managing stress in a fast-paced world

I almost forgot how easy it can be to write a simple web application….

So for work I decided I would “quickly” whip up a nice little web app. I always use PHP for my web apps, it’s just what I’m the most comfortable with. This time it’s not the normal PHP & MySql app though, I’m using SOAP now!

Oh on a sidenote, I downloaded this development API, started using it and found it really well written, I was still learning it so I started reading through the code, noticed some comments which looked “familiar” as I learned more and started reading the online forums, I see more “familiar” things… turns out one of my old co-workers from my days at Cal wrote the API I’m using… the world always seems so small.

Anyways, regarding writing apps, it always seems hard to start, but once the ball is rolling, everything seems to just work at the end of the day.

I’m starting a new project today, to do it, I need to install PHP and Apache… I got a strange sense of happiness setting up my development environment. Funny how you never realize how much you miss things sometimes.

After a few hours of work tonight I have it all working!

If you want to reach my home number, call one of the following numbers, then hit 1 and my SIP number 1-747-642-3572 followed by the # key…

Atlanta 1-678-918-5026
Atlantic City 1-609-840-8027
Baltimore 1-410-372-4173
Chicago 1-708-437-9040
Connecticut 1-860-256-4170
Dallas 1-469-449-2560
Fort Worth 1-817-886-2285
Daytona Beach 1-386-267-2650
Houston 1-832-631-1597
Los Angeles 1-323-908-4167
Miami 1-786-206-4270
New York 1-347-427-9019
N New Jersey 1-973-494-5586
S New Jersey 1-609-873-8119
Philadelphia 1-610-879-1419
San Francisco 1-415-354-1083
Seattle 1-206-219-5789
Washington, DC 1-202-742-5739

After YEARS of not having a home phone, I’m finally going to setup phones in my new place, each phone jack will have it’s own number!

I can get pretty annoyed sometimes, I don’t think I deal very well with people who have bad communication skills. Not that I’m the best myself, believe me I wish I was better.

What has really gotten to me recently is when someone asks me a question, that is completely wrong. It’s like they somehow get the idea that they know what they are doing, but then they really have no idea. Here’s an example, someone comes to me and says, “Where is the X file located?” so I point them to the file, and then they say, “Oh what I really need to know is who changed that file…” My first reaction is uhh, we’ll why didn’t you just say that?

Other times people just blindly ask, “hey what do you recommend for x?” Of course I ask questions, and then I get blank looks like, “uhh what’s the difference?” That really annoys me, especially when you can find the answer with a quick google search!

today i had saltines and a coke… for lunch at 3:30pm

The other day one of my co-workers bought 5 lotto tickets, three of them matched the mega number, the one you MUST match to win big… Each of the three tickets unfortunatly only matched 1 other number, so they are only worth something like $2… doesn’t that suck? In the end he only made $1. I suppose it’s better than losing completely.

Then, recently, someone else left my company, apparently he came into a pretty big sum of money and quit… sheeh.

It’s taken about a week, but I feel much better now. Still have a cough but at least the miserable feeling is gone.

Anyways, about a month ago I got a new laptop, it’s a Dell Latitude D410. It’s an ultraportable model, I had one of these with me when I went to Vietnam last year and liked it so much I decided to buy one with all the extras. I got the media base which holds an extra battery and the DVD-RW drive, with dual batteries I’m getting 10 hours or more battery life. The screen is about the only downside, it’s 12 inches and only 1024×768 so if I’m doing any work, I’m usually using an external monitor.

Other than that, it has plenty of ram and hard drive space to do all my work. It’s like the perfect laptop for me… I’ve got to get around to dumping the rest of my computers, the old laptop and old exchange server… they need to go.