Programmer, Analyst, Learner, Leader, Gamer

Suffice to say with moving, new role at work, and the exciting launch of Warhammer Online, I’ve been very busy. Add two trips to California into the mix and make that VERY TIRED and VERY BUSY. On top of all that, my brother just had his daughter (see Ray’s website on my links list) Rachael Elizabeth Laurence on September 13th at around noon. Very happy things went smoothly and both of the proud parents are doing fine.

In regards to work, I have my Senior Software Engineer (Charles McAuley) hired and recently I’ve been interviewing perspective candidates for Technical Support and my other Software Engineer. Interestingly enough at least 2 people (that I know of) have looked up this website and other websites I’m sure of mine and done research about me prior to the interview. I of course have nothing to hide and am open person, it’s just not something I’m used to (although I should be almost expecting it these days). I think I’ve made my decision at this point about who I want to hire for support, but I’m still working out the details with Tony and corporate (paper work).

In regards to entertainment, Warhammer has been going very well. The guild is up to around 40 members again (plus around 10 alts). The game is great and it’s really awesome to be close to all my good friends again. As always trying manage a guild of 50+ people is challenging, but also rewarding and the members appreciate how I manage things.

In regards to home life and Kerrie… well things couldn’t be better. We’re *mostly* unpacked and have caught up a little bit on the garden. Me being out of town for two weeks in the last month hasn’t helped with the house progress, but even still things have been progressing nicely. We’re enjoying the new house and really settling in well with our lives together finally.

Those are the top events in the last month or so. Will hope to start getting back into the groove of blogging again for those who keep up with my goings on. Life has been busy and I hope all my readers out there have been doing well.

20 credits left in the core of my degree (9 humanities, 3 Law, 4 CIS, and 4 Management)
19 credits left in my specialty (4 classes and my senior project)

So the question is: Now that I’m management do I persue a specialty in Business Management or Systems Analysis and Integration. I think the appropriate answer given my circumstances is Business Management. Here would be the difference in class load.

Systems Analysis and Integration
SAI430 - System Integration
SAI440 - Adv. Topics in Enterprise Analysis
SAI460 - Organizational Process Analysis
SEC340 - Business Continuity
CIS470 - Senior Project

Business Management
MGMT303 - Principles of Management
PROJ330 - Human Resources and Communication in Projects
MGMT410 - Human Resource Management
MGMT420 - Managing Technological Change
BUSN412 - Business Policy
CIS470 - Senior Project

Yeah yeah, call me indecisive. Now that I’m officially a manager within a global, public corporation… I think having a blog titled “O RLY, YA RLY, NO WAIH” isn’t very professional. I’ll still keep the blog’s original intention in place, this is my mental break place where I collect my thoughts. It will continue to be witty, crazy, and filled with gaming stuff. I just wanted to maintain a pseudo professional ring to it.

With the following announcement, it’s official. I’m now the manager of ESP “North”. I will have a few developers, QA, and technical support staff working for me maintaining the current (soon to be legacy) applications for ESP, while the veteran developers work on re-writing the application as a C# / ASP.Net / Web service based application.

Just another thing that is adding to my busy schedule as I am currently wading through 23 resumes that are growing every 15 minutes or so as more resumes come in from the job posts I made. If you are interested, please look for my post on Portland Craig’s List.

It is with much regret that Mark Heins is announcing Victor Laurence is leaving the Comply Plus Development Team. Conversely it is with much fanfare that I am announcing Victor as the Manager of the ESP North Development Team. Of course this will be a smooth transition

 

ESP is in Mountain View California and can be found on the web at http://esp-net.com/. ESP was acquired by IHS the same day as Dolphin and is one of the organizations in the Environment Domain. ESP currently has 6 Software Developers and a few colleagues in QA and Tech Support. We are currently seeking 2 Software Developers and at least 1 QA and 1 Tech Support Engineer to work alongside Victor in our Lake Oswego office. We will be working on existing ESP products, as well as, the future roadmap. Victor will work closely with the existing team in Mountain View which is managed by Randy Chandrupatla on the Software Development side and Tony Bamberger managing QA and Tech Support. This approach will provide good coverage and cross-training for this extensive code base and allow the developers at both locations to create similar look and feel products for the entire product offering in the Environment Domain.

 

Please join me in congratulating and supporting Victor.

Between the Warhammer Beta, college, my car being broken into, changing job roles, possibly other opportunities, house hunting, preparing out household budget, moving finances, keeping my head screwed on, meeting with mortgage lenders to get pre-approved for a future home purchase, finding the PERFECT place, signing paperwork, working with a homeowner/landlord who’s not even in town, dealing with getting new teeth put in my mouth after fracturing two of them, and now packing and preparing to move by the 15th starting this weekend (wears me out just saying all that)…

Let’s just say I’ve been busy. More details forthcoming as I find the time to post.

So I put my mind to it and got myself a Wii Fit in less than a week. I have to admit I’m pleasantly surprised with the device so far. Here is my review thus far about the features of the Wii Fit product.

• Goals setting and tracking - It prevents you from setting too large of goals. For example it didn’t let me put in “I want to lose 80 lbs in the next year”. So I set a goal of 21 lbs in the next 3 months. It also “measures” your goal progress in 2 week increments. In other words, instead of focusing on 1 week long increments it’s broken into 2 week increments.
• BMI, weight, and balance measurements - One could say the BMI is not accurate due to muscle/fat/bone density ratios, but it’s as accurate as it can be. Plus this is about getting fit, not becoming the next Mr. Universe. Ideally it should account for a certain amount of muscle gain based on where you are on the BMI scale and activity with the system. Balance is huge and it’s a good motivator for me. Even though I’m overweight, I carry myself well.
• Motivation - The game is constantly motivating you. The animated Wii board talks to you and congratulates you in a very cute way on your progress. The personal trainers motivate you when you’re doing well or improving on your exercises. Most of all the game rewards you by unlocking more items based on your commitment to becoming fit and how well you are doing. Some exercises will unlock based on total fitness time, some exercises will unlock the more you do that one exercise, and some will unlock as you do BETTER consistently at a particular exercise. This really rewards the person who has a completionist attitude and taps into the “gamer” side of you that wants to unlock stuff. Best of all the features that are unlocked are “mii” specific. Which means I can unlock things differently than Kerrie will for example.
• Yoga is very relaxing and helps you stretch at the beginning of your workout. It is very tough and works core muscle groups well, but at the same time it is VERY low impact which again is the equivalent to stretching. I like the focus on breathing in the Yoga exercises and how they present breathing to you. Right now I’m still really out of shape and can’t do a lot of the Yoga poses I have unlocked. For now I’m focusing on the 2 that I can do well and those poses are helping strengthen my knees, abs, and core.
• Strengthening exercises are pretty hard for me right now. I know I’m out of shape and like Yoga I can only do two of these exercises without seriously hurting myself. I’m looking forward to the day that I can do more of these. I know some of these I can do once my knees get stronger. One in particular “combos” with yoga. Oh yeah as you unlock and master different techniques, you can unlock exercise “combos” which is really cool. For example I think one is the strengthening exercise “The Lunge” comboing into the Yoga pose “The Warrior”. They call it the Lunging Warrior (or something like that).
• Aerobic exercises are really fun. Of all the exercises these are the most enjoyable to me. HoolaHoop has to be the best of all the exercises because it is not only REALLY aerobic, but it REALLY works your abs hard. Forget those days of doing sit ups! The step aerobics is really fun which is surprising because I was shying away from the Wii Fit because I thought it was a glorified step aerobics machine. The “running” I’m not too sure about… I’ll write more about that once I get the feel of it. The soccer headbutting also is a bit weird. It feels more like a balance game than an Aerobic game.
• Balance is the key to a healthy lifestyle, or so they say. If the Yoga exercises are the low impact warm up, the balance games are the low impact. These games focus on pushing your tired self to the limit, testing how well you are balanced and how well you can control shifts in you balance. The only balance game I can say for sure I don’t like is the tightrope. The marbles, skiing games (yes there’s two that I’ve unlocked so far), and the “bubble in the stream” are all excellent games.
• Overall the Wii Fit is fun to play and an excellent exercise. I think I’m going to set a rule that before I can sit down to play video games on my PC or console, I first have to do my 30 minute Wii Fit workout. I think it’s MORE than reasonable and VERY fun and rewarding.

Today I was asked to move (or at least start the transition) onto the development team for our newest flagship product which is going to unify all of our existing products into one suite. I was intially asked to fulfill a simple Flex developer role and one 30 minute conversation later, I had pitched a completely different role. Here is the pitch I gave the manager of the team after our conversation.

Victor’s position on the <FLASHSHIP-PRODUCT> team would leverage his well rounded knowledge to fill a very specific and needed role. Working as part of the <FLASHSHIP-PRODUCT> software development team, his duties would include the following.

He will contribute to the development of the product as a front-end Flex designer/developer, but he will also have a major focus on documenting the development processes. He will do so by working with <FLASHSHIP-PRODUCT-MANAGER> and other stakeholders to better establish project goals, specifications, budget and timelines. This would involve collaboration with various business units, then using that understanding of business operations to help build solutions to meet the department’s internal information needs as well as the customer needs. He will analyze business processes, identifying causes of problems and making recommendations for process and design improvements. He will use his knowledge across a spectrum of technologies to determine the best solutions to design problems. He will also work to establish testing procedures to ensure the application is thoroughly tested during development and prior to release.

EDIT: This was the response.

Thanks Victor.  I appreciate the effort and enthusiasm for writing that up.  I should be able to make it pretty much a done deal.  I’ll send <VP-OF-THE-DIVISION> a quick email to get confirmation.

So apparently I am an epic fail at advertising. Aside from a few select places on the net, my attempts at advertising so far have not… gone well. :-(  Call me a little overly ambitious, but I advertised my new side project on 27 different places across the net. Most people said things like “good luck with your gold sales” and other such comments. MMORPG.Com didn’t shun me though which is promising. My hopes are that the few places which haven’t shunned my advertising will start to spread the word. Hopefully my story gets Dugg as well and more and more people start to get exposure to the site.

Once I have a ton of people signed up for the newsletter then I will announce the beta launch of the site. You know after dealing with this advertising crap, I think back to my days of owning my own business. I loved doing the work, but hated the advertising.

I guess since the word is out, I might as well announce it here:
http://www.mmoleader.com

I am a very honest person. I like speaking my mind. I especially enjoy spreading good news. This is why I am HORRIBLE at keeping secrets. I really… really… want to leak information about the top secret project I’ve been working on. Every time I go to the site to customize something new, do data entry, putting up articles I’ve written over the years (to help jump start the site) and otherwise do things to make the site more and more awesome, the more I want to tell people about it.

I’ve told my guild and I’ve told people I know and trust, but I want to tell everyone else out there who is going to be SUPER excited about this project. My site has a very focused user group that I’m targeting, but that user group will be very interested in this site. Right now Kerrie is working on the branding design for the site including logo design and other things which will give us a professional look. Also I know a friend who is an Internet journalist who is working on pointers and will get back to me soon. I also have a friend who’s mom is an Internet marketing consultant who has been doing it for so long she works via word of mouth through contracts for big customers and not under some big agency. I don’t have any upfront capital for any of these people, but they are willing to help out which is great.

I can assure you this, the subject matter is… related to the MMO industry. I’ll leave the rest of the clues up to your imagination to figure out.

I’ve started an interesting side project recently which is why I haven’t blogged in a couple of days. It really has been bugging me about what I’ve been wanting to do with my blog. I don’t want my blog to loose too much focus on ME as a person because again as I’ve stated before, my blog is mostly for me and my internal thought processing. So the tone of this site will stay what it is, but I’ve been wanting to do something more… something… bigger. In all the years I’ve been making websites, running websites, and building things professionally in my career, I’ve never taken the time to start a personal project of major worth for myself.

So an idea hit me and I went with it. The website is still top secret as I continue work on putting it all together and getting starting content in there, but so far here is what people are saying. Who knows if you comment on this thread, maybe I just might give you a sneak peak. Here is what people are saying so far:

A very ambitious project, for which I will be the first to pledge my support! To my knowledge, this has never been done before, and innovation is something to be commended. 

Wow! That’s an excellent idea for a website. I dont think anybody has ever done anything like that before.