p14nd4's blog is the best blog ever.

Updates

If you’re really masochistic and check my blog every few days hoping for an update, you may have already noticed a few subtle changes to the right navigation bar on here. I hope that’s not the case, though, so I get to entertain you with a brief walk-through of these changes, and how they relate to my recent life.

The first, and most obvious change, is the addition of a little blurb about myself near the top right. Although I still did kind of like the setup over at p14nd4.blogspot.com a bit better, there isn’t a good interface in WordPress (the software that powers my blog) to show this information, so it’s just kind of hacked in there at the moment. I think I’ve heard of a plugin to do something similar, but again, sort of a hack anyway. Most of you probably already know the info I took about a minute to put up there, but I might be getting a few otherwise unfamiliar visitors in here soon (more on that later, if I have time), so I thought it might be nice. Yes? No? Feel free to comment.

Moving down the list, there’s a new section heading … Pages, which contains a new … er … page, Projects. As the page itself also explains, I wanted somewhere to put some of the things I’ve worked on over the past year (at least, I think that’s as far back as any of the projects go so far). I hope to expand this a bit at some point to possibly include some other projects that, while less interesting for the general reader, could be immensely helpful to a few select googlers in the future. Admittedly, this section is virtually useless right now to anyone who isn’t at least slightly interested in computer science / programming. Sorry.

Continuing on, I’ve added one more link to My Stuff: TheLittleMan.net. A very select few of you may remember back to late 1999 when Chris Bates registered this domain for his freelance web design service, which I joined for a period as well. More importantly, though, this was the home of what immediately became my primary email address, so when Chris dropped his web design service and didn’t care to keep the domain name, I quickly offered to pick it up. Since about 2003(?), I’ve owned the domain for the sole purpose of keeping my email address, which I host on my own server, but had no web page there. I finally decided to change that late one night this spring, by making it a nice-looking portal of sorts, and a good place to hold my résumé. In addition to a .doc and .pdf copy of the résumé, I coded up an xhtml+css version, was actually pretty fun to make, too. I doubt many of you are as into xhtml/css/standards as I am, but I’m pretty proud of the results of both of these pages. Particularly with the résumé, I organized pretty much everything just as unordered lists (<ul>), and did fun formatting with css — this is my understanding of how xhtml and css are supposed to be used … organize content using the semantic meaning of various elements/hierarchy, and do all display/rendering configuration only through css. P.S. using a <ul> for an inline, comma-separated list is awesome :). (And yes, I know I’m a dork.)

Last on the list (literally and figuratively) is a new option to choose between different site themes. To be honest, I mainly added this because the syntax highlighting on some terms in the projects section isn’t optimized for a black background. The Classic theme seems to be the best for reading the code, but you’re now welcome to use whatever theme you’d like — for the entire site. (It remembers your setting in a cookie.)

My Life

As you should know by now (having read my info at the top right), I have graduated. <Monty Python>yay…</Monty Python> I ended up really surprising myself by having the best grades of all of college during my last, and most intensive semester (I’m rather proud of myself … please excuse me while I commence a little bragging). I was taking 20 credits (6 classes) of all upper division computer science (well, and inet, which is part of the computer science and engineering associate program), including a graduate-level course in Data Mining (csci5523 … the co-professors of which also happened to be co-authors of the textbook) and three different internet / networking / programming courses, and I pulled off a 3.75, which put me on the Dean’s List =D. (I also took engc3029w during May term … a three week, three-credit course that met four days a week for about four hours … and got a very solid A in there.) It was a good way to go out.

Since then (well, and somewhat before that), it has been my sole purpose in life to find a real job. Of all the programming I’ve done, I think I’ve decided that I like network/socket/client-server programming best, and my language of choice is C. If I were to use those two criteria to limit my job search, though, my options would be pretty severely limited, but a man can dream… I’ve probably sent out nearly a dozen résumés and cover letters so far, including my Opera application (eeeee!), and while I’d love to take a break and just wait for a dozen high-paying job offers to come rolling in, I’m not sure that’s the most appropriate course of action. (My lack of income is starting to hurt, as my [newish] bike was recently stolen, my desktop computer died and needs some replacement parts, I had a dentist appointment without dental insurance, and I still have to pay rent through the rest of my lease (July 31) … not to mention a new apartment after this lease expires.) Regardless, I’m confident that something will pan out … even if it means taking some underpaid support position for which I’m well qualified, but doesn’t utilize my expensive education. Bottom line, though, I can’t move back to my parents’ house once my lease is up … so it’s anything vs. joining the ranks of the homeless =P.

Anyway, that about wraps up what’s been going on with my blog and the last month or two of my life, and I have to shower and be ready to go about five minutes ago, so for all of you anxious blog-checking fans out there … until next time, enjoy.