November 26, 2009
On Sunday, I left for a road trip to Kirkland Lake, which is where Lem and Brad and their new baby live. Brad just got a job up there in August, and Isaac was born in September, and I wanted to hang out with them. Seeing as my old job ended last Friday and my new one doesn’t start till next Monday, I knew I had to take this opportunity to make the trip. Kirkland Lake is an 8 hour drive from Hamilton, and I didn’t want to do it by myself, so I invited my newly retired Mom along for a road trip and we were off.
Northern Ontario has a lot of rocks, and trees, and water. The drive was good — the major highways are in really good shape all the way up, and Kirkland Lake itself reminded me a lot of the town I went to high school in. I’m not a baby person, but Isaac is totally adorable and cute, and Lem and Brad are doing a great job with him. We were there Sunday night, and for Monday and Tuesday. We left early on Wednesday and were home before dark. I would not want to make the trip at night; it would be a mighty lonely trip.
I had a great time. We didn’t do a whole lot; pretty much just hung out with Isaac and Lemmers, watching TV and playing dumb Facebook games, but it was a nice change of pace. We went to the Kirkland Lake mall, toured the town, and Mom made a couple of batches of delicious cookies. On Tuesday night, Lem and I went for dinner and Mom took care of Issac, which was fun.
On the way home, I threatened to stop at all the silly roadside attractions (giant cows, buffalo, Muskoka chairs, etc) and historical plaques, but after our first attempt to locate a historical plaque failed, we gave up. We did however hit more than three bookstores and find some great butter tarts in Huntsville.
Picture time!
I don’t have any pictures of me with Isaac, but Lem does. Will steal some from her Facebook page later and post them here as proof that I will (sometimes) interact with babies.
Shannon Patterson, filed under Uncategorized |
November 24, 2009
Last week I was offered a new job, and I gladly accepted. I will be a PHP developer for a company in Grimsby. It should be fairly similar work to that I was doing in Guelph, and I’m looking forward to joining a new team and building on the skill set I have developed so far.
There were lots of reasons I wanted to leave the situation I was in, but mostly, it was just time. I’d been there for just about two years, and I think I wasn’t learning much any more. My job description had changed from pure development to server administration, client relations, business meetings, and all sorts of other tasks that led me to feel like I was at times making negative progress in getting whatever the current task was done.
In September, the company decided to outsource its data entry and some of the product development to India, and with that change, we lost half of our IT staff: one went to India to set things up there, and one was laid off. One week prior to this announcement, we release a new version (100% new code-base) of our major product. This release was done according to a schedule dictated from the top of the company, and the product wasn’t ready. Understandably, our clients weren’t impressed with the new product, and roughly half of my day was spent fixing client problems. I spent most of the fall simply putting out fires, adding in band-aid solutions to problems with a bigger scope than I was able to address in any meaningful way.
Add onto that the slightly more than an hour commute to and from work, and I just didn’t have it in me to work for this company any more. I started looking about two months ago and after a few interviews found this place. I got a good vibe from the management team, the interview took me less than fifteen minutes to get to, and I think that I can thrive in the environment they have. I’m looking forward to starting there and seeing how it goes.
I’m also looking forward to getting two hours of my day back every day. Not having to commute is a big plus, and I’m starting to think up ways I can fill up my time.
Hope it all goes well.
Shannon Patterson, filed under Life |
November 20, 2009
Marvin The Paranoid Android
A couple of weeks ago I decided I needed a new blog theme, ignoring the fact that my readership probably uses a feed reader and doesn’t actually visit my physical page. Additionally, I opted to ignore the fact that there hasn’t been a post since mid-September, and that the time might be better spent on writing blog posts. I wanted to work on my page design skills a bit, I don’t think they’re up to par with where they could be.
So on Monday when I gave my two week’s (which turned into one week’s) notice at my job, I realized I now had about 8 hours of free time at a computer in Guelph in which I needed to have a copy of Eclipse and something that remotely resembled work open on my desktop, and a new project was born.
Guess who found a new favourite hammer in -moz-border-radius? That’s right, I did. Look at all those rounded corners! Unless you’re using IE, then you get ugly boxes with no pretty child-safe edges. I also learned how to use ems for widths and heights. I think I like them more than px, it fits better into the ideas of cascadeyness that CSS is all about.
It’s even in the blockquotes. That’s how dedicated to roundness I am. And additionally how non-dedicated to IE I am. IE users: Get Firefox.
Anyways, thanks to those who helped me by reading my rambling emails about how the divs were angry with me. Will talk about the new job in a bit.
Shannon Patterson, filed under Projects |
