Hiking, web development, best practices, and general awesomeness
Snap. Where did 2011 go?
Yup, last year was a bit busy. I've barely mentioned this on here, but I now work at DealerFire in Oshkosh. We mostly create custom websites for automotive dealerships, but there's a good mix of digital marketing, social media, and app development mixed up in there too. I'm…
When a computer script crawls across the web looking for information (like Google's search robot) they need to do a lot of thinking to figure out what information is located on a web page. After all, web pages are written by humans for humans, with the data and information contained in our complex,…
Recoding all of my subdomains to follow a model-view-controller framework has been a really interesting process. I've had the opportunity to experiment with different design patterns and techniques, especially in the realm of data handling and content delivery. Abstracting out my resume is a great…
When I first decided to create an online blog I wanted to avoid a common pitfall of many other blogs: lack updates. While there were a few empty months in 2009, it feels like a did a good job with regular posts every week or so... Until the New Year rolled around. This is the first blog post in over…
The last few weeks have been pretty busy for me. To provide a bit of back story, I've been living in Appleton, WI with my girlfriend's parents working a few different contract jobs since May of 2009. While our income was enough to cover a few bills and loan payments, freelance web development wasn't…
I was never worried about finding a job after college. Both degrees I undertook (physics and math) have severely limited job opportunities compared to other Michigan Tech degrees (computer sciences, engineering, etc), but I was too caught up in student life to worry about a career. Working through…
After losing my job at Michigan Tech and testing out the job market in Houghton for a month, Katie and I decided that it was time to move. Several options presented themselves, including Seattle and Chicago, where friends offered free housing for several months until jobs and permanent housing could…
I was hired to work for Michigan Technological University after a short, informal process immediately after graduating in the spring of 2008. Starting under the department of Auxiliary Technologies as a beginning web developer, I was the sole manager for dozens of websites and web applications.…