I am choosing to ride this wave!

Moving forward I will be working for DriveTime at their corporate offices in Phoenix, AZ. Some might wonder why I would give up the freedom of working remote. It would be simple to say that I will be making more money. However, it is so much more than that. Every interaction I have had with them has been top notch. I have met with future co-workers, managers and C-level people. There seems to be a common thread in all these people and several meetings. This place has culture! Not in the employee manual, but they live it, breath it and it shows.

I have not squandered my remote work time at all. I worked many Friday’s of a three day weekend out of state, 4 weeks on a road trip, 4 weeks in Europe, 4 months in Louisiana, several coffee shops, several co-working places and tons of time in my own home office. I have greatly enjoyed all of these experiences. I have learned so much while out exploring the world. I feel that coming back into an office now I come with experiences that will allow me to approach complex problems with a free and clear mind.

Further a lot of what I am being brought on board for is to allow DriveTime to forge ahead with web application development. I was starting to get comfortable at my current job, this new job will take me far out of my comfort zones in everyway. New technology, new methodology, new people and a new work environment. I will be working with ASP.NET MVC 3, Azure cloud computing and many other cutting edge technologies. This will be my first time working in an agile shop, and they have developers and business analysts sitting together at big tables so there is a strong sense of teamwork.

I am really looking forward to my next venture and if you follow me on twitter (@EvilBobby) I am sure I will have more to say there as everything unfolds.

“If we’re growing, we’re always going to be out of our comfort zone.” ~ John Maxwell

So very excited to tackle a project and work with my hands I set forth on Thursday night…and it went a little something like this..

This was the borrowed TV that I had that needed to go.

face down this is what the 37” LCD looks like

This is the hardware from Sanus to make it happen

Hardware mounted to the TV

This is the space sans the old TV

This is me finding and marking the stud. I have recently been told that this may not be the best way. However when you are hanging 75 lbs of TV 18 inches off the wall it really does matter if you are dead center of the stud!

That is an impact drill, lag bolt, mounting plate, and a … torque wrench ~ I mean really who wants a TV to fall down, this shit counts!

Mounting plate is on the wall with three lag bolts in it, and yes the little orange thing is a level, just wait…

Yes I noticed it is slightly off, but let me see you do better.

………

And now we segway into the BullShit…

So at some point into this project I put my knee or arm into the screen because after mounting it … something just wasn’t right, you be the judge…

and that was the horror I seen when I decided to plug in the TV before hiding all the wires… ugh

this is what it looks like full screen, yeah I jacked it up, somehow, someway!

….

Moving on I now have a $150+ mount on the wall with a busted TV, guess it is now time to buy a new one, even though I hardly watch TV…

Enter…

So on the right is the broken one, and on the left is the new 32” LCD TV that includes a DVD player. I went with the smaller one because it was the only one I could find in stock between Bestbuy and Costco. Anyways this isn’t for home theater it is just for sleepy time.

Now the mount has been moved from the busted ass 37” to the brand new 32”

….

So you might be wondering why does this matter?

this was what I had from bed before..

as you can see … it sucks. no view.

and now?

We have a 32” LCD hanging out saying ‘Hello’

this is the side view at full extension, if you ever want to hang a TV with intention use Sanus, they have beefy mounts that work!

This is what it looks like from the front, anybody see wires??? yeah I don’t think so, that is not how EvilBobby rolls!

If you made it this far at least leave a comment

The event was setup via twtvite. I have seen this used for several events and it is great for tweetups. There was one slight problem I found out later. The event was setup in Mountain Standard Time. Arizona doesn’t use Day Light Savings Time and thus my Google calendar is set to Mountain Standard (Arizona) Time. So I was in downtown Phoenix an hour early. No worries though I just stopped by LUX coffee and ended up running into several friends.

After enjoying a great latte it was time to head over to #smunch at @galloblanco. So what the heck is Smunch? The local one that I went to is the brainchild of @matthewpetro @traciepetro @ToniaMBartz. They seen a lot of locals getting together for night time events, and asked why not brunch? From this the Saturday morning brunch was born.

While I didn’t really know anyone there I was instantly welcomed into the group. Some where regulars others were also first timers. We had great food, great company, great service and an overall fabulous time. The owner of Gallo Blanco (Doug Robson) seen the #smunch as we were live tweeting and even stopped by our table to say thanks and make sure everything was ok. He personally runs the @galloblanco twitter account, awesome!

I wrote a review on Yelp

Checked in on Foursqaure

Tweeted with the hashtag #smunch

And made lots of new friends.

So get out there and try something new, meet new people, have a good time and most of all …. Share your experiences.

enjoy!   Picture [2500 x 1600] <—it’s big

The closest thing that I can relate it to is a shooting star.

Most of us have seen them. However when we do we are usually the only one in the crowd who gets to see it at that moment. It can be the most amazing experience even though it is always very quick and disappears without a trace. Sometimes the ill experienced try to explain the shooting star…however the only way to experience a shooting star is to be in the moment at the right place and the right time. I have had a few key moments on my trip that were….simply amazing…not to be explained because that would steal from their meaning.

I started working at my current job with Take Charge America a little over a year ago. Now it is time for this to come to an end so that a new chapter in my professional career can begin. I really love the fact that I have nothing bad to say about my current employer, they have been awesome to me and I couldn’t have asked for anything more.

So if my job is so great why change? Mostly because the new opportunity presents three key factors that I just couldn’t pass up. Growth, freedom and compensation. I will be working on a new project from the ground up, literally we will be putting together the development/test/source control environments in the coming weeks. Also it will be done in C#/ASP.NET which is my strongest skill set right now. Further it keeps with my strong belief in web applications. We will be creating a web app to replace a desktop application that is currently installed in 4 different states. I have always believed in the zero footprint nature of web applications and will be working for a company that feels the same way. Freedom, once all the initial planning and design process has taken place I will be able to work remotely a large percentage of the time which will also allow me to travel while working. Compensation, it never hurts when there are more digits in your paycheck

So wish me luck, there is incredible risk in the move I am making but with that comes great possibilities!

“We rest here while we can, but we hear the ocean calling in our dreams, And we know by the morning, the wind will fill our sails to test the seams, The calm is on the water and part of us would linger by the shore, For ships are safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.”

Firefox has a couple of plug-ins that I just can’t live without. Firebug and IE Tab. Many times I will use Firebug to dig into other websites to see how they are building their pages or what technology it is based on. IE tab is a great way to verify cross browser compatibility when developing a site.  I have found if I just build my UI in Firefox it is usually only a few steps away in IE, however the reverse is almost never true. IE tab also allows me to run my Windows Home Server (WHS) in several tabs. This results in running multiple Remote Desktop Sessions (RDP) some physical some virtual.

I found that as I became more involved with good front end web site construction that without firebug you are just wasting your time. Another power feature for Firefox was the ability to clear private data quickly. You can set this up under options -> privacy -> clear private data. A couple of hints: I turn off confirmation and pre-select what items to clear when using the quick keys ctrl+shift+del.

When monkeying with css and JavaScript I just need to clear the cache. Everything else I leave intact.

When working with session data or login credentials I clear cookies.

Big downfall of this was that I would always get logged out of any of the accounts I was logged into, including the remote desktop sessions in my Firefox IE Tabs. Yes I know you can clear cookies per domain in Firefox but it is not as quick when you are making rapid changes to a site.

Enter chrome: I installed it when it first came out but without plug-ins and the simple interface I didn’t see the point. However now I found a purpose, I could use chrome to stay logged into all of my accounts when doing web development with Firefox. Over time I have really started to like chrome, it is fast, clean and simple. Further as I have added a second monitor at both home and work I now see a perfect use for removable tabs in chrome. Sometime I need to look at Gmail and my Google calendar or a Google doc at the same time…simple drag a tab out to the second monitor. When I am done I can either just close it or shove it back into chrome on the original monitor.

Now if you paid attention you will notice one hitch in this solution…WHS and RDP sessions. There are no IE tabs in chrome and you can not install active x controls in chrome (thankfully). Re-enter Internet Explorer. If I left these in Firefox I would drop all of my sessions when clearing cookies (sometimes I have 3 going at the same time).  As usual IE is painfully slow just opening new tabs and I just can’t use it for regular use but great for WHS/RDP.

So now to complete my trilogy I use Chrome for login accounts like Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Tr.im, Stackoverflow, Pandora to name a few. Firefox to work on web UI (css/JavaScript) and to lookup anything I am researching. And begrudgingly I use IE8 to run my WHS/RPD sessions; occasionally I will view my pages to make sure they are ok in IE 7/8.

So which browser is the best, as usual it depends.  But I have given you some solid info on my strategy so maybe it will help you make an informed decision.

after our first tasting for the day…don’t miss the tiger..that’s me