Tuesday March 08, 2005

Interesting...Blogging on the job

Check out this CNET News article about "Blogging on the job."

 Subject: Technology

Monday March 28, 2005

More Solutions for Identity

So for the past 6 months, I have been studying Identity Management within the Gillette Company for my Information Science Senior Project. Most of my research has stemmed from internal documents, presentations, and actually user experiences with the Global Help Center. Through my studies I've come across the idea that technology alone will not solve Gillette's lack of managed identity. With a revamp of current identity related processes and bringing back an internal Help Center we can move toward a more globally federated architecture. Until then we can hope that Bill Gates is right when he says "the conventional digital password is dead." At least we have an idea of what the software giant has in mind for a replacement.

 Subject: Technology

Saturday March 12, 2005

Post-graduation job @ Endeca

So after a day of interviewing and 3 weeks of waiting, I was offered the Associate Technical Consultant position at Endeca Technologies Inc. I am very excited about this awesome opportunity and of course I accepted the position. The Associate position works closely with the Technical Consultants who are responsible for developing web-based application for customers such as Wal-Mart, Bank of America, Barnes and Noble, etc. The job involves defining application requirements, designing solutions, and building applications in Java/JSP, .NET, and other supported platforms. In addition, we will stress test applications and tune software performance. Endeca is listed as a "Top 10 Pre-IPO" company selected by Technologic Partners, the publisher of VentureWire. As a winner of the Investors' Choice award, Endeca is recognized as one of the top pre-IPO software companies. See where Endeca falls in the Enterprise Search industry here.

 Subject: Technology

Monday April 25, 2005

Sun Blogs

So my Dad finally started his blog at blogs.sun.com. I've been pestering him to sign up for his free account and to start writing! Here is the link to his blog: http://blogs.sun.com/swenton.
Also check out a whole list of Sun bloggers...http://blogs.sun.com/roller/main.do

 Subject: Technology

Monday May 02, 2005

Graduation

5 years have come and gone. I finally graduated last Saturday (April 30th) from Northeastern University with my Bachelor degree in Information Science. I will be spending the next month working for 2 weeks at Gillette then taking the last 2 weeks of the month off before starting full-time at Endeca. It was a great feeling...graduating and already having an awesome job starting June 1st!

 Subject: Personal

Tuesday May 24, 2005

Goodbye Blogger

I have finally implemented RSS tools that are completely run through my own site. I found a php script that builds an xml feed (feed.xml) from entries stored in mysql. It's a pretty well written script and helped me understand how a feed is built and displayed within an RSS aggregator. I was also able to sharpen up my understanding of XML. To add posts to my blog, I created a simple php form that just adds a row to the mysql database. I opted not to display the feed on my index page with any fancy RSS to HTML code, and just simply called up a couple sql queries and echos. I have a couple small bugs to fix, but for now it's in working order and displays nicely in SharpReader. I'm really excited!

 Subject: Technology

Tuesday June 01, 2005

First Day of Work

Today was my first day of work at Endeca in the Professional Services team. My morning started off with some paperwork with HR and getting situated at my cube and whatnot. I spent the afternoon reading documentation on the Endeca technology architecture and then installing the developer studio. Next week I will be taking the Endeca JSP Developer Workshop (http://endeca.com/services/education.html) which I'm really excited about! More to come about my new job...

 Subject: Technology

Friday June 03, 2005

iPod Settlement

So Apple has decided to either replace iPod batteries for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Gen iPods (or replace the entire iPod at their discretion) or give iPod users a $50 store credit redeemable for any Apple-branded products. The one catch is that only iPod owners who purchased their iPods before May 31, 2004 are eligible. I purchsed my iPod on June 14, 2004 from Amazon...I'm sorry you're 14 days late. My Dad suggested to write a letter to Apple explaining my situation. Who decided that May 31st would be the cut off date anyway? I own a 3rd generation iPod that now only runs reliably for about 2 hours and then needs to be recharged. In the Apple Settlement, they have defined a 3rd Gen iPod battery that plays for four hours or less as qualifying for a reimbursement. In their direct words, "You have a Battery Failure for purposes of this Settlement." Check out the Apple iPod Settlement for yourself: http://www.appleipodsettlement.com/

 Subject: Technology

Sunday June 05, 2005

Picasa 2

Just installed Google's Picasa 2 photo management software which can be downloaded for free here: http://www.picasa.com/. I am very impressed with its ease of use and layout. I chose to hide folders such as My Documents and My Pictures since I store my photos in a seperate folder under the c: drive. In under a couple minutes, the software had scanned all my photos and sorted them by year. Even though most of my folders are conventionally named like "eventTitle_date," Picasa sorted them by the creation date of the folder. I guess this would only be an issue if for some reason I needed to recreate a folder after the event has happened...like a year or so later. I found a neat little feature that allows users to select multiple photos and create a collage out of them. I added about 6 photos which are presented in a polariod like layout and then added some cool descriptions underneath in Fireworks. I'm sure I'll begin to rely on this software pretty frequently.

 Subject: Technology

Thursday June 09, 2005

Is iTunes just convienent?

A study done by the NPD group says that iTunes is more popular than most P2P services offered online. The interesting finding is that both iTunes and LimeWire came in with 1.7 million users. I am also suprised to also find Kazza listed in fourth place. I stopped using Kazza about 3 years ago when most of the songs became corrupt, either only containing part of the song or sounding like static. Anyhow, I reazlied I like my iPod so much because of iTunes and how convenient it is. After trying the Napster-to-Go service for a month, I won't be switching any time soon. Check out the NPD study here.

 Subject: Technology

Thursday June 09, 2005

It's Validated

I finally got around to fixing up my RSS feed and it now validates correctly (feedvalidator.org). There were 3 outstanding issues dealing with the , , and tag. For an RSS 2.0 feed, it must be tagged as and not so that change was pretty simple. The tag also must be in a mailto URL form. So I simply changed it from my first name to my e-mail address. As for the tag, it has to be in RFC828 format and my input was just simply a combination of the date and time. PHP 4.0 added support for the RFC828 format time as the "r" variable. So now that my feed is working properly, my next endeavor will be to implement comments. Until next time...

 Subject: Technology

Tuesday June 21, 2005

Purge Extension in Thunderbird

Ever since we've been running our own webmail and accessing it through IMAP in Mozilla's Thunderbird we've had an issue that drives me crazy! In Thunderbird whenever a message was deleted from my inbox and automatically moved to the "Trash" folder, it still remained in my inbox when logging into webmail. At first I couldn't tell if this was a Thunderbird issue or an issue with our webmail interface. I stumbled across some code to change the "Trash" folder in Thunderbird. By accessing the mailnews.js file in the profile folder and adding this line of code: "pref("mail.server.default.trash_folder_name", "Deleted");" I was able to change the Thunderbird "Trash" folder to "Deleted" which now matched the one in webmail. After making this code modification, the problem still existed. After doing some more research, I then came across this Harvard document on how to Delete and Purge messages in Thunderbird (http://www.fas.harvard.edu/computing/thunderbird/delete.html). After downloading the Purge button extension and installing it, I was able to move messages to the trash by pressing the Delete button and then purge them with the Purge button. Now I can sleep at night knowing my messages have been deleted! Hehe

 Subject: Technology

Tuesday June 21, 2005

WebmasterWorld Search Conference

This conference looks pretty sweet...especially the special on "Meet the Google Engineers." Hopefully some year I can attend it.
http://www.webmasterworld.com/conference/

 Subject: Technology

Thursday June 30, 2005

Calling All Endecans

So I'm at Tia's last night for Kevin and Bryan's farewell party and one of the girlfriends and I get talking about IT careers and finding your place in this industry. Having come from the help desk environment at Gillette and seeing the beginnings of outsourcing in huge corporations so had a lot of experience to contribute to our conversation. The guy who was working the door at Tia's began to listen t us so we invited him to join our conversation. What are the odds that he also comes from an IT background and just finished his MBA. If I remember correctly, he now works at an insurance company and really doesn't like what he does. I began telling him about my new job at Endeca and all the great things we're working on. He also mentioned one of his friends told him to look into Molecular. So I tell him about all the new positions we're looking to hire and basically what he could expect working for a small dot com. After a good hour conversation I give him my business card information on a napkin and I head back to my group of friends. I guess I really should carry some business cards around with me! Anyway, tomorrow I will have been here and a month and I'm already recruiting. I always tell my mom that there's something about doing what you love and getting paid for it.

 Subject: Technology

Friday July 08, 2005

Farewell Microsoftie

Yesterday, my Microsoftie set off to his new home in Seattle, Washington. After a few emotional goodbyes (or should I say "see ya laters")...his flight took off from Logan Airport at 8:52AM and arrived at 11:22AM (Seattle time). Throughout the day, I tracked the flight on the Alaska Air website. After entering the flight number and looking over the schedule, they offer a great tool from RLM Software called FlightView (http://www.flightview.com) which allows you to track the flight in real time. It even shows the storm patterns and severity. After a grueling 6 hours, Kevin's flight landed and a few seconds later I received a text message on my phone saying, "Just landed. Will call you later." I replied, "Yes I know."

 Subject: Personal

Tuesday July 12, 2005

Google Maps for Running

Kevin found this great site called "Gmaps Pedometer" that I used to map out a running route from my apartment. I was looking for something more challenging that wouldn't require a lot of "stopping and going." After browsing the map for a couple minutes I began clicking away and mapping out my route. This tool which makes use of the Google Maps API is quite unique and very practical. I even mapped out my new running route which will take affect in mid-August when I move to Beacon Hill. While I did end up cutting some corners on "my running route" I decided to round down the 2.24 miles to 2 miles. That's still pretty good for about 28 minutes.

 Subject: Technology

Monday July 18, 2005

BlogHer Conference

This morning, I stumbled upon a link to the "BlogHer Conference" in Scoble's blog. I was seriously considering attending this conference, despite the $300 or so plane ride but then I noticed that registration was closed. This conference which is open to both women and men seems like a great opportunity to talk to women bloggers in particular and find out how they fit into the wider spectrum of bloggers and blogging. The one session that caught my eye was, "Women Blog Developers: Shaping blogging from inside out," which will be led by KarenLuk from MSN spaces. Like Scoble, I hope to follow this conference...only from the East Coast and maybe even attend next year.

 Subject: Technology

Friday July 29, 2005

Welcome to the Big League

Coming up this Tuesday, August 2nd, I will be venturing down to North Carolina for my first customer requirements workshop. The project's project manager and myself will be on-site for the day to gather requirements and set project specifications. We leave at 6:30AM and return back to Boston around 9:30PM. I sent my flight itinerary to my Dad, just as an FYI and he says back to me, "welcome to the big league." So while I am preparing for this on-site day trip, I am also preparing for the big move in 3 weeks. This move to Beacon Hill will really "set the deal" in terms of being a grown-up and all. Well I'm kinda kidding...I am really just looking forward to having my own place for once.

 Subject: Technology

Thursday September 08, 2005

Home Automation

I am back from my blogging hiatus. My recent move to Beacon Hill and new found love for Java has been keeping me extremely busy here. It's almost been a month in my new fabulous apartment and so far I'm loving ever moment of living by myself. My Dad setup an awesome home automation control system for me with X-10 modules for my living room & bedroom lights and my air conditioner. The interface, which is run through my server, is pretty cool and actually very convenient. I find myself frequently logging into the web interface to turn on my AC before heading home from work. Come wintertime when it starts getting darker out earlier, I plan to put some of the lights on a timed schedule.

 Subject: Technology

Tuesday September 13, 2005

Eclipse Development

In starting here at Endeca, I was introduced to the great development platform of Eclipse. While using this platform for the CVS repository, synchronization, and Java developing, I've found great comfort as a developer. Today, I stumbled upon an interesting feature in the "Tasks" tab. Deeply embedded in some Java code that myself and another consultant had written was a comment like this:

//TODO: add statistic

Below the code development window, a tabbed messaging section exists where the Tasks tab is located. One of the entries under this tab was the comment code about adding statistics. The columns of this "To Do" entry included the description (which was the actually comment), the file name, the folder location of this file, and the location of the comment (line number).



I decided to write about this because it's usually the little things that I stumble upon that make my job as a developer so much easier sometimes.

 Subject: Technology

Friday September 16, 2005

Google Blog Search

So the newest Google hype is their new search interface...Google Blog Search. Naturally, when I am presented with a new search text box, I like to see what results I can get for "swenton." The first 4 or so results are from my Dad's Sun blog, which obviously has been indexed by Google because of it's presence on the web and use of proper RSS standards. The next results include random blogs from livejournal with references to Jennie Swenton and Tilda Swenton, both of whom I do not know. So I begin to wonder why my blog has not been included in the index. The first thought is our DNS resolution. But in refering to any URL on my site, I almost always try to use the resolvable URL. While, I haven't found the right reason as to why my blog isn't indexed, I did look into a work around for indexing my blog.

Under the "How do I get my blog listed?" FAQ, Google suggests that my site feed should ping an updating service such as Weblogs.com. Now I suppose, in the scheme of things it doesn't really matter that Google Blog Search has included my blog in their index. I just love the challenge...and obviously learning a lot along the way. So my next step is to get my blog included on weblogs.com. From there everything should fall in place...hopefully. In the future, Google intends to add a submission form...I would imagine much like their Google Search form to add sites to their index. Again, Google won't guarantee such an addition, regardless of the fact that you even manually submitted the site.

 Subject: Technology

Friday September 16, 2005

It's a Success

Just checked on Weblogs.com for a confirmation that my blog was added...success!

 Subject: Technology

Thursday October 13, 2005

Seattle By Land and By Air

Yesterday morning I flew back into Boston from my 5-day vacation visiting Kevin in Seattle. While my actual birthday, which was on Saturday, was plagued by being sick...my "birthday weekend" was awesome! Our days were filled with good beer, good company, and lots of relaxing. I even had the pleasure of spending an afternoon at Kevin's office and meeting his security team at Microsoft. After that, we stopped by the newly renovated Microsoft Museum and Company Store.

For my birthday I was surprised with a scenic seaplane ride of Seattle from the Kenmore Air Harbor. Mt. Rainier, which can only be seen a handful of days of the year due to the "mystifying" Seattle weather was in plain view! With a huge grin from ear to ear (so I am told from Kevin), we took a 25-minute ride around Seattle and the neighboring towns of Redmond, Bellevue, and Kirkland. It was absolutely amazing! So now that I also love Seattle by air, I can officially move there. Soon enough...

 Subject: Personal

Friday October 14, 2005

Java, Eclipse, and Tomcat

So after a long morning of trying to match the correct JDK version to my versions of Eclipse and Tomcat, I finally found a good combination. The problem started when I kept getting the error: "Class file has wrong version 49.0, should be 48.0," when running an ANT build of an XML file. What the heck are the versions 49.0 and 48.0? Turns out 49.0 is the classfile version for JDK 1.5 and 48.0 is the classfile for JDK 1.4 (which is the version I needed to be running).

A couple months ago I remember encountering a similar problem where my Tomcat and JDK versions weren't compatible for the java compile (javac). To try and solve that problem I proceeded to install 1 older JDK and the newest JDK (1.5). Since none of those fixed the problem, I just let it go hoping it wouldn't come back to haunt me. Well today I had to completely uninstall every JDK I had previously installed and then install the 1.4.2_09 version which was supposedly the Tomcat 5.0 compatible version. After this install, I had to "re-install" Eclipse. There actually doesn't exist an install or uninstall file for Eclipse...it's just a drop directory. But I needed to completely wipe out all existences of JDKs because Eclipse was still hanging onto JDK 1.5 as it's JAVA_HOME environment variable.

So after 15 or so reboots I finally put together a set of compatible versions. Here is the outcome:
Eclipse: 3.1.0
JDK: 1.4.2_09
Tomcat: 5.0.28

I think it might be time to learn the .NET framework.

 Subject: Technology

Monday October 24, 2005

Lesson Learned in Data Loss?

Time after time, we lose our data. Whether it's due to a faulty storage device or an unexpected natural disaster, it's bound to happen. A couple months ago, my faithful laptop began locking up with no warning and throwing out an "inbound memory stack" error in a "blue screen of death" type fashion. I tried uninstalling software that might be causing unnecessary background CPU consumption and even switched from a PCMCIA Wireless B card to wired Ethernet, since it seemed the card was causing the laptop to overheat. After weeks of dealing with an unpredictable system, a new error started occurring on a regular basis. The "Windows delay write error," would be displayed in a yellow triangle in the task bar to warn me that I may be pushing my system too far. This error was usually followed by a system crash. To make a long story short, the laptop reached a point where it would not boot up anymore. I took the laptop home to my dad who was able to quickly pin point the problem to the hard drive.

This replacement 40GB Toshiba drive was a result of a drive that was purchased in March of 2003 that died 1 year later in 2004. Since the original drive was covered under a 1 year unconditional warranty, the online company took it back and replaced it with no questions asked. Here we are now...2 years later with another bad drive, which is covered under a 3 year warranty, but only by dealing with Toshiba directly. While the data on the drive was unsalvageable, most of it was backed up from a previous scare my boyfriend Kevin and his roommate had over the summer...where an apartment burglary left them laptop-less and data-less. What I did lose wasn't much of a loss, but how many times will I be scared into backing up my data before I take it seriously? :)

 Subject: Personal

Thursday November 10, 2005

Cron Jobs and URL Encoding Discoveries

Yesterday was a great day of discovery. In choosing to write about what I discovered yesterday concerning cron jobs and URL encoding, I figured that the simple fact of writing it down would help me to always remember it. So after spending a good chunk of my time this week wondering why my cron job wouldn't run, I stumbled upon the simplest answer ever. I had even consulted with some of the unix guys and others on my team. Turns out the end of a cron job needs to have a "newline" to designate the end of the file. Crazy if you ask me!

In the next realm of discovery, I was passing a password (of type String) from a shell script into a java class. The password looked somewhat like this: h@ht@md. Ultimately, the FTP host, username, and password were passed into an ftp URL formed command (username:password@host). When I compiled and ran the class with my set arguments, an exception was thrown saying my host "ht@md@whatever.domain.com" was invalid. So using some classic echo statements I printed out the variables and had them echoed to a log file. Sure enough they were being passed in properly. Turns out that the first "@" in the password designated the start of the host for the URL. So I implemented a simple FTPpwd.replaceAll( "@", "%40") on the password argument. Now this is cool stuff.

 Subject: Technology

Thursday November 10, 2005

Plaxo and Mark Jen Recap

Last Monday, November 7th, Mark Jen came to Cambridge for a MIT/Harvard recruiting event at the Kendall Hotel. I was particularly interested in hearing him talk about his experiences at Microsoft and Google. Having followed his blog since before he was fired from Google, I thought it would be really cool to meet him. And it definitely was. I brought my sister who is just starting out her career in IT at Boston Beer Company as a Support Intern. I figured the networking aspect of the event would be a great experience for her and give her a chance to hear people talk about exciting things going on in today's industry. Mark talked in great depth about interviewing and what it's like to interview at top IT companies. He even went on talk about some answers to those really tough questions that usually get you thinking...or more often than less stump you.

It was great to hear about Plaxo and what they have contributed to the emerging Web 2.0 community. Mark seemed so excited about his contributions and that he actually has a say in decisions that affect core pieces of the software. After listening to Mark, I reflected on my own place at Endeca. To have the opportunity to go to work everyday, be excited about what you do, and really feel like you can make a difference...it seems these days something like that is pretty rare. Most importantly, you have to be passionate about what you do.

 Subject: Technology

Friday December 09, 2005

Coupon Maven Extraordinaire

For as long as I can remember, I've been an avid coupon hunter. Back in my younger days, while scouring the Sunday Hartford Courant for deals in store flyers, I would also be sure to put aside the coupon inserts. Later in the day I would spent an hour or so cutting coupons for my mom and myself. The coupons I cut for her were more practical...like $1 off Bounty Paper Towels or $.50 off yogurt. The great thing about cutting coupons for her was that I could convince her to buy something specific for me simply because we had a coupon for it. On the other hand, I got a kick out of coupons like $2 off Ben and Jerry's ice cream and buy 1 get one free of Trident gum that I used to cut out for myself.

Early on in college I tried to keep the coupon cutting tradition alive. It began to get harder since I no longer had the Sunday paper and remembering what coupons I had was just too tedious. As technology has grown over these past 5 or so years...so has the way we use coupons. Today, my coupons are no longer made of paper and I no longer have to keep track of them if I wish. Now, my coupons look like this: $3?LLG4GJKCNFR.

With the boom of online shopping in these recent years, coupons play a big role in the way most people shop online. For instance, almost every e-commerce site offers some sort of free shipping deal. The problem is though, that most sites don't openly make their customers aware of these free shipping deals (with the exception of sites like Amazon and Buy.com). Coupon codes for other promotions come in various other forms like: 10% off, $5 off $100 or more, and just plain old $10 off. A unique way that e-commerce sites offer deals to their customers are through surveys that offer participants a coupon upon completion of the survey. Most of the time, these coupons are by far the best deals. They are also posted all over the Internet. So anyone can get access to the coupon and print it without ever filling out the survey. Talk about saving time AND money.

As I have progressed in my hobby as a coupon maven, I now rarely buy anything online without using a coupon. Recently, I bought a t-shirt online for my Dad for Christmas from antiqueradios.com. while I was pretty sure this no-name site wouldn't have any codes, I decided to search anyway. After a few tries at finding a sufficient search string in Google, I was successful in finding a $5 coupon. That basically paid for the shipping costs. And just yesterday, I was set on buying a pair of leather boots from Nine West that would cost around $100. To lessen the blow of this expensive purchase, I found a $10 off $65+ coupon. Turns out the boots were already 50% off in the store so while I didn't use the coupon; I still had an ear-to-ear smile after I bought the boots.

My day to day activities include a few daily visits to my favorite coupon sites which are mostly technology related. While these sites aren't any big secret, I still find friends and family members asking me for the latest deals on everything from Dell computers to ticketmaster.com codes. Seriously...why pay full price?

Hot Deals Club: http://www.hotdealsclub.com
Techbargains.com: http://www.techbargains.com

 Subject: Personal

Friday December 09, 2005

Seattle Bound...Again

This evening, I am scheduled to fly out of Logan for a weekend trip to Seattle. The occasion...the Microsoft Christmas Party! I would like to joke and say that I only packed a dress and my toothbrush, but then I would be lying. As excited as I am, there has been "talk" all week of the big storm that arrived in lower New England early this morning and now I'm a bit worried. When I took my trash out at 7AM there was already a good few inches on the ground. Weather reports are saying that severe elements of the storm should pass by around mid evening. As of now, my flight has been delayed 1 hour and 15 minutes. I am really hoping that I will be able to fly out tonight and I'm really looking forward to the 10-degree difference in the weather.

Seattle: 44 degrees
Boston: 35 degrees

I will definitely post pictures from the party...as I anticipate it's going to be a blast!

 Subject: Travel

Wednesday December 14, 2005

Seattle and Back

This past Monday morning, I arrived back on the red eye from Seattle. Kevin and I had a fabulous weekend! Friday night, my Alaska flight was delayed by 3 hours due to the huge snow/sleet storm that ended just before I left the office around 4PM to head to the airport. Flights were being canceled left and right, so I was very lucky to have been able to make it to Seattle, even though I arrived a little before midnight (west coast time). Saturday, we spent the day doing some errands and checking into our hotel for the Microsoft IT/Services Holiday Party. After a little "gathering" with some of Kevin's MACH friends and the interns, we made our way down to the party. While it was unbelievably crowded, everything was extravagantly decorated and laid out. Of course the highlight of the party was the chocolate fountains, which were my favorite. Later on in the night, we took our chances at the Blackjack table and won a $50,000 chip to enter into a raffle for a trip to Vegas. This party definitely topped 'em all!

On Sunday, we spent the day driving around Redmond and the Microsoft campus. After a short visit to Kevin's office, we decided to stop by a few noted landmarks on the campus. The first stop was the courtyard of "ship bricks." This courtyard, which is located between buildings 16, 17, and 18 has a brick for each product that was shipped since the early 80's. We stumbled upon everything from the "Microsoft Bob" brick to the "Windows 2000" brick. While I was impressed, it seemed that the ship brick craze had sailed after 2000. After visiting the courtyard, we found Lake Bill, which is located by the X buildings (which are some of the first Microsoft buildings). This lake, which was merely a pond, is home to a couple ducks and some bright orange fish. Our last stop was the MSN Redwest campus. We toured most of the campus by foot and finally stumbled upon the river/fountain that was dyed green for the Xbox 360 launch. The MSN buildings are some of the most fascinating buildings I've ever seen. While they remind of a ski lodge, they also give off an incredible vibe; that awesome stuff happens here.

The flight back home on JetBlue was pretty awesome. Not only was I on standby for the redeye flight (because I accidentally booked the 12:55AM flight for Sunday instead of Monday), but I also had the entire second row to myself on the plane. The DirecTV's on the back of every seat are pretty cool, even though there is nothing on TV during the hours of midnight-8AM. I found myself awake around 8AM EST just in time to catch the Today Show before our 9:10AM arrival. The coolest feature though was the JetBlue channel that displayed a real-time map of the United States and the plane's current location. It also included the plane's speed and altitude.

I won't be back in Seattle for a while, but I've been completely sold. :)

 Subject: Travel

Tuesday December 20, 2005

meebo.com

Found out about meebo.com today. Basically, it's the IM of Web 2.0. This new AJAX powered web app kind of reminds me of Trillion, which I initially clung onto because I could sign in with my MSN and AOL screen names. While the app obviously isn't complete in features, it sure is a cool start to this up and coming online space.

 Subject: Technology

Sunday December 25, 2005

Holiday Hiring and Job Searching

These past few week have been very interesting and exciting to say the least. While I have read and heard various things about the trends of holiday hiring, in particular the post from the Microsoft JobsBlog post titled, "Job Search at the Holidays", I am certainly not waiting until after the holidays to keep searching. I definitely feel like most individuals are away on vacation though. Take for example, my Dad who works for Sun...next week is shutdown week. And then there's Kevin who is home for the holidays on unused vacation time and generous Microsoft holidays. I'll still stay optimistic on the contrary.

In the midst of resume/cover letter writing and job searching, I have been trying to maintain relationships of the strong and weak kind. I have been reading The Tipping Point and although I am only 50 pages into the book, I am really loving it. The first section of the book actually mentions that most leads for jobs are from what we call "weak ties." So after I maintained my weak ties, by sending out a few e-mails to past co-workers and old lab partners from C++ 101, I moved on to creating new relationships.

I finally joined LinkedIn today, which I would best describe as the "adult Facebook." After creating my profile, adding my past work experience, and linking up with a few friends from college, I decided to give the "Find Job" section a try. To my surprise I found 2 jobs that could possibly be a good fit for me. I am definitely impressed with the complexity of the app.

So for now along with the job search, I have a few projects to keep me busy...CSS, AJAX, and my new VirutalEarth project. I'm pretty excited.

 Subject: Personal

Thursday January 05, 2006

Interviewing with Confidence

This evening I attended a free interviewing workshop in Brookline called "Interviewing with Confidence." This workshop was given by the Speech Improvement Company and advertised on Bostonworks.com. Eight of us Bostonians gathered in a conference room and it almost felt like I was part of an "unemployment support group." Before the workshop started, we struck up conversation among each other. Our ages varied from what I would guess 23 to 45 and people came from many different industries (biotech, advertising, real estate, and law). It was somewhat comforting to know that I was not alone in the job search.

Our presenter was a lively woman who engaged everyone in the room and even captivated the kid who just graduated from a nearby school who introduced himself by saying, "I am great at interviewing." I don't think anyone believed him, but at least he was attending the workshop. I walked out of the workshop feeling like I could conquer the world. I took away some great ideas to think about and concepts to improve in my own interviews. I'm ready to jump in head first!

 Subject: General

Friday January 06, 2006

Beta This and Beta That

It's about time I finally wrote about my recent experiences with Windows Live Mail and Windows Live Messenger. I am completely impressed (and hooked). Thanks to Kevin, I was able to partake in the beta users group for both of these next generation apps. I remember back in the day...in the year of 1996, I had a hotmail account. Gradually my use of hotmail withered away and I began using the POP mail services that came with our ISP accounts. I was never impressed with hotmail. It was slow and cluttered with ads and too many colors. About a month ago, while peaking over Kevin's shoulder at his laptop (I swear I don't do this often), I noticed that the window he had opened was his hotmail account. It was no longer cluttered and busy with who knows what. Jealousy overcame me and I asked him how I could get my hands on Live Mail. A week later, the invite was in my inbox.

Earlier in 2005, when I was searching careers at Microsoft, I was forced to apply for a passport account. I never thought I would actually use the passport account. But when I got my hands on Live Mail, I immediately ditched GMail (which I only used because it was faster than any other web-based mail app). I began forwarding my swenton.com mail to my hotmail address and actually started checking my mail from mail.live.com just because I enjoyed the experience. Today, I started using the Live Calendaring feature, which I could quite possibly become hooked on. I also filled out a feedback survey from the Mail Beta Team. I couldn't say enough good things and how impressed I am. Eventually I would like to see mail rules so I can put my swenton.com mail into a separate inbox. I keep reminding myself that live mail is still in beta. I love it though!

The next important addition to my daily online tools is Windows Live Messenger. Like applying for the passport account, I only started using MSN Messenger when Kevin started working at Microsoft. Since he was not always on AIM, I decided it was time to melt under pressure and put my passport account to good use. I found out about Live Messenger from Mark Jen's blog. After one mention to Kevin, the invite for Live Messenger was in my inbox. I love my MS hookups! What I love most is how I can check my live mail through messenger without having to log into live mail separately.

 Subject: Technology

Friday January 13, 2006

Workgroup Collaboration in your Living Room

File sharing just got a whole lot easier! I discovered the greatness of Live Messenger's Sharing Folders. There's a great deal on dealdetectives.com for Shutterfly prints and I've been dying for Kevin to send me pictures from New Year's Eve. So instead of using traditional transfer methods through preferably my FTP server, we were able to use our shared folders. Pretty cool if you ask me!

 Subject: Technology

Monday January 16, 2006

Gizmo and SIP Phone

I have become a devoted Gizmo user. A couple months ago, my Dad and I started exploring VoIP solutions. We initially started out using Skype, which turned out not to be what we had expected. We couldn't quite figure out if it was our machines, software compatibility, or our hand/headsets that didn't meet our expectations. Shortly after, we discovered the Gizmo Project, which is based on the open Session Initiation Protocol (or better known as SIP). While the Gizmo Project client is closed source, it is based on open standards. Gotta love open standards. Because of these open standards, users can use any SIP phone with Gizmo.

The land line at my house in Connecticut, has not disappeared yet. It's only a matter of time though. For now though, we have 2 lines. A land line and a VoIP line. The VoIP line was established for $35/year (incoming calls only) from SIPphone. The analog telephone adapter (ATA) connects to the telephone line and also connects to the internet (through the router). Since our house was wired for 2 lines, the 2nd line, which does not have an active PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) service, allows us to pass SIP calls through the ATA.

This is some pretty cool stuff though. Even though I up'ed the minutes on my cell phone plan from 500 to 800, it's nice to know that I have Gizmo to place calls directly to my house on the SIP phone (line 2) for FREE.

 Subject: Technology

Monday January 16, 2006

Adventures of the Coupon Maven

I had a great adventure the other night in my favorite hobby of coupon hunting. Like I mentioned a few days ago, dealdetectives.com had listed some great deals for Shutterfly developing. The prints were free...yes FREE...and all you had to pay for was shipping. I ended up ordering:

48 - 4x6s
3 - 5x7s
2 - 8x10s
5 Customized greeting cards

This order should have come to around $37. Instead I simply paid for shipping which was a mere $6.86. Later on in the night I set up my mom's Shutterfly account with the same discount codes and let her go at it. What I didn't realize is that you could "double-up" on the codes that offered this deal:

Free 10 4x6, 3 5x7, 3 8x10 prints. (Coupon Code: SW03-PRTS)

The site that seemed to pull together the most codes for current Shutterfly deals is right here. My mom ended up getting somewhere near 80 (4x6s), 7 (5x7s), and 7 (8x10s)...talk about a deal!

 Subject: General

Monday January 23, 2006

Expensive Health Care and Bad Code

Today I received a notice that effective February 1st, my COBRA coverage will be handled by a company called ADP, which stands for Automatic Data Processing. After reading through the notification and seeing the outrageously high fee for one month's coverage, I noticed that there was a URL listed that would supposedly "answer all my questions and concerns." Naturally, I decided to visit the link. After creating an account I proceeded to the FAQ section of the site. Having had a few specific questions on my mind, I figured I would find my answers there. Turns out these FAQs were just a dead end. From here a screenshot seemed to be the best way to portray this horrible nightmare.

As you can see here, the left selection box titled, "Select Subject Area" allows users to chose a topic. After selecting a topic, the user will hit the Submit button to view the associated questions with that topic. In the left box, the user is then presented with the list of appropriate questions. The links to view each question are called through the getAnswer() function:

function getAnswer(answerId, questionId)
{
    document.getElementById('answerId').value = answerId;
    document.getElementById('questionId').value = questionId;
    document.forms[0].submit();
}

So after selecting a question from the questions box, one would think the answer to that question would appear below in the section titled, "Answer." Of course that doesn't happen though. What did happen...is that I was rudely logged out of my session and brought back to the login screen. I couldn't believe it. Not only is my health care costing me and arm and a leg, but I have fallen victim to faulty code.

 Subject: Technology

Saturday February 04, 2006

West Coast Skiing and Happy Hour

Last Tuesday I arrived back in Boston from another exciting visit to Seattle. This time, the occasion was a "just because" visit. My weekend with Kevin started out with the usual TV show catching up on his DVR and then a Valentine's Day dinner at Canlis Restaurant. On Saturday, we spent the day skiing The Sumit at Snoqualmie. The weather/road conditions on I-90 were absolutely crazy. The weather in Seattle and about 20 minutes outside the city was a slight drizzle of rain and as we drove closer to the mountains, the snow began coming down literally by the inche. By the end of our 5 hour ski day, I realized that I had been skiing some pretty serious black diamonds in 2 feet of powder. It was awesome!

Later on in the weekend we finally got our hands on some $1 happy hour mini-bugers at Cascadia Retaurant in Belltown. I must note, that this was also our second attempt for the weekend to get mini-burgers during happy hour, since their lounge seating is pretty limited. Between the $1 mini and $3.50 martinis, this was the best bargain happy hour I've ever been to! While this may sound a bit cheesy, it's definitely not comparable to the $4 bud lights and 10 cent wings on the East Coast.

 Subject: Travel

Tuesday February 14, 2006

Coupons, Coupons, and Coupons!

Hotdealsclub.com, my favorite site for online deals and coupons, has an amazing deal for free prints, photo books, and even shipping!

Photoworks.com
The following coupons are available for new customers, and appear to stack with each other:

Code C455-38-5103-31 for 50 free 4x6 prints
Code C86-38-5142-01 for 25 4x6 prints
Code C465-38-5135-51 for 25 3x5 or 4x6 prints
Code C492-38-5183-71 gives free shipping on photo orders.
Code C440-38-5161-81 for a free compact photo book
Code C464-38-5195-61 for a free compact photo book
Code C502-38-5163-41 gives free shipping on all photo books

Unbelievable!

 Subject: General

Friday February 24, 2006

You Might Also Like This...

Recently, I started listening to music in Pandora everyday at work. This site, which is free lets you create "Stations" based on an artist or song. Paandora then creates a playlist (sometimes repetitive) of songs by artists that are similar to the artist/song you entered. By creating an account with Pandora, all your stations are saved so when you login again you can just start listening. The streaming audio is of great quality and I find it much more enjoyable than listening to AOL XM radio (on Winamp).

Much like the features on Amazon and some other e-commerce sites, this site really re-defines the concept of "If you like this...you might also like this." I find that the opportunity to listen to recommended songs lets me hear songs I probably would not have heard otherwise. One of the cool features of Pandora is that you can save songs in your account as favorites. From your favorites, an RSS feed is generated. Here is mine.

 Subject: Technology

Tuesday February 28, 2006

Boston User Groups

For a while now, I have been wanting to attend an user group meeting with BostonPHP. I figured since I am now pretty settled into my new job, that I would start attending monthly meetings. With my luck, the March meeting was coming up this Thursday. This week's topic is: Understanding Open Source Licensing. While I must admit, this is not the most exciting topic ever, it has some potential to be informative and educational.

While browsing around Meetup.com, I also stumbled upon the mySQL Meetup Group which is meeting next week. Not only did this group also catch my attention, but it appealed to my sweet spot for free pizza.

 Subject: Technology

Thursday March 02, 2006

Razr Sharp

Yesterday, my Verizon V3c Razr finally came in. Not only did I get an awesome deal on the phone but I also absolutely love it! The phone, which is regularly $199, came with a $100 off online promotion. With my luck, February was the month that my 2 year contract expired.

Verizon's "every two," allows customers to receive a $100 credit towards the purchase of the new phone if you renew for another 2 years with them. The choice but pretty much a no-brainer. After signing up online and getting the phone for FREE, I anxiously awaited it's arrival. Even though this phone has been around for a while it's pretty exciting to have a new sleek looking phone. After all, getting something for free is a deal maven's greatest achievement.

 Subject: Technology

Thursday March 02, 2006

Live From Your Living Room

Last week, I bought 2 Logitech Quickcam Pro 5000's. While one camera was obviously for myself, the other was an early birthday present for Kevin. Before purchasing these cameras I spent a week or so researching the best cameras and as most deal mavens do, the best prices. I had even at one point considered bidding on some cameras on ebay. Turns out it would have only been $20 cheaper to buy from ebay than a reputable online seller such as Amazon or Buy.com. Most of the research that I did came strictly from reviews. We all know that usually the only people that write reviews either really hated the product or loved it. Surprisingly, I found reviews that listed out the pros and cons of each camera I was investigating. While browsing Amazon, I had found a Logitech Buddypak that included 2 cameras. They looked exactly like the webcam I had back in 2001 that came free with my Verizon DSL subscription. I know that looks certainly aren't everything, especially when it comes to electronics, but I wanted a camera that looked more modern. After seeing some of the Quickcam Pro 4000's here at work, I decided to look more into the Quickcam Pro 5000 version. After reading tons of reviews and watching a cool video review in CNET, I was sold. It was also my lucky day, since Amazon was running a 5% off electronics promotion. I had also went to a local coinstar and cashed in $32 worth of coins. I ended up getting a whopping $40 off my total order. Now that's a deal!

On a more technical note, Kevin and I have been using the cameras quite often. We are using the Video conference feature in Live Messenger Beta. So far, we have no complaints. Although we usually talk via cell phone and just use the cameras for video, the audio/video quality simultaneously is pretty good. I guess we won't be using Gizmo anymore...and no more waiting until 9PM Pacific Time to talk anymore. :)

 Subject: Technology

Wednesday March 08, 2006

Changing Lives, One Month at a Time

I have been here at Mass. General Hospital (MGH) for exactly one month now. I can honestly say, in this past month, I have learned so much more than I had ever imagined. In mid-January, I was forced to make a tough decision when I was offered positions for my 2 top choices. Both positions were very different in tasks and responsibilities and also opportunities. As most people do, I weighed the pros and cons of each position and really tried to find the position that would allow me to grow the most and learn new technologies. Before making my decision, I met with some folks from MGH to talk about the working environment and the types of opportunities I could potentially be exposed to. The most common response was that, "the opportunity to grow and learn at the hospital is tremendous. The fact that you're helping people and doing what you love at the same time is a great feeling."

I have not only learned new things like ASP, VBScript, CDO, sprocs, and XML/XSLT but I have been able to really build up my programming skills. In the Neurology department, we're doing some pretty cool stuff with telemedicine and video conferencing. In the recent issue of NetworkWorld, they published an article outlining our telemedicine program for homebound and remote stroke patients. Basically, my position as a web developer, is to maintain and enhance the websites that are used during these stroke evaluations to store and process patient data. These sites are coded with ASP VBScript and a SQL backend.

While we have a lot of work ahead of us, I absolutely loving this job and I definitely can't beat the 3 minute walk to work. It truly is great to love your job.

 Subject: Career

Sunday March 12, 2006

IT, Evangelism, and Maven-ism

Last night, while talking to Kevin, he asked me, "How do you feel about ramping up on a technology and then traveling to share your knowledge and level of expertise." I immediately replied with, "that would be awesome." Since I know that I do not want to be a developer for the rest of my career, I have always thought that getting into a position of an evangelist would allow me to apply my passion of learning and implementing new technologies.

For a few months now, I have been reading the Tipping Point, per Kevin's advice. I had no idea that my passion for deal hunting and finding coupons classified me as a Maven. I realized that I was not only obsessed with getting the best deals or coupons, but that I also had a drive to share my knowledge and to tell people about many different products, prices, and places to find these deals.

It's pretty interesting to relate these findings from the Tipping Point to evangelizing in regards to technology and IT. I noticed that after I started my job at Endeca back in June of 2005, I was able to tell people exactly how the software worked and explain each component of the indexing process after only a few training sessions, weeks of reading, and hands on practice. I had actually amazed myself at how well I was able to convey this information. Kevin also agreed.

While I always find myself sharing cool deals and coupons with friends and family, I've recognized that all along I have also been applying this drive to technology. In the future, I would definitely like to transfer these maven-like traits into my career.

 Subject: Career

Wednesday March 15, 2006

iPod and Zipcar, Together At Last

Today, I received the monthly newsletter from Zipcar (called: Under The Hood). I always find the newsletter to be somewhat informative with new locations of cars and recent additions to area discounts for Zipcar members. Of course we know I'm a huge fan of discounts and deals. The newest bit of news though was something they called, "a nice little treat for you iPod enthusiasts." Naturally anything titled like that will immediately draw me in. It seems now, that the 2006 models of the xB, xA, and Prius have auxiliary audio jacks in the center consoles. In my opinion this is a pretty cool feature. I remember back in the day, about 2 years or so, I had dreams of the day I would buy my first car and have my dad wire it for my iPod. I think it would be pretty cool if this came standard in most cars, although I'm not sure how easily this would be adopted. Meanwhile, I'll keep an eye out for these new models and have my iPod in hand. Zipcar says to, "Enjoy your tunes, but keep your eyes on the road while spinning the dial!" How cute.

 Subject: Technology

Wednesday March 22, 2006

Multi-Tasking Techie Teens (and Twenty-Something's)

The other morning on the Today Show, there was a short segment on teens and technology. The essence of the segment was how today's teens may be multi-tasking too much when it comes to balancing their academics with technology. They are trying to do their homework, update Myspace profiles, and talk to friends on IM; all while listening to their choice of music. While some say that learning to multi-task at a young age can be beneficial to one's success later on in life, I can only imagine how much pressure today's teens are under to be everywhere all at once.

Looking back a few years...okay more like 8 or 9 years, I was an IM/web pioneer out of my group of friends. In 1997, I hoarded cool Geocities addresses (like SouthBeach/Sands/2895), which surprisingly is still a valid URL. I had an e-mail address for every kind of interest of mine (trombone@... and rollerblading@... to name just a few). What really got my friends, was how I managed to stay on AIM for days at a time. Remember now, this was back in the days of dial-up on a 56k modem. I spent most of my time writing HTML code from scratch which I taught myself during a snow day that year in high school.

During high school, I would come home from school everyday around 3pm and spend the entire evening and well into the night on my computer. These were the years where I really learned the art of multi-tasking. Recently, I found an essay I wrote at the beginning of sophomore year. I described in great detail what an ISP (Internet Service Provider) was and even named some common ones such as AOL, Erols, Compuserve, and SNET. I called the Internet the, "Information Superhighway." Now that's a classic line. While this essay certainly doesn't have much to do with multi-tasking, it's interesting to look back at where I started. This is where I learned to multi-task best; staying up late to finish my homework, talking to friends on IM, and feeding my passion to learn and develop a presense on the web.

It seems like the world of multi-tasking in technology hasn't changed much since the mid-90's. But with the emergence of online social networking, the array of online tools has greatly expanded for today's generation. As a 16 year old, would I spend more time on MySpace...or doing my homework? That's a no brainer.

 Subject: Technology

Friday March 24, 2006

Do-It-Herself Home Depot Workshops

Home Depot which is one of my favorite stores (besides Staples and Target), offers "Do-It-Herself Workshops" for women. These workshops supposedly offer a "friendly, supportive environment for women to learn new skills and tackle interesting home improvement and decor projects." This is such an exciting opportunity! Having grown up with a father who can fix pretty much anything (from washers and dryers to the windshield of my Barbie corvette) I am always drawn to do-it-yourself projects and learning to be self-sufficient. While my dad is way up there on the fix-it-yourself-scale, I've started with small tasks like drilling holes for a coat rack and hammering nails for hanging pictures. Someday I even hope to fix the windshield on my daughter's Barbie corvette as well. But for now I could possibly learn to install my own ceiling fan or light fixture. That's pretty cool.

 Subject: General

Tuesday March 28, 2006

Customer Product Reviews: Reliable or Questionable?

I recently submitted my first product review to Amazon for the Logitech Quickcams I bought a few months ago. Since I am big believer in sharing my experiences (hence my maven-like tendencies), I thought it was only proper to write a small review on my approval. When looking for a webcam, I was overwhelmed by the choices. I decided to go with the Logitech brand based on its prominence in the amateur webcam scene. From there, I researched the most recent models (Orbit, Fusion, Notebook Deluxe, etc.) and read the customer reviews written for each camera. For the most part, I have always been impressed by the quality and number of reviews that Amazon products usually have associated with them. On the contrary, I have noticed on more than one occasion that Buy.com is lacking in this area. Although I have purchased products from Buy.com (due to lower prices), I frequently seek out the reviews from the product listing on Amazon.

I wonder though, how reliable these reviews actually are. Obviously they are opinions. To some extent there will always be a few people who are just technically challenged and may not have installed the product correctly or actually did receive a defective product. Sometimes I want to compare technology reviews to say restaurant reviews. The difference lately is that I have noticed a far greater amount of positive reviews for technology products than restaurant reviews. In terms of a restaurant, I would still probably try it out even if all the online reviews were bad, but I had heard something good from a friend. Unfortunately, since electronics are so expensive, one does not have the luxury to try before you buy. I guess in the end it really just comes down to the mavens and counting on them to reliably share their experiences and thoughts.

Should we even go to the extent of receiving free products to promote them among online communities and friends? Chip Chick thinks that companies should be giving us free gadgets. Of course even if the product was just mediocre, the sole fact that it was free would certainly sway my review.

 Subject: Technology

Friday April 07, 2006

Brawl Between The Designers, Developers, and Marketing

For the past few months now, my group here in Neurology has been closely interacting with marketing and their so-called web designers to redesign the layout and content placement for our telemedicine website. A task like this, in my opinion should not take more than a month or so, with a few people on the project. After many passes at the 2-page layout and the main banner, the site does not look much different than it did back in February. The banner, which features a female doctor with dark hair went through various stages. At one point, the hair that flowed below her shoulders was removed. It was obvious that someone had Photoshop-ed it out. Another version involved a maroon colored fill of the wall behind her. The designers finally gave the lady her hair back and unfilled the wall behind her. The next issue for my team seemed to be the secondary (content) pages and how the images are too large and prominent.

My co-worker sent an e-mail to marketing saying the banner is, "too big." He received an email back from the designers that was passed through marketing. Here is a snippet:

"Their browsers are set to 800x600 not 1024x768 so they're seeing more of the header graphic than body content. Unfortunately, a browser set to 800x600 is no longer the norm - 1024x768 is now the lowest common denominator - explain to them that we have to build pages that are designed for our end user."

Now I didn't exactly study web development in college, but having gone for 5 years (and having web dev experience under my belt), I think I know the difference between 800x600 resolution and 1024x768 resolution. They sure told us, huh?!

 Subject: Technology

Wednesday April 19, 2006

Branded on Vacation in Mexico

I have been back from a week long vacation in Mexico for a few days now. I miss the buffets, the 80 degree weather, banana daiquiris, and sitting by the pool all day long. While it's back to the grind for now, I had been doing a lot of thinking about the bracelet systems used down in Mexico. When we arrived at the resort, they placed gray plastic bracelets on our wrists that pictured 4 stars in a row. Besides the stars representing their signature logo (the star) for Iberostar, I don't think they stood for anything else. During the week, I noticed the bracelets for their other resorts included the 4 stars but were a different color (blue, maroon, yellow, and white for under 18). The great thing about the all-inclusive-ness was that we could walk next door to the neighboring resort for some drinks or the buffet. Besides that, we were not tracked by any means in terms of what we did inside the resort.

On the contrary, we spent one day at Xel-Ha, which is a huge natural water park with snorkeling, caves, cliff jumping, and a lazy river. Before leaving the bus that brought us to the park, we were randomly given the paper-sticky type bracelets with barcodes on them. The bar codes identified that we had purchased the all-inclusive package. Upon entering the park, our bar codes were scanned. We then made our way over to the breakfast buffet where we were seated and then asked to read off our barcodes while our waiter wrote down our numbers. So besides the first scan at the park entrance, our bar codes were never scanned again. This was a great system they had in place, but in my opinion, not used to its full potential.

Later on during the vacation, Kevin and I talked about these bracelets systems and their potentials. The bar code provided an easy way to track park goers, but maybe Xel-Ha had not fully implemented the system. Another great feature that the bar code could offer is the accessibility to marketing data (this was Kevin's idea). With each scan, data could be collected about time, location, and person. Ideally, since the rentals of the lifejacket, snorkel, mask, and fins where included in our package, they should have been tied to our bar codes. Instead we were required to leave a one license with the rental desk for every 4 people and no information was collected from our bracelets.

In the scheme of things, I think the marketing benefits of a scanned bracelet are the most valuable to resorts and attractions. I suppose this would have been a great project for my sophomore year IS Systems Analysis & Design class. Nothing like a little system redesign in paradise.

 Subject: Travel

Tuesday April 25, 2006

Blog Early, Blog Often

Lately I have been thinking a lot about effective blogging. What probably triggered this was a recent conversation with my sister about her website and upcoming Co-op interviews in the Fall. She mentioned how she was interested in starting her own blog and then I explained that if she chose to blog, that it would be important to blog early and blog often. I related the blog early part to keeping yourself on your toes in regards to the ideas and thoughts you encounter. These ideas will drive your blog. The blog often part I felt, was best related to out of date websites. I remember back to one of my co-op jobs. When I started, my boss told me that other co-ops he interviewed had included URLs on their resumes to their personal websites. None of the links worked. While he did say he hired me because my link was the only one that worked, I am sure the recent and interesting content helped out a bit. Below, I have included my experiences with blogging early and blogging often:

• Blog early: I find that in the midst of daily life, if I don't write down my ideas and thoughts, they naturally disappear. I have resorted to a pre-blogging technique that works really well for me. For an idea that I feel has solid content, I create a text file with a title and rough outline for content. Usually the content includes a few words, sentences, and/or links to reference in the post. I then save the text file in a format like this blog-04_25_06.txt. By using this technique, I am able to create a work in progress without losing my train of thought and associated ideas.



• Blog often: Back in my earlier days of college, I had a freeopendiary.com account. I wrote in my online journal every week or so. Most of my entries were in regards to things I did with friends or vacations with my parents. It reminded me a lot of the days when I kept a diary in 1st grade. Looking back in that diary which now lives in my nightstand at home in Connecticut, the pages are full of the same lines. "Today I went to school. I played with Jessica and Amanda at recess." At least I "blogged" often back then.
  
  In today's blogging space, a simple two sentence entry of what you did and who you played with at recess simply will not suffice. It has definitely become more complex. In many ways, the diaries of today (more well known as journals) will probably not get you too far ahead in life, but at least your friends and family can stay up-to-date with your life's happenings. On the other hand, a blog that is kept up with quality and meaningful posts, might just land you that dream job. Even before the Blogging your way to a better job article was posted on BostonWorks.com by The Boston Globe, I found myself landing a job at Microsoft in part because the folks who interviewed me were impressed with my blog. Out of the 5 people who interviewed me, 3 of them had read my blog, browsed my Flickr photos, and probably even Googled me...I mean MSN searched me. ;)
  
  Going back to the recent talk I had with my sister, I explained that if she wants to get into blogging, that she will need to devote some time and energy into her posts. I explained how my posts have evolved since I entered the blogging community last year around this time. Some of my first posts where 2 or 3-liners. Most were reactions to an online article or new technology, while others were about upcoming conferences I'd like to attend someday (ex. BlogHer). As my posts progressed, I found myself approaching problems and ideas in everyday life and turning them into a blog post. Like many software feature requests, only a handful actually make it to my blog, but it's the thought process that counts most.

After reiterating the fact that it is very important to blog early and blog often to my sister, I ended our conversation by saying, "You never know when Microsoft is looking." :)

 Subject: Technology

Friday April 28, 2006

Seattle Day Trips

The other day, Kevin sent me an email full of great Seattle day trips. After reading over the email I was even more excited about my big coastal move. In some regards, I feel I have exhausted Boston and even New England. Sure there's great foliage in the fall and warm sandy beaches in the summer, but I want something more adventurous like hot springs and rainforests! While I won't take credit for any of these trips and their details, I have decided to include a few of the good ones below.

• San Juan Islands. Drive north to Anacortes and take the ferry out to Friday Harbor, or other destination in the islands. Probably more of a summer type trip, but it could be done now if you don't mind the cold.
• If you are really ambitious, you could drive around the Olympic peninsula in a day. There is a ton to do over there though: Hurricane Ridge, Lake Crescent, the hot springs in Sol Duc, numerous waterfall hikes, Hoh Rainforest, Ocean Shores, etc. Just don't get your car stuck in the sand if you decide to drive on the beach.
• Portland, OR is only 2hr away as well as Vancouver, BC. These are both fun places to check out if you've never been there before.
• Don't forget WA has over 230 wineries. Yakima valley, Tri-Cities, and Walla Walla are excellent places to make a long day trip out of if you are interested in tasting at some of WA's premier wineries. Columbia Crest is the states largest winery and definitely worth a stop if you head out that way.
• Mt. St. Helens

 Subject: Travel

Tuesday May 02, 2006

Netflix Suspicion Confirmed

Ever since I joined Netflix back in October due to my new found obsession with the TV show 24 and the need to catch up to season 5, I knew there was a conspiracy deep within. Finally someone uncovered this conspiracy.

A year ago, I was an avid Blockbuster renter (through the online service). I enjoyed the 2 free in store rentals that came with my month unlimited subscription and I had the "watch and return" process down to a science. I knew that if I watched a movie on the day I received it and returned it on the next, that within the following business day, I would receive the next movie in my queue. I ended up canceling my subscription 6 months later because my queue ran dry and there wasn't a single movie left that I was interested in seeing.

Recently, when I joined Netflix to try out the $9.99 deal for 3 weeks and compare it to Blockbuster, I found that the same science did not prove similar for Netflix. I would return DVDs the day after receiving them and would not receive the next DVD in my queue for sometimes up to 4 days later. I was definitely not one of the "infrequent renters" as mentioned in the above Boston.com article. At least I have confirmed my suspicions of Netflix. In the future, I will return my business to Blockbuster.

 Subject: General

Wednesday May 03, 2006

The Hacker's Favorite DVD Player

I have been a proud owner for about a year now of the "hacker's favorite DVD player." This Philips DVP642 DVD/CD/MP3/Divx Player runs for about $58.99 from Amazon. Techbargains.com describes this product as the "hacker's favorite DVD player." While I may not be a hacker, this DVD player certainly is my favorite.

I haven't found anything this player can't play. Recently, I was home for the weekend and brought a movie home for the parents. We popped it into our very nice (and expensive) Sony DVD player. The player skipped through the disc, playing about 30 seconds from each chapter. After a few reboots of the player and a couple blows into the tray, we gave up. My Dad then marched down to the basement to grab his own Philips DVD/Divx player. We knew it would most definitely play the disc. Without a doubt it did.

I have also had several incidents where I received damaged discs from Netflix and they wouldn't play in my PC's DVD-ROM drive, but OF COURSE they played in my Philips Divx player. The nicest feature though, is that you can dump most files (JPEG, mpg, Xvid, PAL DVDs, PAL Divx, KVCD, SRT) onto a DVD disc and the player will start playing them without any special formatting to the disc. All and all this player should definitely be on all technology enthusiast's must have list.

 Subject: Technology

Thursday May 04, 2006

Another Reason To Shred Everything

I'm not surprised at all that someone discovered a way to access sensitive personal information from a discarded airplane boarding pass. This article, describes how a security guru found a boarding pass from the trash in Heathrow and accessed this man's information via the British Airways website using his name and frequent flyer number. His birthdate, passport number, and other sensitive information was immediately exposed.

This incident reminds me of the CVS security leak (that occurred in June of 2005) where it was possible to enter someone's CVS ExtraCare number into the website form and view a person's recent purchases and personal information. These are just a few examples of why I shred everything these days. I also received a $25 fine for putting my trash out too early back in November from the City of Boston. They only needed to rip open my trash to find my name and address neatly printed on the back of a Crate & Barrel magazine. It seems one can never be too careful.

 Subject: General

Thursday May 18, 2006

When Microsoft Calls (April 5, 2006)

My interviewing adventures started in mid March when I received a phone call from a Program Manager in the Enterprise Application Services (EAS) group at Microsoft. I spoke with her for about an hour on the phone that same day. Apparently, Kevin's really good friend/MS mentor had passed on my resume to the EAS group. During the phone interview, we spoke about my past experiences and reviewed my technical background. As I expected, she asked me several situational based questions that reflected how I would act in future situations and scenarios. The conversation flowed naturally and I had a feeling I would be hearing back from Microsoft.

Literally two days later, I received an email from a Microsoft travel coordinator saying how they would like to fly me out to Washington for an all day campus interview. This was it...the one chance I've been waiting for since I was about 8 years old. I read the string of emails, which described the interview process and listed the links to plan my travel arrangements. Naturally, I spent a few hours reviewing the links and looking over my calendar to plan my trip. After calling Kevin to check with his schedule, I submitted a few possible travel dates and submitted my paperwork (online of course) to my travel coordinator. The next day, I received an email with my travel arrangements. I was booked to stay at the W Hotel in downtown Seattle with roundtrip airfare on Alaska.

I spent the next two weeks preparing every night for my on campus interview. I received my interview schedule from my recruiter and was able to do some online digging to find out the backgrounds of the potential 5 interviewers I might be meeting with. I had identified a few goals in preparing for this interview. While these bullets points are standard for most advice that HR bloggers would give, I felt the need to relate my research to SAP and Microsoft more specifically.

• Researching the industry: Gain a better understanding of SAP and the function(s) it serves. I had used SAP in the past at The Gillette Company. My past usage only allowed me to interact with SAP through a web interface to enter my billable hours and vacation time. I really needed to familiarize myself with the larger, enterprise aspects of SAP which involve CRM, warehousing, HR, etc. To do this, I found a wealth of information on the Microsoft | SAP site. Many of the individuals I was interviewing with had given webcasts, which were archived on this site. I helped to not only hear/view the content, but listen to the individuals speak and get a feel for their expertise and presentation styles.


• Read JobsBlog: As usual, I kept up with my reading of JobsBlog. Recently Jenna, posted a post on change, as is relates to Microsoft (MS). She said, "If you like a place that keeps you on your toes and challenges you once you think you have it figured out, then you will likely do just fine." I wrote this quote down and read it right before my big day of campus interviews. Later in the week, Tim Sneath (an MS Technical Evangelist) posted in his blog the "Inside Scoop on Interviewing at Microsoft." He made clear an important fact of interviewing for a technical position that just stuck with me. He said, "No matter how much you want a job coming into an interview, pretending to be someone you're not (more technical than you really are, more interested in a certain type of work than you really are) to land a position doesn't lead to satisfaction in the long run..."


• Prepare your answers: In the two weeks before my interview, I reviewed not only some potential interview questions, but also some brainteasers. I wrote up a 5 page document of questions like, "Tell me about yourself," "Explain a time when a project...," and most importantly "Why Microsoft?" I prepared my answers in a way that every time I reviewed them in my head (without the print out in front of me) I could envision what page it was on my print out and the 3 or 4 bullets underneath it. Of course it sounded natural instead of being read off a paper. I am a very visual person, so this technique really helped. I also included questions to ask the recruiter and technical ones for the team. I knew I would be pretty nervous at the interview and couldn't just say, "Ohh I really don't have any questions."


• Talk to current MS employees: While most people probably do not have the luxury to speak to a few MS employees before their interview, I found this to be the greatest benefit in easing some of my worries or concerns. I had a chance to talk to one of Kevin's friends who actually works in the group I was interviewing in (as an Associate Program Manager). After finding out who I might be interviewing with, I asked him to describe some of these individuals and their roles within the EAS group. He helped me understand the EAS group as a whole, how it fits into Microsoft IT, and how I might fit into the group as an Applications Developer. Kevin also helped out a great deal. He gave me a few helpful ideas on things to review like SDLC, SQL queries, and even advice on what to wear to the interview.

I prepared all my travel information, directions, and SAP/SDLC reading for the plane. I was off to Seattle for a nice relaxing weekend and the biggest Monday of my life. (...continued in next post)

 Subject: Career

Thursday May 18, 2006

Blogging My Way to Microsoft

(...continued from previous post) Kevin and I spent the entire weekend enjoying what I love best about Seattle. Great food, unique beers, lots of walking, amazing coffee, and checking out some new places (the Bobby Morris Playfield).

My interviews started at 11AM on Monday morning at the Issaquah campus. I arrived 1 hour early, which was good and bad. It was good in that I did not get stuck in traffic and I had some time to relax and collect myself. On the flip side, an hour is a long time to anxiously wait for what lies ahead. Here is a breakdown of my interviews:

• Lead of the SAP BASIS team (under EAS)
• Applications Developer (team member)
• Development Manager (former)
• Development Manager (newly hired)
• Head of the SAP HR team
• Director of EAS

The interview questions ranged from brainteasers to questions about my work and life experiences. As far as exact details go, I'll leave that up to your imagination. The one thing that I saw consistent throughout the interviews though, was the fact that almost all the people I met with had visited my website or read parts of my blog. I actually even inspired one guy to start working on his website again after our conversation of building your own blogging tool.
I left the campus around 5PM after the longest and most exciting day of my life. I also left knowing that a offer was most likely going to be extended to me very soon.

 Subject: Career

Thursday June 01, 2006

First Weeks at Microsoft and Living in Seattle

I am finishing up my second week here as the newest developer on the Enterprise Application Services (EAS) .NET Dev team. While most of my time spent in the office has been ramping up on the technologies and Microsoft as a whole, I know that I am really going to love it here. After just two short weeks, I have found myself back in my element; the same place I was in during my two years at Gillette. At Gillette, I enjoyed not only the people I worked with, but the type of work we were doing. In accepting this job in EAS, I knew I would find myself right back where I belong...in IT. While I learned what I didn't like from the most recent of my past jobs, Gillette helped me figure out what I do like and the type of environment that I need to thrive in (and be successful in). I've found that in itself is an invaluable experience.

As for now, I am living in corporate housing in the Dexter on Lake Union. My apartment which is fully furnished, also comes with a bi-weekly housekeeping service. I also have what people around here call a "peek-a-boo view" of the lake. I have seen some pretty awesome sunsets from my balcony. I also recently bought a brand new Mazda3 (with a moonroof and spoiler on the trunk). flickr photos to come shortly

While settling in here at work, I have been slowly but surely settling in on the home front side of things. Kevin has been out of town...or should I say out of the country since May 23rd, so I have had a lot of time to drive around the city (and to get lost). Along with knowing where essential places are like the grocery store, I have also managed to hit up the driving range a few times a week. I am really looking forward to all the outdoorsy type of things that Washington has to offer...hiking, kayaking, mountains, waterfalls, natural springs, etc. I am sure Kevin and I will become quite the adventuresome duo. Did I mention that I love it out here?

 Subject: Personal

Friday June 09, 2006

Sunny Seattle

Lately, I have been wondering where exactly I am living. While it is 60 degrees and sunny in Seattle...there is a nor'easter making it's way through the Northeast Region of the U.S. Having lived in Connecticut for most of my life and then moving to Boston for school, I was no stranger to the rain and the brutal Northeast weather patterns. All of a sudden, I move to Seattle and it's fabulous outside (and raining back home)! I have included a nice screen shot of today's weather from MSN below.



I'm definitely ready for some more golf on Sunday!

 Subject: General

Tuesday July 25, 2006

80 and 90 Degree Weekends in Seattle

You might already know, but I am having way too much fun out here in Seattle. This picture probably says it all. Besides all the fun weekends, work has been keeping me really busy and I promise soon to blog more about all the exciting things I have been up to.

 Subject: Personal

Wednesday July 26, 2006

Camping on the Pacific Ocean

This weekend, a few of us will be traveling to Forks, WA on the Olympic Peninsula for 2 days of beach camping. The trip coordinator was kind enough to e-mail us the map of our 4 hour journey to the site.

Compared to our camping trip from a few weeks ago, this will not be a walk in the park. On this trip, we will only be brining what we can carry to the campsite. I have been told that we will be hiking on the beach over huge logs to the campsite. While I am super excited, I have no idea what to except. I think that ?bring your own toilet paper? says it all. :)

 Subject: Travel

Thursday July 27, 2006

Battle of the Boxes

So today, me and a few of my team members received an e-mail from Stuart Scott (for all of you non-Microsofties, he is our CIO), that congratulated us for "making IT Dev our most vibrant community to date." He also said to, "Keep up the pace!!" At the bottom of Stuart's e-mail was this note:

* sent with Office 2007 using Windows Vista

Since I thought that getting an e-mail from Stuart (that was not addressed to all FTEs) was pretty awesome, I forwarded his "keep up the pace" e-mail to my Dad. My Dad replies with:

Great job!
Dad

* sent with Mozilla Thunderbird using Kubuntu Linux

I guess we know which team my dad is on. :)

 Subject: Personal

Monday August 14, 2006

It's a great time to be an IT Developer

Last Thursday, I was able to see all the time and energy we put into the planning of the Microsoft IT Developer Community Launch Event finally come together! Along with the director of the community and the vendor event planner, my co-worker and I have been involved since June in all of the event's logistics. We helped plan everything from the design of the t-shirts to the line up of the speakers and the event budget.

The community event launched with an attendance of about 200 full-time IT Developers and a best practices fair which contained 10 booths. Our guest speakers included Neil Leslie, Stuart Scott, Steve McConnell (author of Code Complete), and Eric Brechner. The talks featured topics on why it's a great time to be an IT developer and developer best practices. We even gave away 24" Dell monitors and Xboxes.

While this event alone opened the biggest door yet for me to meet people at Microsoft, it has also presented an opportunity for me to stay involved in the community and represent the women Developer's in IT.

 Subject: Career

Thursday August 17, 2006

Finding your clique

I've found my clique. Meet PPHAT. Our name evolved from the team name of the Underdog Kickball team (which I subbed into a few times) and our love for being adventuresome. The acronym stands for, "Peter Pan High Adventure Team." We are an energetic group of 20-somethings who mostly work at Microsoft and pursue extreme adventures in our free time. While we're not professionals by any means, we sure know how to have a good time. Our invite-only wiki lays out all our past and future adventures. They include everything from camping/hiking trips, Red Sox vs. Mariners games, DMB at the Gorge, skydiving (for only the bravest), and local (Seattle) weekend events. Some future trips include a ski weekend in Tahoe and Whistler as well.

Lucky for me, I kind of fell into this group of awesome friends, since Kevin had already established a position (as the Kickball coach and event planner) in the group. The transition from Boston life to Seattle life was made so easy since my calendar filled right up with something every weekend. I love it out here!

 Subject: Personal

Friday August 25, 2006

I am officially a Washington Resident

This morning I paid the always dreaded visit to the DMV (Dept. of Motor Vehicles in Connecticut lingo), which is actually called the Dept. of Licensing out here in Washington. After waiting for 15 minutes or so, I finally made my way up to the counter. The guy behind at the counter was somewhat in awe that I was from the Northeast. He began asking me questions about the snow/blizzards that I'm sure he's only seen on the nightly news. While I didn't mind his silly questions (such as "So how many layers do you actually wear in the winter?" and... "Is it true that you never leave the house during a storm?") it was like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I've finally settled in...goodbye Connecticut, hello Washington!

 Subject: Personal

Monday October 02, 2006

Alma Mater Recruiting

Tomorrow evening I will be heading to Boston for two days to recruit for Microsoft at Northeastern's fall career fair. Not only am I excited about this great opportunity to talk to potential "Microsofties," but I will get chance to spend some quality with my sister, Rachel who just started her middler/3rd year at Northeastern.

On the flip side of things, summer has almost come to an end here in Seattle. Kevin and I have spent our last few weekends on some last minute summer adventures (B&B on the San Juan Island and camping in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest). While I am sad summer is coming to an end, work has begun to really pick up the pace...and just at the right time too. I am well on my way to becoming the C#/.NET expert I had always hoped to become. It's really amazing how far I've come since graduation a year and 1/2 ago.

 Subject: Personal

Tuesday December 19, 2006

Ski, Work, Eat, Sleep...I love it!

While it has been almost 3 months since I have last blogged, I have many valid excuses.

1. Ski season started just after Thanksgiving, where we spent our first day on the slopes at Crystal Mountain, which is part of Mt. Rainier and then each weekend after skiing The Summit at Snoqualmie with our season passes. Four ski days later and the once-beginners have now moved onto an intermediate status, taking on some pretty intense (and powder-filled) black diamonds.

2. 2007 is guaranteed to bring some changes to the SAP Dev team. Both my co-worker and my manager will be moving into new roles starting in January and February respectively. This change will be interesting to say the least, but at least we have an intern coming on board in the new year. He is a middler at my alma mater (Northeastern University) and I'm pretty excited to be his mentor and have another .NET'er on the team.

On the other hand, I will be crossing over my 7 month mark here at Microsoft in a few days. I had always been looking forward to writing my 6 month mark at MS blog post, but like I said time has certainly flown by. While 7 months isn't much of a huge accomplishment (compared to most who have been around for 5-10 years), I have found that my contributions to the SAP team certainly are. While on my way to becoming the team's web services guru, I successfully ramped up on an entire codebase for an internal web application (C#/AJAX) and then proceeded to complete the application and rollout 2 feature releases into production back on October. Pretty soon, I'll be ramping up on some Sharepoint development too...the fun just keeps on coming!

I have also found myself becoming heavily involved with what my manager calls "the extracurriculars." The Women's Focus Group within my organization has kept me pretty busy between mentoring events and lunches with the Female IT Interns. One of the most beneficial aspects of being part of a group like this is the opportunity to build relationships with those that are within my own organization and meet with other women in Microsoft (both in IT and the product groups).

3. Holiday parties are in full swing now. The past three Saturdays, Kevin and I have been spent at the Windows and IT Holiday parties. The first one, was at the auditorium of the Seattle Symphony and the second at The Palace, which was conveniently located right down the street from our apartments. This past Saturday, was the IT Holiday Party and this time Kevin was my date. :)


With all that said, Kevin and I will be headed home to Boston on Friday for week off. I am very much looking forward to spending some quality time with the family and my dog. We'll be back in Seattle for New Year's at the Space Needle though.

 Subject: Personal

Thursday January 04, 2007

Looking Back on 2006 and Ahead on 2007

As always with the new year, one begins to think of the year that just passed and the upcoming one. For me, this thought process is especially rewarding considering how 2006 began. The first weeks, I spent job hunting in the blustery cold city of Boston. I had thought that being unemployed would bring a few mornings of sleeping in and relaxing evenings of Oprah and the five o'clock news. Don't get me wrong, I knew I'd be busy, but those few weeks turned out to be the busiest and most hectic ever. With the new year came multiple phone calls each day, for informational interviews, phone screenings, and scheduling interview appointments. There were days where I would have to squeeze in two interviews, since each day of the week was already booked. When I wasn't interviewing, I was brushing up on interview questions, working on some personal websites, and I was even able to find some spare time to make a $140 round trip flight (on JetBlue) to Seattle to visit Kevin.

By the end of January, I had already received 2 job offers and had 3 more second interviews lined up. Based on where I was technically at this time in my career and where I saw myself in 5 years, I chose the position at Mass. General Hospital (MGH). Looking back on this decision, it was probably one of best I've ever made. It was right up there with the decision to stay in the Computer Science college, as opposed to switching to an MIS major in the College of Business at Northeastern.

After only 2 months at MGH, I was back out in Seattle interviewing at Microsoft and shortly after, I received an offer and relocation package. After accepting the offer and determining a start date of May 22nd, I finished up my last few weeks at MGH and then spent 1 week at home in Connecticut with the family. While I had no idea what was in store for me out on the West Coast or even at Microsoft, I knew it was the right move.

Now...almost 8 months later, I am happily in love with the city of Seattle, the state of Washington, and I thoroughly enjoy living across the street from my partner in crime (Kevin). The crazy thing is that if you had asked me 2, 3, 4