Well, it’s hard to believe but summer is almost over. Come next Thursday it will be back to the books for me. I had a nice start to the summer back in May with our trip to the Dominican, which was quite awesome. The weather here this summer hardly compared to how nice it was there. I told myself the reason for going away this year was because I didn’t know when I would have the chance to again. Now that I’ve gone once it is hard to think that I couldn’t find the time and money to do it again next year.

Ever since the week after I got back from the Dominican I’ve been working at my co-op position. It’s been incredibly nice having a job where I don’t have to work in the evenings or on the weekends. Being downtown by the waterfront also made it so much better. The best part is that it isn’t coming to an end quite yet. While my co-op now officially ends next Wednesday that have agreed to let me work there part time during the school year. I am pretty happy about it all.

In other news, I recently attempted a dual boot with Windows Vista and FreeBSD. The dual booting part worked fine for the most part. I ended up deciding to try to use KDE for the desktop environment which for most peoples standards worked fine as well. However, the trick with my setup is that I am attempting to have dual monitors working, in the same fashion as I have it working under Windows. Try as I might I just couldn’t figure it out. The biggest problem seemed to be that I am working with a 20″ widescreen LCD and a 17″ LCD. From my understanding there is a certain combined maximum resolution that will work and that I am exceeding it. I have not giving up yet though, I just need to perform some more research first.

The last month has been pretty good all around. The trip was excellent, had a great time. It really makes me sad that it will probably be awhile before I get the chance to go away again. I have also started my summer co-op with the government which I am enjoying, the people are great.

As for the site change I discussed last post, I have actually made progress. I came up with a design that is a mix of this design and my portfolio design, I’m happy with it. I still have some tweaking to do before I’m ready to put it up though. So, my current goal is to finish that off and get it up then go back to an old project. I had previously created a Facebook app called PhotoGrab to make downloading of pictures from albums very simple. I ended up neglected it so it isn’t online anymore but I want to get it back online and improve it.

I’m really enjoying the lack of homework and having a set work schedule Monday to Friday. It should make for a great summer.

Seems like every time I get around to making a post on here I end up changing something. Well, this time there are two notable changes so far. The first being that I upgraded to WordPress 2.5. I’ve been using WordPress for awhile now and have seen it evolved, and I must say it keeps on getting better. Unfortunately I end up neglecting it by not posting, then always have to update it when I do post.

The second change is that I have moved the blog to its own directory. For now I don’t have anything in the root directory of the site but that will change. During my first term at school we created an online portfolio, something that I think is incredibly important to have, especially as I try to market myself and get that dream job. For the portfolio I created the design myself and I’m not totally pleased with it, mainly because I am in no way creative. I don’t do design. My current plan is to incorporate the portfolio into the design of this blog or to play around and come up with something on my own that I do like. Ideally I want the whole site to have the same look though.

When will this all be done? That’s a great question I say. With school done until September now I have one less excuse, however I will have a full time job (co-op) this summer - starting around the first of May. Oh, and then next week I am gone to the Dominican for a week so it won’t be happening then. I have some free time in between packing and going to a birthday celebration this weekend so I think the plan is to start on it now. Until then though the site root will redirect to /blog.

I feel like I am just talking to myself right now, I don’t think anyone really reads this thing. My own fault though for not keeping it active.

Well, I just spent most of the afternoon trying to figure out how to get a drop shadow working on a box that is compatible with some of the most popular browsers (Firefox, IE6, IE7 and Safari). Let’s just say it wasn’t as easy as I expected to be. There are a number of tutorials out there, but most seem to apply to img tags. With CSS3 there is supposed to be a box-shadow property but apparently the browsers don’t support it (I only gave it a quick test and it didn’t render properly, I didn’t investigate why).

I tested a number of methods and there was always something that prevented it from rendering properly in IE (whether it be 6 or 7). Luckily, I finally came across this page that had a tutorial that actually accomplished what I wanted. The one downside is that I was hoping to get the shadow without relying on any images, but I am happy with the result. I may expand on this later on, but I wouldn’t count on it too much right now.

(Side note: I am slowing learning CSS. The key being slowly.)

I’ve left NY and came back since that last post. So, I am currently back down here again. There’s quite a bit going on, but yet I don’t seem to have too much to say right now.

PeekYou.com - Coming Soon

A few days late, but we have added India to the RateMyTeachers family.

Where will we be next?

Well, after the power went out last weekend a few times my server was having issues but I finally had some free time and got it back online today. Mind you the solution seemed to be to unplug the network cable until it was fully booted, weird.

Anyways, I have been quite busy over the last two weeks, and have a couple announcements that I mentioned about in my last post. Firstly, as of yesterday RateMyTeachers has now expaned to two new countries, Australia and New Zealand. We are really excited to be expanding and hopefully can branch out more in the near future!

Next, I am pleased to say that RateMyProfessors has finally got a face lift. We had been working on the new design and some feature improvements a lot over the past few weeks and we hope everyone likes it. I also want to give a shout out to the guy I worked closely with and who made the new design, Raj, he did a fantastic job.

That’s all for now, until next time.

So over the past month or so I have had the opportunity to be working on a great side project. The site I have been working on is RateMyTravel.com.

Everyone involved with the site is really excited about it, it should really take off. I think the name pretty much speaks for itself. I encourage you to go check it out (just a splash page up right now, site will launch soon!) and signup to the email list to be notified when we launch the site.

Contact me if I know you and you might be able to get a sneak peak!

It really has been a fairly uneventful week, unless you count that little thing on Thursday night. But first, let’s rewind to Sunday.

After making my last post on Sunday I eventually got off my butt and went out. My destination: Central Park. I must say it is so calm and peaceful there. I actually intend to go back there (perhaps tomorrow?) so I can go to the zoo they have there and just enjoy it all a little more. I was a bit late getting there on Sunday to get into the zoo and to have enough time to enjoy it before they closed for the day. I ended up walking about 3/4 of the way up the park (which is quite the size), headed west, then proceeded to walk down to Times Square from there. I ended up walking around Times Square a few times, pretty nice. I, however, still did not get many pictures there. The problem is that on the weekend there are so many people there so it is hard to get the “money shots.” So, this is also one place I intend to return to, but on a weekday.

Nothing really spectacular happened from Monday to Wednesday that I can recall. But Thursday turned out to be a pretty good day. After work everyone was invited out for drinks, paid for by the company. I certainly made good use of that invite. Let’s see, as I recall it I had 6 drinks plus a shot of tequila. Five of those drinks were a Lava Lamp and then a beer, which was a chaser for the shot. It was good to get out like that but to also mingle with some of the people in the office I don’t normally talk to and some who I was never really introduced to. I would certainly do that again, problem is I will probably be gone before the next event happens.

Last night, Friday, was kind of more laid back. I actually stayed at the office with a friend until around 10:30 and just kind of chilled and watched baseball. Neither of us has cable or any such thing at home but there is satellite at the office. It was rather odd sitting there at my desk when the cleaners were coming in and doing their thing. Oh well!

That about covers it. It is now Saturday, 12 PM, and I have no idea where I am going today or what to do. This seems to be a regular problem on the weekends. Perhaps I shall try to find a place to buy a new power adapter for my laptop, damn you Dell! Maybe I should just find a new laptop….

Oh, I almost forgot, looks like I might be heading back to California for a little bit once I am done here later in October.

Well, it’s official, I am heading back to NY… on Thursday. We have a lot of plans in store for the future at work and the process and productivity is just so much better and easier when the team can work together face to face. When I was there last we were ironing out the plans for a big new feature of the site which should be live within the next week. At the same time we are also launching a new design, which I personally find a whole lot better then the current one. It will actually provide a true makeover compared to the small cosmetic fixes/updates that have been done over the past couple of years. It is taking a tad bit longer then I had hoped but in the end I think it will be truly worth the wait.

As I said, I head back on Thursday with a nice 6:40 AM flight. I make a stop in Montreal before heading down to NY for around noon. As for the length of the stay, that is still up in the air.

Now, time to get some rest, busy day tomorrow!