Growing up is totally optional

This weekend, I was blessed with the opportunity to go visit Cole and Luke Smith.  Technically, I was babysitting them while their parents, Rob and Lisa, were away...but I don't really see it that way.  I enjoy my time with them so much that it's more like I'm just hanging out with them.  I've been fortunate enough to have been able to watch these boys grow up, and I've enjoyed every minute.  Cole has the biggest heart of any kid I've ever known and an amazing memory that I'm pretty sure surpasses that of my computer. (You gotta be careful what you tell him, or it will come back to bite ya later!)  Luke may be ornery at times, but when he experiences a moment of true happiness, his smile could light up the world.

The boys were excited to show me their 3DSes that they'd gotten for Christmas.  Of course, I had to bring mine as well so we could all play Pokemon together.  :)  We also fought with lightsabers, played Rayman Origins on the Wii (really fun game if you haven't tried it; I have it on my PS3 and absolutely love it), and we ended the night by watching Star Wars Episode II.  Sure, I could act more mature, but what's the fun in that?  Growing old may be mandatory, but growing up?  Now, that's totally optional.  Life's more fun when you can act like a kid every once in awhile.  And hey, we're all children of God, right?  So why not act like them?

I often refer to Cole and Luke as "the boys I babysit," but that simply isn't true.  They're family.  I'd do anything for them.  These boys will always hold a special place in my heart. <3

Why you stuck up, half-witted, scruffy-looking, NERF HERDER!

Remember that line from The Empire Strikes back when Princess Leia chews out Han Solo?  Well, my co-workers asked me to come up with a few Star Wars names to add to the possibilities for our team name...I came up with quite a few, one of which was the "Nerf Herders."  To my surprise, that's actually the name my team liked best (although I suspect that it has more to do with the fact that a few people on the team thought we might be able to bring Nerf guns to work as a result than anything else).  I'm just excited we have a Star Wars themed team name, even if it was meant to be a derogatory term.

Last Friday, a group of friends from high school and I went to watch our friend MacKenzie Westcott play basketball at Drake (she plays for Bradley, a school in Illinois).  Bradley lost, but it's always fun to watch Kenzie play.  It was great to see everybody again.  We were talking after the game and we realized that it won't be too much longer before we have our 5-year reunion.  That seems so strange to me; it's hard to believe that high school was that long ago.  (Happy, Lindi? I blogged about it!)

Now...back to Nationwide stuff...this past week at work has been a lot of fun for me.  I was actually able to start writing code and committing it to the project.  The ADC (Nationwide's "Application Development Center") uses the agile style of programming, which means that we don't use a lot of documentation and changes are easier to implement and occur more frequently (that is my majorly oversimplified definition of it, if it doesn't satiate your curiosity enough, you can go Google it).  The work is divided into "user stories," which are simply smaller pieces of work.  These user stories are put on cards, and developers go and take the cards and write code for them.   This week, I finally got to do that.  It has made my time at work fly by, and I've really enjoyed it.  I've gotten so many of them done that my co-workers are starting to tease me about just letting me do all the work for this iteration (an iteration is a 2-week period of work for the project).  :)

Richard hasn't been getting many hours at work lately, so he called Securitas this week and asked if they had any openings.  As it turns out, they have a new contract with the Maytag company in Newton.  It sounds like he'll be able to start working there next week.  He's still looking for policing jobs, but something like this will be a good job for now.

Um...can't think of much else that has happened to me in the past few weeks.  But I do think I hear my PS3 calling...tootles!

Happy Friday!

One week down, 2,239 more to go until retirement

Well, they haven't fired me yet.  Haha, just kidding; my first week at Nationwide actually went really well.  I am rather proud of myself for surviving an entire week of driving in downtown Des Moines (even in bad weather!).  I get to the office around 8 each morning, but it's nice not having to worry to much about being there right on time.  If I'm a few minutes late because traffic was backed up, it's no big deal.  That takes a lot of stress out of the drive.

Most of my week has been spent trying to learn ColdFusion.  There were some really great tutorials, and I feel that I have a pretty good handle on it.  I certainly don't know every little detail about the language, but I know enough to be able to understand someone else's code and write a little of my own.  Our team is working on a web application where Nationwide customers can manage their policies and make payments.  It was previously done by a team in Columbus (the main Nationwide branch), but my team members are definitely not impressed by the work.  There are a lot of bugs, and the code is written poorly.  One of my favorite examples of this are the ridiculously long function names, such as: getPolicyNumberForCustomerWithValidLoginAfterBillingArrayHasBeenInitialized().  (Now, I just made that one up, but seriously, some of these names take up my entire window screen so I have to use the horizontal scrollbar in order to read the darned things.)

I don't have my own computer yet, but I cannot wait until I do!  The one I'm currently using is ridiculously slow.  Hopefully, I will have my PC by the end of next week.

Today, we had a meeting to decide our team name and discuss some areas of the project where we would like to see improvements.  We voted for "The Annexation of Puerto Rico." (I was told that it's a football play in the movie Little Giants.)  This might be too long of a name, however, so If our supervisor doesn't approve it, our second choice is "Sinister Dominos."  No, there's no story behind that one.  Programmers are just weird like that.

Not gonna lie, I've really enjoyed getting to feel all important in my business clothes and going to meetings and whatnot.  That will probably wear off pretty quickly, but hey, I'm gonna enjoy it while it lasts.

I hope you all had a great week as well!  Until next time...

First day of being "On Your Side"

So...I've finally caved.  During college, there was no way I'd have time to write a blog...but hey, no more college.  Sorry Krystal, I don't mean to copy you, but this is a really good idea.  :)  Not sure how much I'll keep up with this, though, since not a whole lot goes on in the life of a computer scientist.  If I were to post every day, you'd probably see a lot of posts like this: "Today, I wrote some code. It had a bug.  After hours of scouring the internet for a solution and relentlessly cursing the computer, I fixed it.  Then I wrote more code."  Yeah...so I think I'll spare you guys and just post sporadically.

Anywho...back to what this post is supposed to be about...you know, that's another reason I shouldn't blog much: I tend to ramble.  But again, I'm off topic.  Ahem...

My first day at Nationwide went really well.  I survived the morning Des Moines rush hour (it really isn't that bad for me since I can just take I-80 and 235).  I also managed to use the parking ramp properly, which is a serious accomplishment for me.  After entering the correct room for orientation, I was feeling pretty good!  Then the orientation actually started... It began with a webinar, which, for those of you that don't know, a webinar is like a conference call over the internet, usually with one computer displaying a slideshow.  We could hardly hear the man presenting and when it came time for questions at the end I found myself praying that people would just shut up so we could move on.  After the mind-numbing webinar, we then proceeded to have a rather childish "get to meet your peers" activity, where we each had to mark off activities that we liked to do and share this with other people around the room.  When our orientation director informed us of what we were going to have to do, I think all 30ish people in the room groaned on the inside.  We just wanted out of there at that point.  After that, it was finally time for a tour of the building.

Des Moines is the second biggest location for Nationwide in the entire U.S., so the building(s, really) is HUGE.  I tried not to let my eyes bug out too much, but I'm not entirely sure how successful I was with that.  It's hard for a country kid to get used to the city. :)  Once my tour was finished and I was convinced I was completely lost, it was time for lunch.  We had the option of getting lunch at one of the 2 cafeterias or the coffee shop, or, since the Nationwide building is connected to the Des Moines skyramp system, we could head out to the various food joints along the way.  I opted for the former option, because I figured there was less chance for me to get lost.  After that, I finally got to split off from the group and meet the team of developers I will be working with.

I will be working in an agile programming environment, which involves a lot of team interaction.  All of our desks are located close together, in a cluster of sorts.  I got the hand-me-down computer since I'm the team's newbie, but I really don't mind.  Starting to miss that 27" iMac I had working at UNI, though... I was introduced to all the current team members (I was told that more would be joining soon) and given a rundown on what our project will be.  And then...drumroll please...I got to start programming!  Ok, so it wasn't that exciting...I got to follow some tutorials on the basics of programming in ColdFusion, which is what we will use most often in our applications.  It's actually a lot like PHP, so learning it shouldn't be too bad.  It'll mostly just be figuring out the syntax (the rules).

My team doesn't have a name yet, but we are working on that.  It should be pretty interesting.  Some of the current options are: Pickled Monkies, Shameless Dominoes, Go Hawks (because then the people in Ohio would have to say "Go Hawks!" whenever they referred to us, lol), the Mighty Ducks, and some more that involved Dominoes...not quite sure what that is all about.  "The Annexation of Puerto Rico" was vetoed because it was just too long.  Another team in on our floor is called "The Relentless Marshmallows," so I think we're just trying to outdo them.  I'll let you know what the final decision comes down to.

Seguing back from that tangent...the best part of my day was when I was informed that I could work the hours I wanted, as long as I was there during the 9-3 block (since we need to have the entire team around for at least that chunk of the day) and I get 8ish hours in.  So, I can work 7-3, 8-4, 9-5, etc.  I was also told that I can take whatever time I need for a lunch break.   At this, I thought I might have fallen asleep during that horrid webinar and was now dreaming. :)  I'm sure they'd frown upon taking a 2hr lunch, but it sounds like the hours will be pretty flexible as long as I am getting my work done. Total. Awesomesauce.

After work, I got to hit up the gym.  The one that's right there in the Nationwide building.  Like the rest of the place, it's huge.  I thought I was gonna miss the gym facilities at UNI, but I seriously doubt that now.  Oh, and guess what?  We get extra benefits if we do healthy stuff like sign up for a class for go to the gym a certain number of times...easiest benefits I could ever ask for. :D

OIY...so I think that was the longest post I could have possibly come up with.  I apologize for all the sentence fragments and run-on sentences, but I didn't feel like using proper English.  But hey, college is over; my brain can now become mush.

Hope your day was as epic as mine!