I guess the reason I haven’t blogged in the past 3 days was because there was really nothing to blog about except work. And work…is work. Its not “hard,” its just physically taxing to stare at a screen for like 6-7 hours (I actually did it straight once or twice because I was too busy to take a lunch break…or maybe it was because I’m too stingy to spend 8 bucks on a sandwich in lower manhattan…) At any rate, making money isn’t very easy.

But I have picked up on some good tips from the head-developer (sort of like my boss but not really, he just tells me what to do. my real boss is the guy in charge of money). Basically when I find time, I’m gonna look at mu-tools. And AJAX. And maybe learn some ASP/.NET stuff.

Learning how MVC worked by reading about rails and using CakePHP in the past have really helped though. *Hattip to paul shen for introducing me to it all* — this one project used CodeIgnitor and it uses an MVC model. Hell if I had to learn MVC at that point, I’d be shot to hell. Its hard enough even knowing where everything goes. The programmer who used CodeIgnitor to write for us was not very neat about it though, or well-documented. I had trouble setting things up as a codeignitor nub…

So I had mostly an uneventful weekend. I went to 7/11 like twice though to get slurpees. Once with Kev Hsu after our fail Saturday run, another with my little brother (he craved something cold, haha). Also had some late night chats with a couple people. Oh and today frisbee was fun. We joined a bunch of random Holmdel alumni and seniors (Ryan Muller, Mike from Red Bank, Jeff something. I don’t really know the names of anyone on the other team except that one of them had a beard). Our team lost our first game but wrecked the other losing team during the second. They basically gave up after the first point though. It was fun overall but I had to go home at like 6:15 cause my dad needed someone to watch him and my mom and sister were exhausted from tending to him for the past week. I guess it was time for me to do my turn!

I’ve been so busy lately but finally went to B&N to pick up a Math Level 2 SAT II book so that I can retake it in October. I also got a jump on the first Common App essay. I’m liking my opening but losing ideas toward the end of the essay.

This week has been pretty brutal. I’m getting more used to the rhythm of work but its very difficult and tiring to code for such long stretches. What does help, surprisingly, is loud Linkin Park. I’m liking Minutes to Midnight a lot. Its better than the Hybrid Theory EP that I used to listen to like in 6th grade…full of depressing songs. They’re still a sort of negative band. But whatever, it helps me code for some reason.

Today was the first day I went to the balcony at where I work. I looked down…and realized how frickin high up we are. 20 stories…looking down into Times Square….insane. For the record, I hate heights. But looking at all the moving people, busy streets, other parts of NY, all the tall buildings…exhilarating.

I’m currently….very very sick of XHTML/CSS. I spent my entire day (woke at 6:40 to catch the train, got to work at 9, left at 3 to get home by 5 to go to running practice at 6…) porting a layout from XHTML to Wordpress XHTML/PHP. Its…laborious and tedious to say the least. But I did it, and now all thats left is really some beautification and adjustments made by our company’s clients. Yay. No doubt I’ll be set up with yet another project to finish tomorrow…

So having worked 3 days this week and tomorrow a 4th, I can officially say: commuting is tiring.

But its ok because its NYC, Lower Manhattan, Times Square…its where the action’s at!

I think I’m finally getting into the work groove. Woke up at 8 to catch the train, started work at 10:30am, ended work at 6:10pm. Its about 7 hours, 40 minutes of straight work. I only got up to go to the bathroom (twice, because the first time all the bathrooms were locked, and the second time I realized you needed a key to get into their bathrooms.) Tomorrow I wake at 7 to get to work by 9, then work till 3:30 to catch the 4:00 train home so I can get to XC practice on time. That means tomorrow I’ll work about 6 1/2 hours. Probably more like 6 hours though because I plan to take a lunch break somewhere in between.

Didn’t get my run in today because I left home at 8am and got home at 8pm. Tomorrow I’ll be at practice though…

I’m currently at someone else’s house cause we’re redoing the floors at our house and can’t be in. My laptop is my new best friend…

Wow ok so my day was like: Wake up at 8am…eat, help catch some weird stray dog, get to train station at 10, get to work at 11:45, work till 4:10, rush to catch the 4:30 train home, rush off to XC practice right when I arrive at the train station, rush home to help move furniture…all without eating breakfast or lunch. I ended up eating dinner at 9:30pm. And yeah, I was tired. Well, I had a handful of granola as “breakfast” and a cinnamon sugar pretzel for my train snack…but is that a reason to have another good run today? Sure it was a moderate day but it felt a lot better than most moderate days! Which is ironic… Maybe I’m finally getting over my injuries. Yay.

Work was cool. There was another Asian guy and I think an Israeli girl in the room I was working, both with heavy accents. It felt pretty cool, us sitting there designing web sites and stuff. I felt useless not knowing flash though. And since the company I work with does so much ASP, I feel sort of useless too. But the head developer guy is chill (his name is CJ). Its a really laid back environment, good place to work. At the same time, its not like other jobs where you do 10 minutes of work and 30 minutes of idling (stefan and bert lmao)…its constant work. But I enjoy the work so time flies really fast. And I can’t help but think about the work when I get home.

Oh something I learned today: PHP.ini directive overrides for SMTP aren’t as useful as socket connections which can be made with an open source GPL script a guy wrote. Its actually quite good. Hopefully that will solve a little problem I was having today with their mail server (probably because they’re security oriented and have different ports and setting stuffs).

OK. So today I had a really good workout. Frontwoods backwoods, 9:05, 8:53, 8:36, 8:07. Stefan and Dave Sun stayed up the whole bit. I think that last bit was harder than I should have gone, but whatever. Hopefully by end of the summer I’ll be running with Kev Hsu’s group again…I want to do really well this year. I’ve been running every day except Sunday on the most part, and I think frisbee is actually helping my lower leg issues (my lateral-motion muscles finally get used and loosen up a bit).

Oh yeah, Frisbee. Yesterday afternoon we played some Allied Health High School kids. About half of them were indian. One was Vivek Angara, a kid who was in Holmdel until like 8th grade…he had a family tragedy that was quite bad. Hadn’t really seen him since but he’s chill. Yeah but we owned them. Totally. 10-7 for the first game, us. 7-6 second game, us. I found out how useless I am on short passes now….I’m good with catching, ok for defending, but every time I pass I make really bad decisions. I have to work on that.

7/11 Slurpees are $1.60 for 40oz. I have to get them more often. They are amazing.

I start at my new job tomorrow. I can’t wait, its freaking awesome cause I get to go to NYC and do web design. 1) Web design is my favorite thing since sliced bread, 2) NYC is awesome. I feel so l33t going to work there.

Yeah hopefully I do a good job… wish me luck!

Sunday. Another day at church…and now I find out minister Jackson is off to do some church-planting. That officially leaves us with…Pastor Paul and Minister Heald. Grrrrreat. I love how the heads of our church are like disappearing.

In other news, [this] is a very good read. Its about how girls should not date startup guys….or if they feel like a bumpy adventure they should. Though I tend to disagree on one point, because some developers don’t like Mac. I personally think Apple is worse than Microsoft in that Bill Gates became a philanthropist…while Steve Jobs just takes a $1 salary…but gets HUGE corporate gifts. Microsoft develops expensive software that gets stolen….Steve makes expensive software and hardware to steal your money at hugely jacked up prices. Microsoft isn’t “OSS-Friendly,” Apple “is” but locks hardware down so tight you can’t change your graphics card. Oh and OSX only runs on Macs, legally at any rate. Way to go, Apple, you startup-friendly bank-robber!

Vive Linux. Compiz-Fusion pwns all graphical interfaces.

Ran with Ashu this morning, about 52 minutes in the reservoir trail and the mile trail at Thompson park. We remarked how funny it is that he’s the last man standing for their grade in terms of running; nobody else in their grade level is still running. Actually, reflecting on that year….none of their guys were that outstanding. Sourav and Chuck were really fast, but they didn’t have a Greco or a George. I miss a lot of the seniors…haven’t seen a lot of them in a long while.

Dad is moving out of the hospital next week, so we’re replacing the carpet in his room with tile so that his walker doesn’t trip or something. If you ask me, its a big hassle because I’m the one doing the heavy lifting…but he needs what he needs.

Today was pretty decent. Ran 2 toploops at 8:53, 9:30. Then ran backwards with kev hsu and monga twice. We technically were supposed to do 4 toploops, but our pace on lap 1 really blew (we were supposed to be 9:10!)

I spent the afternoon doing college essays. They’re more tedious than I thought they’d be. Its a lot of the “delete” button and hair-pulling at how stupid the sentences form. I find I write better at night though, so I’m trying my hand at that right now.

There was a lot of traffic sending my brother to Ranney this morning. Some accident on the Parkway and then construction on Shrewsbery Avenue. Something to remember for tomorrow…