Phil's blog

2008-02-12T14:48:00.000-08:00

Today, I'm wiped out. It's the second day in reading week, and I've been studying the entire infrastructure of my company's product. It's very interesting, but very tiring to read page after page every day. Good thing it's only for a week.

I joined the gym, NY Health and Racquet. It's a nice gym, lots of locations in Manhattan, so if I move out of Brooklyn, I'll still be set up.

I Love this job. It feels right for me, just learning all about the system, and eventually diagnosing problems, making tweaks, setting it up for the end-users...Plus it's a really great company, the more that I spend time there, I start to realize that.

I don't know what to do with my free time, I hope I make it into that choir. It will be nice to get out of the apartment for a few hours each week. If not, then I'm consiidering joining the Manhattan rugby club...or I'll just teach piano around the city.

We'll see, I'll let you know.

p.s. If you're reading this, feel free to shout out, or say hello.

Peace

End of New Hire Week

2008-02-08T04:08:00.000-08:00

Wow. I just learned a ton of stuff in 4 days, I never imagined that trading stocks could be so interesting. It's really just a complicated service, like retail, but with many many more checks and fees involved in the process.

My apartment is not the best, but I have enough room to live, and I enjoy the comforts of having a small electric piano to play on, and some good LP's to listen to.

I've been reading on the subway, working through "All Creatures Great and Small", or to some, the book that Model Student. It's by someone named James Herriet, and I'm gonna look up to see why the protagonist is also name James Herriet. Kind of strange for a (presumed) fiction book.

This weekend will be my first free weekend in a few weeks. I have a lot that I can do, but I haven't made plans yet, I probably will. I'd like to hang out with some friends in midtown, and maybe pick up some things for the apartment. I HAVE to do some laundry, which is not fun.

I'm going to look into investing, it just makes sense, for security sake.

I could write more, and maybe will later. But now, I'm gonna go. See you later.

p.s. As per some advice from a girl in my apartment, Talking to a house plant DOES help it grow, especially if it is not doing well. I'm surprised, but glad that it helps. My *rescued* spider plant is looking really good after just a week of being brought in. I enjoy having "her". "She" might get some company from a small palm tree soon. My room gets HOT. Well, Ta Ta.

New Job, ETA 83 hours

2008-01-31T18:31:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm starting a new job on Monday, and I've been working pretty hard at reading up for it. I'm not really well versed in many programming languages, so I've been reading about the ones I'm gonna use. Tcl/Tk for one sounds Ok, I've never used a scripting language with a regular compiled language before. Should be interesting.

Also, I got the book CODE COMPLETE, which is completely kicking my ass, in all general respects of programming (in any language). If you are a developer, you DEFINITELY need to read this book, it will give you years of insight into design, writing highly readable and functional programs, and, well, I'm sure there's a lot more to it. But the design suggestions are worth noting. Apparently, it's been a best-seller amongst software developers.

Back to the books, gotta get used to Tcl, it's a bit strange.

Got a job today!

2008-01-23T19:20:00.000-08:00

Today, I got an offer from Fidessa, NY. I will be starting out as an Implementation Specialist.
For me, it is exciting, because I get to program, I get to do some forensics, and I don't have to sit in a cubicle, I get to be on the trading floor of
some Wall Street firms, and see how it all works.
I start in a week and a half...

VERY STOKED.

Also, I got the Opera Web Browser, it is SOO much faster than firefox and explorer. Plus, there is a lot of viewing functionality that the other browsers don't have, such as saved sessions, speed dial, multi-engine address bar searches, an in-browser CTL-Tab selection similar to the Windows Alt-Tab interface. Also, did I mention it's FAST? And it looks nice taboot.

For now, до свидания.

Rockin.

2008-01-19T20:07:00.000-08:00

Listening to Rachmaninoff plays Rachmaninoff. If you like his music, you should hear him play it, it's completely different than anyone else.

Today I got a lot done, laundry, some room cleaning, some reading, programming, some improv at the piano. I'm feeling good, I don't wanna jinx it. I'm going somewhere in this life. I don't know if it has to do with music or not, but I'll find out.

I'm 23 and I haven't had much of a social life yet. I wanna change that, I think. Well, I don't like being alone 99% of the time. That is what I want to change.

I am soo happy that I bought this new laptop, I've been away from computers for about 3 years, and it's great to get back into it. It definitely gives me something to do, which I'm glad about, because I can learn new things, and hopefully get paid for them someday.

Also, I'm learning to type in Dvorak. I'm terribly slow at it now, but I am confident that it will be so much faster when I get it down. This paragraph took about 3 minutes.

Much faster with qwerty now. But qwerty, your time will end soon. Anyway, I'm going now.

Vista Rocks....

2008-01-18T20:03:00.000-08:00

....and I don't even work for Microsoft. It really doesn't suck that bad, although it is REALLY annoying when you're setting up the system, and installing your own programs (have to deal with extra clicks to get stuff done). But since then, for a few weeks, I haven't had to deal with the UAC all that much. Anyway, the Explorer on it is much better, the searching of the start menu makes things easy, and the whole layout is very, very, user friendly.

I like it.

Reminder...

2008-01-18T18:19:00.001-08:00

This is just to remind myself, the band "The Motet" jams out pretty hard...gotta listen in the future.

First Post

2008-01-18T17:24:00.000-08:00

Hi, how are you? I'm fine.

This is my first blog post in a few years, when I had livejournal for a little while. Hopefully, I'll get some decent content up here...I just wanna produce something, so hopefully it'll be enjoyable.

Maybe some music, maybe some stream-of-consciousness writing, maybe some coding, who knows. I got a digital camera, maybe some lo-fi pics, or low quality...

Anyway, say "hi" once in a while, to make sure i'm still posting....

Hasta Luego.