Category Archives: Work

Learning Something New

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I try and make every project an opportunity to learn something new. Whether its a new way of thinking about an old problem or something I just never took the time to understand. I’m also trying to accept help from others whenever I can. I find that I often develop my own idea of how something works and input from someone outside of the problem can often shed new light on the matter. I never want to become so full of myself where I start overlooking valuable input from those around me.

Work so far has been an amazing opportunity to learn and grow and I’m glad I’ve been pushing myself like I have. I’m finally starting to realize my potential as a developer and there’s a lot more fun to be had.

The Start of Something Good

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So I’m failing at keeping this thing updated but in all fairness I’ve had a busy month. The holidays were a breath of fresh air compared to life since I moved to Boston a few months ago. Work became a bit too overwhelming and there were too much I wanted to do. I had made the decision to try and settle down somewhere full time a few months prior and since my last blog post I’ve now reached that goal.

So I’ve completed my third week at my new job and so far I’m loving it. The people are great, the work is challenging and the environment is exactly what I need. Best part is I can see the TD Garden, the Zakim Bridge, the U.S.S. Constitution and part of the North End right from my desk.

The best part about starting a new job is a chance to start fresh. I’m starting fresh as a developer, a boyfriend and a Bostonian. These last three weeks have felt great and I couldn’t be more excited for the future.

Nothing Goes Bad

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I spend a crazy amount of time creating content for free on the internet. Whether it’s posting to one of my many blogs or working on one of the plugins I maintain in the WordPress repository. I do these things mainly because I enjoy helping others and I especially enjoy hearing how my plugins and blog posts have helped people with their own projects.

I also put these things on my resume because I spend a lot of time working on them and believe they’re one of my strongest selling points as far as defining who I am as a web developer. It is a little disheartening however when you put a lot of time and effort into something that ends up getting little to no traction online. It’s hard not to feel like I failed or did something wrong.

Ultimately I try not to let this get me down. If my plugins and posts help just one person then they were worth it. But then today, I was meeting with a potential client who in fact used two of my plugins for their own clients’ site. Something I had developed a few years ago with little to no traction on the internet ultimately was the deciding factor in getting this new job.

So be proud of everything you create whether it gets the response you were looking for or not. It’s a little piece of you on the internet and you never know who’s going to run across it a few years down the line.

Working Out Of The House

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The best part of freelancing is that I get to work from home. You would think this is awesome but recently I’ve been finding it hard to focus. I have this reflex I can’t seem to control where whenever I am in between projects or having a hard time with something, I automatically open Minecraft or right click the Steam icon in the bottom right corner of my desktop.

To solve this problem and overcome my gaming addiction I need to get myself out of the house to actually get any work done. I’m not sure if it’s actually the change in scenery or the fact that without a mouse I can’t game but either way it helps. I should try an experiment where my girlfriend hides my mouse from me during work hours. It does suck a little because I am definitely more productive with my mouse but whatever, this is what I have to deal with.

So I usually end up walking down the street to Starbucks. On occasion I will head into one of the offices of my clients nearby but I really only like working from one of them, because they’re pretty awesome. I’ve also graced the Mass Challenge offices a few times which is nice because of all the startups crunching away getting shit done. A cool environment to be in.

Starbucks however is my location of choice. Maybe it’s the easy access to delicious coffee of all varieties or maybe it’s the diverse group of people coming and going but I just like it. It does seem pretty cliche, a web developer working from Starbucks, but it works.

That’s all for today. I’m due for refill of the ice coffee and I need to get some work done.

Connected More Than Ever

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I’ve been so busy with work I never update this blog anymore. Hopefully I can change that. I finally got a more capable phone and can now easily post to WordPress using the Android WordPress app. So i’m hoping between this and voice input I can find the time to insert my random thoughts here. This also means my random thoughts might get more random but I’m ok with that.

In other news I’m trying to wrap up a side project that ended up being a lot harded than I expected. I’ve accomplished a lot I had never done before with it so it’s all been worth it. It helps that the client is pretty cool and has been very understanding.

Hopefully this will be my last side project for awhile now as I move on to bigger and better things. Either way I’m looking forward to the morning so I can wake up early to move my car and get some Starbucks. Living in Boston has been swell.

5am and I feel like I should be working on something but instead I’m in bed writing this post. Forcing myself to fall asleep now. Good night moon

Christmas Follow Up

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Photo by *Sally M*

Back to another 2.5 day work week and I have no idea what’s going on for this weekend. I feel like the more I work the more my friends kind of drift off and do their own thing. I’m not one to take it personally … its just kinda depressing.

But anyways, the one person who would hang out with me Sat night was my good ol friend George. It was an interesting night. Saw some girl I recognized and took a stab at remembering her name … I was way off. At least I tried.

Then there was a fight back inside the bar, which led outside the bar, which apparently kept going because we walked by the kids fighting again on our walk home. Fighting = Immature. Sorry I hate it.

So 20SB Secret Santa came and went. Apparently I’m a crappy Santa but oh well I tried. I ended up ordering something off of Amazon so I could get the most bang for my buck. The problem however is that Amazon’s estimated shipping times are about 6 days off so far. I’ll give it a few more days but I kinda feel bad. Kinda.

The present I received in turn was freakin awesome. It was THE Chuck Norris quote book. I’ve personally never been a big fan of Mr. Norris or that website but that book had me and my friends rolling. So Thank You whoever you are for that special little bit of Christmas awesome.

So now it’s back to work for a couple days and another long weekend. I can’t wait even tho I have no idea what I’m doing yet. Regardless I hope everyone else has a Happy New Year.

PS (Watching Religulous on Christmas eve was awesome)

Motivate Me With Pictures

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Photo by mediaboytodd

I constantly want to feel like I am moving forward with something. I hate feeling like I could be doing the same thing for the rest of my life. So far I’ve been really good about keeping things mixed up but now I am starting to feel stuck again.

How long can I stay at one company before getting tired of the repetition. Is this the real test or should I forget it and keeping moving forward. Well, so far I’ve just made it a point to always have work to do on the side as well as constantly try and move up in the company. Once that comes to a standstill I will re-evaluate again.

But for right now … I’ve always wanted to learn how to design. I’d say I’m pretty good at picking out things I don’t like about stuff. It’s the being good at knowing what looks good that I am no good at. So I decided a little while ago I was going to create title images for all of my posts. At first this was just a random thought and know I want to fully pursue it. I will not post on this blog unless the post has some sort of header image.

Hopefully I will just get better over time all the while learning more and more about adobe creative suite. It’s funny the things I will do to motivate myself.

At Pats vs Jets

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Wednesday my boss asked me if I wanted to go to a football game on Thursday. I immediately said yes, because it was the Jet Pats game, failing to think that the ticket would cost a lot of money.

So on Thursday we left work around 2:30 to meet up with some of my bosses drinking buddies. They seemed like cool guys at first …. then the drinking began. We were in the car for about 15 minutes on our way down to the razor when the guy driving goes “You guys know the routine”. About 8-10 beers later we are in Foxborough. The buzzed driver then decided to see how close to the stadium he could get us with his wife’s old handicapped sticker. We ended up two rows form the entrance.

So safe and sound at the stadium with 3 hours to go until the game we headed up to the bars at patriot place. The bars were packed to the gills so we ended up eating at some fancy expensive place. I was okay with this because the guy who drove us offered to pay … so I had some muscles, calamari and an anchor steam ale.

The game was awesome …. minus losing in the end. But here’s the thing. It was my first NFL football game … and I think it would have been a lot more fun to watch on TV. Don’t get me wrong, the scene is amazing. It’s just hard to follow whats going on in the game. First downs and touchdowns were about all I got out of it.

So when my father asked if I would be wiling to throw down another 120 bucks to go to a football game I said no, I would rather pay half of that and go to Sox game. However it was still a lot of fun.

Why Social Media Marketing Sucks Ass!

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The second we put labels on things, everyone makes a break for it to be on the forefront and mark their territory. The problem with this is that a lot of those people claiming their territory have no idea what they’re doing. This is the case with Social Media Marketing.

It sounds too good to be true:

  • Ridiculously high ROI
  • Small marketing budgets
  • Inbound marketing techniques
  • The viral potential is unheard of

The kicker of it all is that it’s really not that hard to wrap your mind around it. It’s a free society of individuals sharing information. People with quality content and a desire to communicate will thrive in a social media world. Once companies learn how to adopt these new forms of communication as legitimate forms of connecting with their clients they will began to see new marketing channels open.

I only use the word marketing in it’s most primitive form the “practice and science of trading”.

So the people who are doing it wrong end up filling the web with all this garbage. If only Google were THAT good. I mean they’re good …. but I feel like a lot of crap still slips through the cracks.

So I’ll say it before and I’ll say it again. STOP SPOILING THE WEB.