The Eclectic

Now that I’ve finished my tour with Wildfire, and finished my gradual motion towards living at home, I’m jumping back into the digital realm with both feet. Since the university doesn’t offer my next academic term again until January, I am trying to find work in the field for a few months while I take a distance education course on religious perspectives on evil.

On the job front, I’m having more success hearing back from web development contracted work than with full-time development work at local firms, which is fine with me so long as the pay gets me ready for next term’s tuition. On the balance of getting to learn new things and finding work in something I really know and enjoy, these opportunities are more latter-leaning, but I think that’s good; trying to take a course while I work will be a first for me, and I’m sure I’ll need to review a lot of old course work to feel prepared to re-enter the engineering realm.

The distance ed course looks interesting, but we haven’t “really” started yet, so I don’t know how things are going to go. I hope I don’t feel behind without the benefit of lectures. A couple of field trips (one mandatory) to related lectures on campus and in the community look like they’re worth the drive as well. Of course, I’m supposed to buy three books and a course pack, and have a reading from the course pack done by Thursday, but I doubt shipping will be quite that fast, considering I still need to send an on-campus buddy to pick those up for me and send them out (since at least one of them is not at the campus bookstore). Oh well, I’m sure I can catch up while I finish securing employment. I’m actually interested to see how good the online resources are for interaction with the instructor and general discussion through the distance ed system. We shall see…

I haven’t even mentioned the most plugged-in and exciting part of my return to the computer world yet. I’m typing this post from my brand new HP desktop that I finally purchased after my laptop’s service plan expired right before it ran into hard-drive complications. The funny story here was me trying to install the RAM and video card upgrades that I applied to the package. The machine is so tight inside that I practically looked like I’d taken to self-mutilation as a hobby by the time I had given up. The graphics card was so long that it crowded a surprising number of wires facing the motherboard, and none of the configurations of RAM that I patiently installed and reinstalled while slicing my hands on the inconveniently-placed drive bays ever worked. Eventually I made sure it booted once I put it back to its original configuration and took it back to the shop for a paid install. Taking off the front end to get the drive bays out of the way was the solution to my crowding, but I didn’t want to unscrew the wrong thing and then unplug have of the front-end devices by mistake.

This new machine can do anything I tell it without breaking a sweat so far, but of course, I’ve barely had it for a matter of days. The system is designed to be a TV Media Centre, though I doubt I’ll use it for that much while I’m living in London. I bought it because it’s got the specs to endure a few years. I tend to buy big less often when it comes to laptops and desktops, so I enjoy the boost I get at the beginning. For those who are interested, it’s running a quad-core Intel processor with two hard drives each circa 300GB and 4GB of RAM. Vista only registers 3.5 gigs of memory and until I upgrade to 64-bit Ultimate, it won’t even use more than three of them. Still, the setup is truly fast and vast. Of course, in this industry, that doesn’t normally last long, but I’m sure it’ll be a functional system for long enough to make it worth my while.

Technorati Tags: university, distance education, web development, employment, online resources, HP desktop

Preamble

For those of you who don’t attend UW, PDEng stands for Professional Development for Engineers. UW Engineering coop students are forced to take PDEng online during their coop work terms. The program is supposed to teach us about professionalism, but it sucks, and here’s why. (more…)

Technorati Tags: UW, PDEng, Professional Development, UW Engineering, coop

So I started another co-op workterm last week. At my last placement, while the people were nice, the work was pretty boring and monotonous. My new job has the best of both worlds. My week was filled with protocol hacking, learning a new (to me) scripting language, open discussions about projects to improve our products, and interdepartmental airplane/bottle cap wars.

The protocol hacking was fun; I haven’t worked much with hex before and the puzzle-esque problem solving is quite addicting. The scripting language was Perl; grossly efficient and quirky, but a bitch to read (unfortunately, I had to do the latter). And when I said open discussions, I meant OPEN discussions. If I suggested something that challenged the current structure of a product, I was typically met with, “you know, that could work even better. You should test them both and maybe we’ll implement it.” Remember this is my first week on a co-op job–unbelievable.

As for the interdepartmental wars, our cubicle dividers are a good five feet lower than the ceiling; I’ll let you paint that picture yourself. Essentailly, I’m in department full of fun-loving, easy-going goof balls. One day this week, 1/2 hour before the work day was “officially” over, one of the full-timers decided he really wanted to get an old stoplight fixture he’d recently obtained working as a fun and interactive cubicle prop. The only logical thing to do was drop what we were doing and all drive to the electronics store for the relays we’d need to hook it up to a parallel port. Awesome.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is, I love my job. I hope subsequent weeks are as fun and enriching as this one.

Technorati Tags: co-op, workterm, protocol hacking, interdepartmental wars, cubicle, I love my job

Once again I have found myself slowly slipping away from the paradigms of my youth. As a basement computer junkie, I naturally cared none for aesthetics; those who have seen my wardrobe know, in some facets, I still do. But as I grow older, I have naturally evolved into a sucker for chic design. Maybe it’s the gradual engraining of North American Capitalism in my neuro-fiber; maybe it’s an increased awareness that most people are born with (it’s true, how something looks does affect its impact); maybe it’s the continuing improvements in the marketing industry. Whatever it is, over the past couple of years, I’ve come to realize that things are nicer to have when they’re nicer to look at. It’s true, pretty is good, and Apple products are not only pretty, they are dead sexy. (more…)

Technorati Tags: Apple products