A) I finished a reasonable draft of my resume last night, crafted for the current first phase of the job hunt, and have it out to three editors. I was jazzed and could not get to sleep until about 3:45 this morning, so i am a little tired. Once i incorporate the feedback i will have it online should you wish to: read it for pleasure, help with edits, hire me… You can read the old version if you like.
Initially, i will simply replace this existing resume with the new one, but i am also crafting a narrative style bio for the web to replace the resume. Though for ease until i get hired somewhere else, i will probably implement a ‘download pdf resume’ button. With the resume “nearly done”, i can press forward with slightly less unsavory tasks – finishing re-writing the rest of the RAI website.
B) I am still working on transitioning to a self-hosted environment for this blog. So far i am still stalled at the initial phase. I have all the pre-pre work done, but the true first step “install WordPress on your website” – that one is still holding me up. I did find and fix a slight (though probably inconsequential) error in the sample php config document the comes with the WordPress install download package, that you have to edit so that it will talk to your MySQL database, but that has not made everything groovy yet. I do think it could have helped because i am getting different error messages than i was before. I thought i had this all figured out, but i took a shortcut that may or may not have made any difference. After deleting all the old install files from my site, and deleting the first database as well – in order to do a fresh and clean install, i assigned many of the same values in the new (second) database that i used in the first database. Probably should not matter, but i do not really know what was wrong the first time, so i am trying to catch any useful details. Today i shall start again.
C) Related to B) a little bit – web browsers. I decided to try checking out the self-hosted blog in a wider variety of browsers instead of just 2 – Firefox which is my browser and Seamonkey which is my web design platform. At least it has been for html – i do not yet know if i will need something else to develop php and css chops because i have not started figuring all that out yet. So far in the reading, it seems that PHP and CSS are done more by actual coding than the GUI html approach dominant in the past, so people are doing it in simple text editors. The nicest part of starting over with an issue like webdesign is that this is not a bad time to be doing it. People have figured out a lot of mistakes made and have largely agreed on some decent standards. So, i hope to continue to learn more about designing to current standards and getting rid of some old crap like the prevalence of tables in html designs.
I installed Chrome for the first time and dusted the cobwebs off of Safari. I have never really liked Safari. It works fine, but i don’t like the way it looks, you can’t customize your tool/nav bars as easily as some others, and i really hate the way it deals with and displays bookmarks. I have used Chrome before on other people’s machines, and i figured that what i did not like were things i could fix through preferences on any machine of mine, and i had a good feeling about it since i like most things google makes. I think that the gmail web interface is the only thing google makes that i do not like. I love gmail, it just always bothered me that google decided i did not need folders anymore and i cold not have them. Since i have been working in a fully portable high-powered laptop environment for a decade or so, i don’t need the web interface and I solved this by using gmail in the mail client of my choosing, formerly Thunderbird while i was still stuck with Windows, and now Mac Mail.
It was interesting to note that the self-hosted blog looked different in the different browsers. Actually it looks the same in every browser except Firefox. The blog would load in Firefox but would not in the other browsers. The error messages i could see were useful, but still interesting that they did not come up in Firefox (and for other geeks out there, it was not a cookie or cache issue).
I enjoyed using Chrome. It was super quick to set-up and i got it customized to about 90% of where i wanted it to be inside of 5 minutes. I have not yet researched the last 10% but i bet it is possible. Chrome looks slick and things work well, and having google search incorporated into your address bar is awesome. I have only been playing with it for a few hours, but i don’t understand why all the ads? There are ads at the bottom of people’s posts in my google reader, ads on my facebark, ads on some search pages, and it frustrates me. Admittedly, i may be spoiled, but this does not happen to me in Firefox. In Firefox, i have no ads in google reader ever. I have no ads on facebark ever, and i have no ads on search pages. The ad banner that loads at the top of “free hosting” accounts with godaddy (which is where my self-hosted blog lives for now until i see if it is worth paying for) – i don’t even see that banner in Firefox. I may look into seeing if i can cut the ads out of Chrome, but i bet not. Mozilla has a different mandate than google. I can’t blame google for wanting to make money, but i don’t want to see the ads. It is a slippery slope between having a few ads and becoming godaddy.*
*Note – do a host provider write-up soon to get input on what other people are using.
Summation:
Hopefully you guys will help me with resume feedback after the new one gets posted.
Hopefully i can get WordPress to install correctly today.
I will play with chrome a little more, but most likely i am sticking with Firefox.
Godaddy frustrates me very much, but it is like having an old car and not being able to afford a new car. Do you stick with the one you have, fixing the things you know are broken, or do you buy a different used car having no idea what is about to break on that? Further discussion pending…
