I Am Loving WordPress More And More
Alright!
Okay, so it has been a couple of weeks with WordPress. WordPress is a blogging engine, the underlying "meat and potatoes" of this blog and many others. There is no charge for WordPress nor its required components (PHP and MySQL) and it is VERY configurable. You could easily use it as a foundation for a small business web site. If I were a bit better with graphic design and creativity I would create a business out of creating web sites for small businesses and use WordPress as the engine. I would choose WordPress over Joomla everytime. Joomla is a similar engine that is popular with small to mid-size companies...even larger sometimes. It is highly configurable as well. In a computer comparison, Joomla would be a PC and WordPress would be a Mac (although in reality they run on Linux). I am a little bias when it comes to Joomla. A company I previously worked for had their site built with Joomla as the core and there was always something wrong with it or getting hacked. Maybe WordPress has similar security issues, but I haven't personally heard of any yet.
Here is why I like WordPress:
Free Software
As I mentioned, WordPress is free as well as its requirements. This means that hosting will be much cheaper than something requiring ASP or .NET.
Tons of plug-ins
There is a huge growing list of plug-ins available to do just about anything you might want. Although this is kind of the reason I hate Linux servers...add-ons. If you wanted to get a Linux server up and running, you had to first install one of many versions of Linux. Then you had to install Apache (web server), then MySQL (database), then PHP (script language), phpMyAdmin, Squirrelmail, Perl/CGI, etc. OR you could install Windows Server and SQL then go out for some beers.
Easy to add plug-ins
My biggest complaint to plug-ins is their complexity to add. WordPress has done a great job of making it a few mouse clicks. It's not just WordPress that has easy to install plug-ins, but it's still a plus.
Clean database structure
Compare a Joomla back-end (database) to a WordPress and see what you find. You would find that Joomla is equivalent to Kim Kardashian in the comparison. Although neither compare to the last software application I worked on which consisted of 367 tables, 513 views, and 3200 stored procedures! Talk about junk in your trunk!
Image Storage - Done right in my book
You should store DATA in databases and FILES in your filesystem (disk). And don't try to argue that images/files are data...I'm familiar, and that's not my point.
Up For Auction
I finally got around to selling my old phone, or at least posting it on eBay. We'll see if it gets any bidders.
Marin is loving her new bed. I will have to put her old one on craiglist, maybe next week.
I applied for a particular job a while back. They just now are getting to the professional reference check and background check...slow application process I suppose. They notified me of a flag that popped up under the Crimlink + National Sex Offender Registry and it was their policy to bring it to my attention. Turns out there is someone in Missouri with the same first name, middle initial, and last name as me. Luckily, our name was the only thing we had in common! I used to occasionally get a letter about owing someone money. I would always call the number and they would ask if my last 4 digits of my social were XXXX. I would say no, and they would take me off the list. I suppose I have a fairly common name, or at least when it comes to certain types of folk. I have yet to receive a check in the mail and it was meant for a different Eric Bridges! Good news is everything else checked out on my background check...I graduated from SFA in 2001, no criminal records, credit report good, and I am still alive according to the Social Security Administration!
So I got that going for me...which is nice!
...So I got THAT going for me...which is nice.
Bill Murray, Caddyshack
Marin’s New Bed
Angela found a new bed for Marin last week. She found it off of craigslist and I was the lucky one that got to pick it up. Turns out a twin size bed will fit in an MDX with the rear seats down and the front seats moved up a bit. The lady kept it in great condition and with all of the pieces! I have put together several furniture items throughout the years and you can definitely tell a quality difference between them. This is a pretty solid bed, so it should last her for 4 or 5 years…at least that is the plan. Here are some picks, I gave myself a pat on the back since I had to put it together without any instructions and only a faint memory of a picture from the craigslist listing from a week prior.
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We are still sticking with the Tinkerbell theme. |
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 She LOVES the slide! |
 She had a routine of pouring herself a cup of tea, climbing up the ladder to the bed, sliding down the slide, and repeat. |
 And soon it was bedtime. She did very well the first night (last night). We asked her this morning if she liked her new bed and she responded with, “I like it.” |
Job Hunt
I am still going strong with the job hunt. I had 3 interviews this week, so it was a better week than most. One was a very brief interview with a head hunter/recruiter that was looking for a .NET developer position for a friend. I don’t think she typically handles technical jobs, so she really didn’t know what to ask me. She just kept saying, “Oh, I think you are perfect for what he is looking for.” So we will see what happens with that one. Another interview was with a small growing company needing mostly a programmer, but also someone that can get their infrastructure in order (as far as IT). We will see how that goes, but I am a little uneasy with the size of the company. He had 15 employees at the end of last year. He is “restructuring” and is now hiring employee number 4. (I was employee #4 at Marketplace Software and we see where that got me.) The last interview, which was actually the first of the week, was with a large company that contracts out technical services to other companies. I applied for a .NET Developer position. The interview was a technical interview which consisted of 2 guys taking turns asking questions about object oriented programming, .NET and SQL. Specifically about polymorphism, abstract classes, inheritance, implementation, .NET controls, stored procedures and SQL functions. And yes, finally someone that doesn’t care if you natively use VB or C# (pronounced “C Sharp”)! For those of you not familiar with the difference between VB and C#, I will give you an example. The difference is mostly syntax (meaning how items are written out). The two code snippets below do the exact same thing.
| for (int i = 1; i <= 10; i++) { WriteLine(i); } |
For i As Integer = 1 To 10 WriteLine(i) Next |
C# |
VB |
Can you tell what the program writes out? Doesn’t one of examples seem to make better “sense”? I think so, and I think it’s VB (Visual Basic). Yet 3 out of 4 companies will want a C# guy. Turns out 95% of C# programmers only have about 1 year experience right now (I was told this by a recruiter after they went through 150+ resumes looking for 3-5 years, not my statistics).
Here is another tip I have found while looking for work…craigslist! Two of the three interviews this week were from a posting on craigslist. Plus, I have found a couple of contract opportunities as well. I just finished one small project for a guy I ran across on craigslist. He was very happy with the work and has already given me another small project. And guess what language…you got it, C#…gotta do what you gotta do!
Changing It Up A Bit
I have finally got around to changing the site…again. The previous site used BlogEngine.net which was a quick and simple solution that served its purpose. However, the old site did not have many built in options not to mention I never got the email working correctly. The new site uses WordPress as the engine, which is very popular and mainstream. Most, if not all, of my friends use WordPress as a blog engine. Luckily when I signed up for hosting I chose a provider that offered IIS 7 because PHP (the technology that WordPress uses) is included in the new IIS. So I can not only host sites that I have created in Microsoft .NET (Wish List and My Resume), but I can also host site created in PHP like this one. NOTE: There will be some broken links to some of the images in the post until I can finish moving them over.
As Angela had mentioned in a previous post, I am no longer employed with Marketplace Software. The work itself was fun and the job wasn’t too bad either (working from home with flexible hours). The company was growing/expanding and doing well. Unfortunately, things caught up too quickly. When a payroll check was withdrawn from our account a week after receiving it, the downward spiral started. As of now, the owner of the company is working frantically alone to finish the next version of the software and has become unresponsive to employees and customers.
On a better note, Marin is doing wonderful! Although, she is getting to the stage where she says “No”…ohhhh booooyyyy. We had a Sunday Fun-Day at Lake Lavon yesterday. We swam, cooked out, and relaxed on blankets under a shade tree. We will have to do it again soon.
