4 October 2007

Server issues arise

We’ve been implementing a Joomla/Virtuemart storefront to replace our Joomla/Virtuemart storefront, this time updated and hackless. But the trick to it is that we still have to hack it, without hacking any core files… This is tricky indeed, a coworker hipped me to the

ob_get_clean()

method in PHP, this enables you to look at certain code chunks spit out to html, then replace them before processing. This takes care of most hacks needed however we implemented a lightbox bit for product images, this required some core modifications slightly.

Now the question I have is, when your “reinventing the wheel” as my boss calls it, but it’s to redo something already done, is it in fact … a waste of time, or are you building a better tomorrow?

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7 September 2007

What a crazy world!

With the hustle and bustle of daily life it’s no wonder that people are commonly exhausted.  Just ask any of my coworkers on a Monday morning how their weekend was, the answer’s always the same “Not long enough” it’s not just my office however, everyone feels the grind at their place of employment. Maybe the Europeans have it right with their four day work weeks and extensive “holidays” (their term for vacation). Who else out there would love that sort of thing, and have the security of a “normal” job? It seems that you can do this if you are running your own business right?  According to my colleague Ash, you sometimes work even longer hours and less days off.  Sad to say the weekend will probably not get any longer in our lifetimes, so just stop complaining that it was too short and make the best of it people!

Happy Friday, and the iPhone price dropped people (I still won’t buy one for fiscal reasons) so be merry!

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3 September 2007

mellow and relaxing

Well, as it’s labor day today, I have not labored one bit, I woke up, ate a bagel, watched some tube, went for a walk and laid around lazily.  I don’t do this often enough, we were going to do a barbecue this weekend but it didn’t turn out to be in the cards because I’ve been feeling a tad ill the past few days.  Just relaxing today to make sure I’m bright eye’d and bushy tailed for work tomorrow.  Well as writing feels close to labor right now, I’m going to close it up, just a quick post to check in.

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23 August 2007

Has anyone seen my personal life?

So I’ve “forgotten” about my site for a few weeks, my apologies to all. I have been tremendously busy at work as of late. I am currently preforming on a level of 3+, and no that’s not just my charisma there, I’m working on a couple different sides of the box lately, just trying to break out of the box concept.  Things are not all bad though, I may be getting a reward shortly of a new MacBook Pro, as I have been working at home as well as the office, and we are doing Interprise/Win2k3 server stuff my G4 here at home isn’t going to cut it, and I need the dual monitor workspace for productivity. So I will be getting a MacBook to take back and forth, that’ll be cool however it will probably end up meaning that I’m expected to do more work than I am doing currently

No biggie, we are getting caught up at work and I feel like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, kinda. At any rate, I’ll be posting up some of the exciting things I’ve been working on in the very near future (so you can stop thinking I’m more bark than bite)!

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8 August 2007

Good Samaritan

This evening my wife and I went out after a grueling day at work, it’s been busy busy busy the past few weeks for me.  So per usual my wife likes to offer my services to people in need, not that I mind it’s just something I chuckle about.  A couple at the Pub/Restaurant we frequent called the Tin Can on Morganford in the heart of South St. Louis had a flat tire.  We sit down and order drinks and food, she gets to speaking with the wife of the couple that has the flat tire, and let’s them know that I know a bit about working on/fixing cars, maybe I could help.

I wander over and mention to the guy that if he would like some help I’m more than happy to assist.  He’s on the phone with someone in another land trying to get the tire issue resolved, he thanks me and says that if he needs to he’ll let me know.  I proceed to wolf down my Chicken/Bacon Sandwich that really hit the spot and then help him get the tire off of his Explorer.  He seems to have it from there then offers me some money in exchange, I turn him down albeit I could use some extra green as of late.  Upon our leaving the Tin Can they’re having an awful time getting the spare onto the Explorer, I assist in that and am again offered some money, this time I don’t refuse because it’s poor taste to turn someone down for kindness twice in a row.  The $20 was nice but didn’t matter to me, I felt good to help them out because I’ve been in similar spots before, and the help would have been nice.

Hopefully that inspires someone else to help somebody out.

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2 August 2007

Random Thought

So I have been working back in design and development for the past few months again, and that got me to thinking about some of the places I’d worked in the past.  Here at Multicom I enjoy design freedom, great atmosphere and my ideas and opinions are valued.  That wasn’t always the case though, in fact some places I didn’t mesh well with because they wanted Cookie Cutter websites with no real flair, sadly the first and foremost in my mind for this was working for an idiot named Lou off of Broadway near the St. Louis riverfront.  But I feel that even out of the industry professionally for a few years I’m still designing stronger than his people ever could, and my company makes 75% more money per job than his (and we crank them out twice as fast).  So a little vindication on my part is to know that I’m in a totally better place now Maybe for fun I’ll get my sales guys to go after his clients, it’s been over two years since I’ve worked there so I have no qualms with ethics on that one.

It’s been a long road for me in the last nine years or so of being a programmer/designer/forward thinker/drinking champ, but I’m still holding up.Anyway, on to the latest and greatest.  I’ve been super busy at work last few days with a rush job for Warner Brothers, they’re sponsoring a fun greenscreen project for the Warped Tour 2007.  My company built the system and I had to get a retreival website knocked out in short time, but you can see it at tsnevents.com but please be good, it’s a live data collection site, so entering your details will surely get you spammed up!  The trickiest part of this was trying to figure out PNG transparency with only a Mac and a few Windows boxes around (all of which had IE7).

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25 July 2007

OMG, Work!

Well, it has been busy, not bad per say but busy nonetheless. After a trying ordeal with Meijer and Harry Potter’s book release we’re tossed headlong into another Warped Tour project for Warner Brothers.

During this trying time my company has decided to get rid of the waste that was our former engineer/asp programmer/person who did so much wrong that I’m constantly fixing stuff person. In his place a new asp.NET programmer has been hired, I like him because he’s from a Linux background, and I’m a mac so BSD/UNIX/Linux is right up my alley. Unfortunately he walked into this gig at an incredibly stressful time, he has had to get something to work for a Green Screen project that has him at a learning curve. He will pull it off I think, he’s 99% done at present. My biggest gripe lately is that I was hired on as a graphic artist/web designer and I’ve been a sysadmin, graphic quickie, tech support guy since I walked into this position. I know a bit about everything that is involved with the internet, but all of the extra responsibility has left me not able to achieve my graphic artist job in doing our companies storefront redesigns. But they are getting me the tools in under a week to be stronger in my design abilities. I am used to working multi-display, I’m on three here at home, but at work I’m stuck with an Intel Mac Mini, this leaves no options for even a dual display But we have on order a new 20″ iMac for me, which I’ll chain my 20″ widescreen Sceptre HD monitor next to, yay for working at full speed after that!

At any rate, I have been working ten to twelve-hour days the past two weeks so I haven’t written, and am heading to bed now. I’ll try to get back to writing more!

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12 July 2007

A visitor is on their way

My old friend Pat is coming to town tomorrow, I haven’t seen him in over a year so we have some major boozing to catch up on

We’ll be hitting the house for the evening then off to Columbia to see his brother and some of our old friends, should prove to be a blast, hell, the last time he and I went out that way I had just turned twenty-two, so that’s eight years or more ago, now I’m showing my age, lol.  I plan to get some photos on this trip so keep your eyes peeled!

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7 July 2007

Outlook on the Day’s Events

It’s late, and I’m fighting the urge to go to bed… Family Guy marathon was on the tele this evening and I got the last load of stuff from our landlords after work, today is a somewhat joyous occasion for my wife and I, we severed the ties from the negativity known as rent and are fully owners! This has been a week of hell for me at work, as well as home. WORK WOrk Work as it were, making the impossible possible at the paying gig, then moving all of our stuff after hours. My iPod almost died this week since my compy wasn’t hooked up to recharge the device, god I didn’t realize how much an asset this little thing is!

At any rate, the Meijer Potter project at work has been kicking my ass, but I think that the programmer and I have it under control finally. Both compys here and at work have been flaking on me. The intel mini has been having audio issues as well as slow reboots, here at home I can’t get the box to wake from sleep!?! I am sure I’ll figure it out but until then, it’s time for sleep myself, we have a fairly big get together going on tomorrow and I have to be sharp!

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2 July 2007

I hate moving

Don’t get me wrong, I like the prospect of moving into a new place but I hate the physical act of moving. The packing, the lifting, the putting down, the driving, the overuse of commas in my writing, the sweat and the stink. We hired movers for the big stuff but if we had managed our money better we could have hired them for everything, and that would have been a tad nicer on my back. All last week wasn’t that rosy either, I had a nightmare client at work, we were one of three agencies in on a project, this means waiting for several approvals before you can even fire off an email. Despite us getting the final elements from the video company we were able to get the site up without a hitch, which was secondary to us building the greenscreen video capture setup for the event staff.

I will post a sample of what we did in a bit, then give a rundown in the work section of the website (once we have more videos up and such).

I am knocking off, two days of hardcore moving, then a Monday of work and more moving, I need some rest and a PBR then sleep.

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