I'm a pimp!

Here is my project that is too stupid to talk about (love ya hunny!)

Monkey Personals

Enjoy!

I can't believe it!

I just realized this site is still getting about 25 views per day. Wicked. I haven't posted anything here for a month, and even at that it was a good bye.

Good bye it wasn't exactly. I am STILL stuck at my crappy job. New York was a bust. The stupid "travel agent" turned out to be a fraud and is sitting in jail because he didn't actually buy the tickets. My boss from New York says that this is the week we will be determining when I will be starting full time, but now he has sent an email on Monday saying he is out for family emergency and will be back on Tuesday. Today is Thursday and I still have not been able to contact him. I'm waiting to get paid still from last week (and the week before!) Now I have a bad feeling.

Life, liberty and the Persuit!

This weekend I am traveling to NYC. My wife and I are leaving tomorrow morning. I'm traveling to New York to meet my boss and negotiate a salary for my new JOB! I've been working for a guy from NYC as a freelance web developer part-time for the past 5 months or so and now he's offered to take me on full time. This is very exciting news for me! Finally, I am going to be doing something I like, making more money and I'll get to work from home. Plus, I'll be gaining some great experience for if I ever want to go back to work in a company setting a few years down the road.

I'm hoping that this new job will also give me more time to do things I want to do. I will be cutting about an hour of time I wasted driving to and from work every day. I even plan on blogging more!

Now, I haven't given my two weeks notice yet at my current job. I wanted to be sure everything works out smoothly this weekend first. If all goes well, I am going to inform my work on Monday that my last day will be 7/25 or so.

Speaking of blogging more, I've decided that I opened this blog because I didn't like my current job, so now that I am leaving it I will also be leaving this blog. But have no fear! Come on over to my other site at WackyQuote.com.

So long blog... thanks for the memories. (I'll make one last post here on my last day.)

Not invited?

OK... I must not have been a very good "party-er" at the last potluck we had, because this time, I didn't even get the invitation!

Everytime someone turns 50 here, which is like every couple months, they throw a potluck. They make the birthday person wear this stupid red boa and hat and carry around one of those gimmick canes with the horn, rear view mirror and blinking lights. It's soo annoying.

I heard about it a couple weeks ago. Normally someone will pass around a sheet with stuff that people could bring. (LAME! THEY PRE-DETERMINE THE MENU. AND IT'S ALWAYS THE SAME!) Somebody must have either crossed my name off for me, or they just left it off intentionally. Nobody even came and asked me if I was joining them. It's like a conspiracy; everyone was in on it to keep me out of their precious potluck.

In reality, I'm not really bumming that much, because sitting around listing to old people jokes during my lunch break isn't exactly what I call a good time. I would have like a piece of cake though.

Check this out..

Not too long ago I told you about this big website project I was working on, but since it wasn't live yet, I didn't post the URL. We've made it live, so I thought I would post the URL here and you all can check out my work. Basically everything on this site I designed and programmed. (Before you say anything, remember, it's what the client asked for and he is happy... so.....)

To protect myself, I am not going to post a direct link or even the full name. You'll have to do a little bit of work to see it, but I think you can figure it out.

Here it is: w-w-w (dot) Jf Of Bf Ff Af Vf Of Rf Sf =dot= c0m

In the words of World Wrestling Entertainment, get the "f" out (and the spaces too!)

It sucks!

We have this tracking software. It sucks.

Anyone can enter a record and then I or one of my co-workers will assign it to ourselves. It sucks.

The only thing people in the processing areas look at is who is it assigned to, so when the person who enters the record makes a mistake, the processing areas call me and tell me that I did it wrong. It sucks.

What have I been up to lately...

Things are basically unchanged. I've neglected my blog for a long time, so let's catch up.

- I have won a cool prize playing Google's Davinci Code Quest.
Yep. I am a big winner! The contest was 24 puzzles that had to be completed. One puzzle was released each day. The first 10,000 to complete all 24 puzzles won a replica Cryptex (see pic below.) Basically though, it boiled down to the first 10,000 that completed the last puzzle. From what I have seen, you had to have completed the last puzzle within about 11 minutes of when it was released. I completed it in 7. Also, because I am one of the 10,000 finalists, I get to play the final round, which starts this Friday. It's pretty exciting I guess, though I doubt I have much chance to win. There is only 1 grand prize winner. The grand prize is 4 trips (NY, Paris, London and Rome) and a bunch of electronics from Sony.

Image of the Cryptex that I won.


- I have become, unfortunately, the Access Guru.
Sounds like a good title, but it really sucks. My company thinks that they can just use me to create whatever Access db/app they dream up. It all started because I created a "letters database" for my supervisor and a couple other people in the area. It's pretty basic... it allows them to input some info into forms, saves it, then allows them to print out preformatted letters. Now because I did that, they are dreaming up all kinds of things they want me to do. The main problem I have with this is that I am being paid to be an Administrative Assistant. If they want me to do all these Access programs, then I think I should be getting at least Analyst pay. It feels like they are taking advantage of me so that they don't have to pay the IT department to create software for them. (The IT department charges a per hour rate for the other departments... kinda wierd too.)

They came to me with a huge project. I can't go into too much details, of course, because I want to keep my confidentiality safe for now... They want to integrate a web app with no direct database access into an Access program. It's a screwed up system to begin with, we do not "own" the web app therefore we cannot make changes to it and the web app itself is going to go through a major upgrade in about 3-4 months, so anything I do know will need a major upgrade at that time. I haven't started this project yet, as they just came to me with it last week. Can I just say I don't want to do it?


- Related... my department loves Access, so I reported them!
There's one "major" Access program that is used by my department. It's against company policy to hold passwords in an Access database, but this one does. And it's unlocked, so that anybody could view anyone else's passwords. Brilliant! So I reported it. The other day, I had a meeting about the new Access DB that I mentioned above and they read an "annonymous tip" they received through the audit channels. Hmm, they all wondered who it was. My lips were sealed.


- Need a website?
I have been doing freelance web programming since January when I found the site scriptlance.com. It started as just something to do, but I've actually made some decent money doing it. Now I found a guy from New York City that owns a web developement business and I work part time for him. He pays hourly almost as much as I make here. I'm considering quitting working here so I can do that full time. I have less than 2 months left until I am vested at this job, so I wouldn't quit it until then. But then I have to worry about health insurance and related benefits too, so who knows.

You might ask why I don't just find a job as a web programmer locally? I have tried. It's pretty difficult because of a couple reasons: This market is very picky about degrees and experience and I don't have a degree and my professional experience is limited even though my personal experience is more, and most companies in this area use Microsoft web development tools where I am most familiar with other tools.

If you're interested...
Both of these are my personal sites:
WackyQuote
DIYAutoTech
I have one more personal site in development. I'll let you know when it's finished, but I'm not really putting much time into it. Too many other projects to do first.

As far as other peoples projects...
Mostly I have done just some scripting and customizing lately. No full sites that I can show you yet. I am working on one large site, but it's not released yet. Going to be going into testing starting this weekend. When it gets released, I can post here if anyone is interested.



So there you have it. Sorry I've been "in hiding."