Virtual Thoughts from eRoom-D » About Me

Like my friend Chris Miller, I’m working, no really, I’m working.

vandermore — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 02:51:47 +0000

I’ve never been exceptionally good at keeping up with the blog here, even though this year started out fairly well. So in order to keep my momentum going, you know an object in motion tends to stay in motion, I am going to be writing these smaller updates in addition to when I get out my long tutorials and other long form posts.

I’m still working at Digital Primates and loving what I do there. I haven’t had much time while on the job to study up for the Flex Developer’s Certification, so I do that as much as I can from home. I need to take a practice test or two to see where I would score if I took the actual test, and where I need to focus my studies to make sure I pass.

Over the last several months I have worked more with the Flex Framework than I have ever before. I am so used to doing things in pure AS2 an AS3, that I had to retrain myself to look for things in the framework that were already waiting for me to just use them. Some of the people at DP also have been a great help in this. I’d thank them all here, but I’d really be thanking everyone at the company, so thanks guys.

Moving on into the late summer, I am still working on my augmented reality project. My friend and now co-worker (he’s an intern at Digital Primates), Joe, is helping me work through the FLARToolkit. Making things make sense, and finding out where we can speed things up. Optimization was the main topic last week. This week it was me solo, but I was able to get DAZ3D models into our app. Definitely need more optimizing there (15 Meg for a model! jeesh!).

Oh, and I am also now a contributor to the FLARToolkit’s repo. Haven’t submitted anything yet, but I should before the next post. So with Podiobooks.com, this is the second open source project that I am currently active in.

I may get out another post before Gen Con, so stay tuned.

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Job search, concluded. Verdict, success!

vandermore — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 02:36:45 +0000

As some of you know, but some others might not, I am now employed full time again. It’s with an excellent company, Digital Primates. The company has some excellent people working there, and it has several Flex luminaries at it’s head. I’ll give you a moment to go over there and look, go ahead, I don’t mind.

…

Before I was hired, I thought I knew a fair amount about Flex, having been working with Flash AS2 for many years, and then moving over to Flex and AS3, it seemed more or less like a change in syntax, plus some nice things with the Flex framework that were definite improvements over the Flash IDE for developers.

I was wrong.

I thought I knew, but there is so much more that I didn’t know that I am humbled by the amount that I know is still there and the huge leap in knowledge that I have gained since working there for the few short weeks that I have been training there. Yep, you heard right, training. It’s been a while since I have worked at a job that cared enough about it’s employees, and it’s reputation enough to train new employees enough so that they can do the job right the first time.

…

I’ve had this blog post mostly written for at least a month now. So I am posting it here so you can get an update on what I have been doing. The rest of the post I will write up later. It will be about the Flex component framework. From what I understand, as soon as Flex 4 comes out later this year, that post may become out of date. I’ll be doing it anyway so I know it better, and there are probably more than a few people who will be using Flex 3 for a while after Flex 4 comes out. It’s just the nature of business to not upgrade right away.

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Keeping myself marketable

vandermore — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 22:54:10 +0000

It’s day something, 19 21, that’s it. I decided to leave off the days from now on, since it seems my finances are stable again. Starting my own business isn’t ever going to be finished though, so I can’t say my job search is over.

Right now I am doing work with LifeSnapz, and have several roleplaying game writing contracts on deck. I am still looking at one full time employment opportunity, but I have at least one other possible large job that is definitely interesting. Note: Make that three others. Overall, I am really hoping to make this business work.

I am really enjoying being on my own with this. I still have some schedules set by other people, and I still need to meet those deadlines. The place that I work, and when I work though, are pretty much up to me. It is amazing how much I realized the commute and working in an office was taking out of me, now that I am not doing the 2-3 hours of commute a day, plus the hours in the office. I also get to see my kids a lot more, big huge plus there.

If any of you out there are needing Rich Internet Application (RIA), Flex/Flash, or web development work done, contact me through the comments if you don’t know my normal contact info. I’ll get some contact information or a form up soon. Just realized that I don’t have that up.

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Is it really “The Grind” when you are having a ball? – Day 12

vandermore — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 20:57:39 +0000

So my interview is probably postponed until January 5th or after due to the holidays and people being out of the office. This isn’t really a surprise, since I have been through this part of the year when I was contracting before. Since I have the one freelance contract right now, I’ll be fine until then.

Note the nugget of wisdom above for other contract and freelance workers. December, especially the last two weeks of December, is the worst time to find work over the entire year. I suppose that this year for many people that it is doubly so. So if you have the chance to grab a contract or three that will last you into January, do so early.

Here’s an almost disaster turned into a great customer service story. My machine is an HP Pavilion notebook, a dv7 series for those that are interested. I have had it for several months now, and earlier last week, the AC adapter started making strange noises. Today, I thought it would be a good time to call HP service to see what they would do about it. While on the call, the adapter stopped charging my notebook, and I couldn’t get it to work again. (I have since the call, but then, no power.) Let me just say that the HP support person was very helpful, almost too self deprecating, and she was quite efficient, even if her computer systems were slow. I was on the phone just about 20 minutes from the start of the call, to the end where they took my address and were shipping me the new AC adapter. A fairly short, and definitely productive, call and I will have the new AC adapter on December 26th via FedEx. The computer is under warranty, and I was thinking that they would need me to cross ship the old adapter, and so did the support person, but as we both found out, I don’t need to. I keep the one that is acting up, and get the new one later this week. Not that I am going to want to use the old one, but in case the new one shorts out, I can go to the old one for backup. Overall, I would continue buying HP products. A few years ago, I would not have said that. Good job HP.

Happy holidays!

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Snowed in, but still on the hunt – Day 9

vandermore — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 14:37:11 +0000

Hello again,

So yesterday I posted a question of do I keep up the hunt or not. Sleeping on it, I realized that I was not as comfortable with my current status to stop the hunt. Today, I am going to follow up with my recruiters and see where things stand. The interview was postponed, or so I assume, since I have not heard from the recruiter who was setting it up (bad form there, always keep your clients up to date).

I am going to take a step back though, since I have my freelance project that I need to get cracking on. Today will be mostly a work day, to get that project really started. I have a decent proof of concept working, I now need to get it past the prototype stage.

FlexUnit 4 – Starting out For any of you familiar with FlexUnit 1, Fluint, or...

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Do I need to keep this up? Day 8

vandermore — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 00:55:31 +0000

Hi peeps!

Today I had yet another interview, and it went quite well. I have already been informed that they wanted me back for a second interview as soon as tomorrow. Though given the weather, and the fact that the recruiter called me earlier and said Monday was also possible, I am thinking it will be Monday.

The opportunity sounds like something I have been looking to do. It is about 50% coding/development, and with the other 50% being management of the teams, external resources, and client interactions. Definitely something I have done before, and also enjoyed doing. Lots of new development, since it is an advertising agency, and the projects are more short term. They use Subversion, which is cool, since I find Subversion to be a very very good thing for version control and asset management.

What else? Most of the Christmas shopping is done, and I have started on the freelance project, though mostly the planning, since coding it was a bit difficult with all the running around I had to do today. Oh, and for anyone wanting to find 10 South Lasalle in Chicago, Google Maps puts it about 10 blocks north of where it actually is. So I got very very cold walking around for a half hour trying to find the place I was needing to be. Good thing I had planned on getting lost. Though I hadn’t planned on getting that lost, or on being outside that long. Brrr.

Tomorrow, coding, and probably either staying inside, or heading to Panera. Depends on the weather where I do the coding.

I apologize for the lateness of the posting, the start of the interviewing was at 9:30am, so I had to be out of the house by 7:30am to make the right train.

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Search nearly over – still day 7!

vandermore — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 00:38:28 +0000

Today I had my interview, it was with LifeSnapz, go there, check them out. I will be doing some Flash/Flex work with them to start, with the possibility of more work down the line. LifeSnapz is run by Brian Hand, the creator of ShopLocal (back then it was called Sales Hound, and then CrossMedia Services), he is a great guy to work with, and I am looking forward to working with him again.

I still have my interview tomorrow, and I have another possible coming up soon. Things look really good right now. Thank you all for your support.

I will continue blogging for the forseeable future, but perhaps I can do it about things other than my job hunting. Here’s to hoping!

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Interview today! – Day 7

vandermore — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 14:49:39 +0000

So today I have an interview, and it’s looking pretty promising. There was another scheduled for today, but it was moved to tomorrow, which is good since it was going to involve quite a bit of transportation juggling to make it to both on the same day. The locations of the two places are just too far apart to make it easy.

I was able to get a few more things cleared off of my plate relating to the household that had needed doing for a while. Even cleaned up in the basement a bit.

As far as the coding front is going, I am still working on the id3 tagging AIR application, and have hit a snag with it. I can get the file loaded, I can *almost* read them, but not quite. So I need to dig into that a little deeper. I may just need to write the bit parsing myself. Right now I am working with Metaphile’s open source parsing classes, but I just can’t get them to pull in the data. It’s not helping that there isn’t any documentation and very little commenting in the code. I am reading the code, but there are a few spots that seem unfinished. I am probably missing something simple, rather than them actually being unfinished. So if anyone out there would like to help me out, I would appreciate the insight you could give me.

Lots of snow here today, driving was not fun. I hope tomorrow is clear. Oh, and that is one thing I need to mention. When your prospective employer emails you and asks if you want to reschedule because of the heavy snow, that is a really good sign that you want to work for them.

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Things are moving along – Day 6

vandermore — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:25:37 +0000

Yesterday was a pretty full day. I worked on some things for the company I started with some colleagues a few months ago for some freelance work, and one of the first sites that we are putting together for ourselves is nearly done. It’s a gaming review site, and we some reviewers lined up for it. Go on over and take a look, I’ll also announce it when it is ready and we have some more reviews on it. http://gamecryer.com.

As far as the job hunt goes, some of the leads that I had last Friday are panning out. I have an interview on Wednesday, and I am fairly sure it has a decent chance of turning into work. I am also working on another writing contract, we’ll see if that pans out as well.

As far as all the coding projects, other than the Game Cryer one, I restarted my id3 tagging AIR project, and I hope to have an iteration of it done by the end of the week. Unless of course I have some more paying work that gets in the way.

Here’s to hard work and hoping.

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It’s cold outside, perfect job hunting weather. Day 5

vandermore — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 14:04:37 +0000

I implied, but didn’t state, that my plan for finding a new job was for the weekday portion of the week. The weekends I intend to still strive towards that goal, but I also need some time to recharge and ready myself for the next week. So the weekends are mine, which means that I usually won’t be posting anything on them.

Ok, Friday turned up some good leads, that I hope will turn something up today. I am going to be following up on them today. Today is also recruiter calling day; which I will start at 9:30am to give them time to get into the office and ready for the day.

From my experiences of many years as a contractor, I know that this time of year generally has a dearth of hirings. It should break open in January, but I need to be looking now, so that when the budgets open up for hiring, the employers already know who I am and want to hire me.

On an interesting note, I was able to get a small contract for writing fiction just by putting my name out there. It’s for 5,000 words, and something I should be able to do quickly. I just need to finish up the Flash work I am doing for the same client first; that I am working on today.

This last weekend I went to the Museum of Science and Industry, and it really helped recharge my brain. Lots of interesting things to see and do there that spark the imagination, and a great many things for kids to do. Much more than when I went just a few years ago. I recommend it, especially if you need to get out of the house and recharge your brain with ideas.

Not a whole lot since Friday on the job front other than what I listed above. I don’t want to list specifics, they never quite seem to pan out when I talk about them. The blogging’s over, so now on to the rest of my day!

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The search continues – Day 2

vandermore — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:47:48 +0000

So today is day two of the job searching. I’ve put together a plan for my day to accomplish two things. 1. It helps me become more marketable by honing my skills. 2. It keeps me busy so that I don’t do time wasting things like watch TV or surf the internet all day. As a side benefit, I think staying busy will help me stay positive through this.

Here’s my plan for my work week:

Get up and get the kids to school
Once people are out of the house, make this daily blog and get things going on the computer.
9:30 am – start making recruiter and other phone calls. No one is really functioning in the office for phone calls at 9am.
Get out of the house and do any running around that I need to do.
Housework, I do some normally, but now that I am home I will be taking over much more of it.
Continue coding – I have some personal projects that have been languishing due to lack of time, and now I have time to spare. I’ll post them here as I complete them.
Write some fiction, which I may post here. This is more to break up my day, since coding straight I start to lose my creative edge. This gives it back to me.
Back to coding
Evening stuff
Get kids to bed
More coding, or time to relax
Go to sleep at a reasonable hour, so that I can do it all again the next day. This one is also a key thing. Staying up until all hours means I sleep in the next day, and gets me in a habit of not doing the things needed doing. So I’ll be headed to bed early and waking up early.

That’s the plan I have currently. Suggestions are always welcome, but I think this one will work for me. I already have some good leads, and I hope that at least one of them pans out. I will of course, keep you all informed.

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Today I continue my search for the perfect job.

vandermore — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 22:28:29 +0000

I say continue, because in this economy and with the shakeups at my last, as of today, employer, I thought it would be prudent to start putting out feelers to see what the market for someone with my Flex, Flash, and web development skills would be. It’s fairly lukewarm, but jobs do still seem available.

As you might have gathered, I was just recently laid off. It was the second of the most recent round of cuts, and about a dozen people were let go, including some very senior staff. It seems that I was on the list of people that were compensated well, and they are trying to cut costs.

My intent on this new series of posts is to be positive about the job search, to get my name out there, and lastly, to give myself a routine during the day so that I keep moving forward with my life and career, rather than letting things stagnate. So you can expect this and other blog posts, once a day until I get a new job. They might continue after that, but how about we decide that after getting over this first hurdle. Getting the job. The one rule I have for these posts, is that they are positive. They may relay bad news, but I am going to strive to look on the bright side of things instead of wallowing in self pity or some nonsense like that. (I’ve already done that in my past, and let me tell you, it doesn’t work. It also has a tendency to make you stink. Which does not help your chances of getting a job.)

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The Seven Weird/Random Things Post

vandermore — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 22:27:20 +0000

Chris Miller tagged me, and though my alter-ego is at war with him, I’ll answer his call.

The rules:

Link to the person that tagged you, and post the rules on your blog.
Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself.
Tag 7 people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs
Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Continuing the trend, I’ll skip the commenting on the blog.

I have gotten much better at networking and freelance contracting, because of podcasting.
My kids changed my life, and made my work ethic even better than it was before them.
I’m not an only child, but I like my alone time as much as my wife, who is one.
I have never been a hugely social person, but thanks to podcasting again, that has radically changed.
I am adopted, and my birth mother was a young woman, yet I still believe in the right to choose.
I am a spiritual person, but absolutely refuse to allow myself the luxury of thinking that some higher power will make things better for me in this life or the next. I feel that the only way to make things better is to make them better myself and with the help of friends.
I want to publish a role playing game.

And now, we tag:

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