand Canyon being so close is an awesome idea. Oh well.. Let's just see how this week goes & what it has in store for us.

I have just uploaded the first public release of blogCal. You can get a copy here or by downloading it from the link on the right. If you have any questions or comments please let me know. Update: Here is a list of todo items for blogCal:

1. Drop the prototype library in favor of the Javascript Behaviors library.
2. Remove the requirement for the back end PHP file.. Using DOM to parse the already existing archive lists.
3. Incorporate popup divs to display titles of posts for each day.

I have updated blogCal to version 0.1.2. It contains minor bug fixes. Mainly it fixes the non-standards complaint Internet Explorer. It should now be fully functional in Internet Explorer. I also added the ability to pass the number of calendar months to draw. You can do this by passing a number to the show method. Example: <div id="blogcal"></div> <script type="text/javascript">     blogCal.show(3); </script>

I found this on the net, I thought someone might enjoy it. Rule 1: Life is not fair – get used to it! Rule 2: The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself. Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both. Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping. They called it opportunity. Rule 6: You are accountable for your own actions. If you mess up it’s not your teachers fault, your parents fault, or your enemies fault. It’s your own fault. Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room. Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life. Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and no employer is interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time. Rule 10: Television in NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop to go to jobs. Rule 11: Be nice to geeks. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

Just testing the flikr integration with pictures.

Donna & I have been talking more and more seriously about moving. We are thinking about heading south. A place with nicer weather, better scenery & in general more things to do. I have started applying for positions in South Carolina, Florida, Southern Georgia, California, Nevada & Arizona. If someone reads this and is interested in offering me a position, please drop me an email.

I almost forgot to post this. The couple that made the offer on my house got financing, so we are on schedule to close on April 28^th. To make things more interesting, the school district says that Zach must stay in school until the middle of May before he is eligible for early graduation. So if I don't make a decision on where I am moving to soon, I may have to find an apartment to rent for a few weeks. But I don't think I can rent an apartment for that little amount of time. Oh well, we are having a yard/moving sale this weekend to lighten the load when we do finally move. I'll post more later....

I have created an AJAX calendar for archive viewing. Note the calendar on the right side of the page under the archive heading. The only real requirement is that you have PHP installed on the server that hosts your blog. Then it's as simple as:

1. Putting this code in the HEAD of your blogger template: <script type="text/javascript" src="/blogcal/blogcal.js"></script>
2. Putting this code in the BODY where you want the calendar to display: <div id="blogcal"></div> <script type="text/javascript">   blogCal.show(); </script>

It uses a php file on the server to build the calendar and locate the archive files. The calendar is fully stylable. All elements of the calendar have a unique id. I will try to get the files commented, zipped up & posted to the site sometime tomorrow.

Well I have had a couple of good phone interviews this week. I have one more tonight & a really big one on Monday. The one on Monday is with a great company & if I'm lucky it will go well.. I'll post more later.. Update: The phone interview tonight went really well. It sounds very promising.

Well here's the latest info on my search for a new job. Google sent me an email yesterday telling me that I had made it through the first interview & they wanted to schedule the second technical phone interview. I replied by telling them that I was no longer interested in the position. I tried to explain to them that I don't want to work as a SysAdmin. I gave that up a while back for several reasons, that I won't go into here. I am pretty good at web front-end work & that is what I like to do. I no longer want to get the calls at 3am about a server that's not responding. Anyway, I had my second phone interview with Yahoo! last night. I think it went pretty good, it was a nice feeling to hear 2 of Yahoo!'s developers compliment my code. My only concern with working for them, is the increase in my Cost of Living. They are in the heart of Silicon Valley and things can be rather expensive there. I haven't heard back from the company in Arizona yet and the company in Atlanta is making airline reservations for me to visit. Well that's all the update I have for now.

Well I got my new BlackBerry last night & I have to say that I love it. I haven't even tried the data access yet (waiting for my new job before I get it). I used a Treo 600 last year & I have to say that this BlackBerry stomps it. It's lighter, easy to use & works better as a phone than the Treo. I can sync all of my info on my Mac, the only thing I can't do it install files/applications. I had to borrow a friends Windows machine to upgrade the OS and install a few applications. Once I get the data plan, then that should be taken care of since you can install via network. On the job hunting side, I had a phone interview with the CEO of the company in Arizona last night. It seemed to go pretty good, I think I would be a good match with the company. I have my second phone interview with Yahoo! tonight, then another next week. The company out of Atlanta has contacted me to make airline reservations for an on-site interview scheduled for around the 13th of April. I'll post more after the Yahoo! interview....

I interviewed with Yahoo! and Google last night. I have to say that I liked Yahoo!'s interview better, they where actually interviewing me for a position that I wanted. I think I did rather well on both phone tests. I also took Yahoo!'s programming test, now I can't say what it was but I'm pretty sure I did rather well on it too. I wasn't really comfortable with Google's phone test because they kept asking me System Admin questions & I haven't done much of that in the last couple of years. Besides I like doing web front end work, that's what I am good at.. I'll post more later. Update: The guy from HireMeGoogle.com ran across my posts, you can take a look at the article here.

I'm not going to quote the email, but I get the feeling that I did rather well on the Yahoo! coding test. I have a phone interview tonight for the company out of Arizona, I hope it goes well! As for Yahoo! they are ready to setup an interview with other members of the department, that one should be interesting.. Anyway, my new Blackberry should be here tonight. I will write more on that after I get to play with it..

I ordered a new Blackberry 7100g today from Cingular, in anticipation of a job offer next week. With the offer on the house yesterday, I need to accelerate my plans on moving. Hopefully Zach's school will sign off on his transfer so he can leave school early. If not then Donna & him will have to stay in a hotel until the end of the school year. I'm really looking forward to this week, I hope all goes well. I am still hoping that one of the potential employers that I interviewed with last week will call back. Out of all of the interviews I have done, I really liked them the best.

Welcome to my new website. I am in the process of moving my site to blogger.com. I am also in the process of moving all of my pictures to flickr.com. Stay tuned for more posts.

Just added Donna's Port Charles trip to flickr. Stop by and take a look.

We have an offer on our house!!! That means we are one step closer to getting out of Southern Illinois. Will post more later.

I have moved my site from it's old location to a new account with Blogger.com. Please drop me a note and let me know what you think. The only thing I haven't moved yet is the pictures, I will be adding them to flickr.com when I have a chance. Thanks Dav