Yes, I know this post should have been out two days ago, but I came down with a bad sinus cold and have not been able to think well enough to concentrate long enough to write all the things I want to talk about. So now that I am feeling a little better, I thought I would try and get through what I did this weekend.
To start things off, I will send you to xfep.com to read a funny little story about how the WordCamp Toronto 2008 hash tag battle happened. So in the end, my hash tag that I came up with in the morning before the event came out on top for both days! I think I should have one a prize for that. But no worries. At least I know that I created the hash tag for WordCamp Toronto 2008.
For those of you that have no idea what WordCamp is, I will take the next few minutes to explain WordCamp to you as best I can. WordCamp is a conference build around the blogging software called WordPress. Markwood.ca and many other personal and professional blogs are based on this software. So WordCamp is a place for people that use this software to find out new things coming up with WordPress as well as learn different ways to use WordPress from other presenters. There are topics such as WordPress Gallery with Rannie Turingan, WordPress Security with Mark Jaquith, WordPress and Podcasting: The Good, The Bad and The Audible with Charles Hodgson, Running Your Blog Like a Pro with David Peralty and a few others that I will mention at the end of my post.
There is so much to learn at these events that I thought I would record them all for myself so that I can refer back to them on a later date, but then I thought, “Why hog these sessions for myself? Why not post them online for everyone to see?” So that is exactly what I did. I attended ever session (except for the last panel because I had to get a cab to make it to the train station on time for my train.) Being a novice at blogging and wanting to get into the world of professional blogging, this event was very useful for me. I hope that other people will take the 6 hours plus needed to watch all these videos and really use them to improve your blogging abilities or to get into the world of blogging.
WordCamp Toronto Schedule:
Day One
10:00 a.m. – 10:45 a.m. – Blogging as a Cornerstone of Social Media with Joseph Thornley
video: The Video
11:00 a.m. – 11: 45 a.m. – ‘State of the Word’ with Matt Mullenweg
video: Part A, Part B
1:15 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. – WordPress Gallery with Rannie Turingan
video: The Video
2:15 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. – WordPress: Beyond A Blog with Jamie Oastler
video: The Video
3:15 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. – WordPress and Podcasting: The Good, The Bad and The Audible with Charles Hodgson
video: The Video
Day Two
10:00 a.m. – 10:45 a.m. – WordPress Security with Mark Jaquith
video: The Video
11:00 a.m. – 11: 45 a.m. – Running Your Blog Like a Pro with David Peralty
video: The Video
1:15 p.m. -2:00 p.m. – Video Blogging with Mark McKay
video: The Video
2:15 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. – Making the Most of Plug-ins with Brendan Sera-Shriar
video: The Video
3:15 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. – Entertainment Blogging: A Panel Discussion with Frank Yang, Tim Shore, Chris Budd and Jonathan Dekel
If you would like a copy of the presenters slides, please go to the WordCamp Toronto Wiki
“Distinction”. The one word in the world that makes me so happy. As I stood by the table waiting for the register to my little card that I use to hand in to the people handing out the Diplomas, I nervously wait to see if this word is written on the piece of paper. Gladly when she finds my slip the word has been written on there and circled in green highlighter to let the emcee know that I have gotten a greater then 3.5 average during my time in the Computer Programmer Analyst program.
I was a little nervous, as I mentioned in my last post, that I was not going to be graduating with distinction. But I ended up graduating for a second time with the prized word on my Diploma. “Distinction”. What an amazing word. I would later find out on my Official Transcript that I graduated with a 3.599 (3.6) average for 4 years of college. Not bad in my mind. I could have done better, but there were some hurdles and some teachers that made a perfect 4.0 nearly impossible.
I would like to thank All of my family for helping me with my 4 long years getting a higher education and for all the support they have given me over the year. Thank you.
Yes Sir!, that is where I am working full time on a 4 month contract making some GOOD money. I am finally out of school and into the real working force. Sadly right now there is no permanent full time position available but hopefully with all the movement in the area I am working in, something will open up and they will hold a competition for a position that I am able to get hired for. Or they keep me working the same job for 18 months and I can get automatically rolled into the position I have right now.
School went well. I will admit that it was not one of my best semesters and there are a few reasons behind that. No, I will not make excuses, I know I could have tried harder, but I didn’t, but still managed to graduate. The first reason was because it was my 4th year in college. I know that does not seem long at all, but when you are without money for that long, it’s hard. Another is have 16 hours of work placement, and having to find a part time job to have some cash flow and keep the debt down, on top of going to school for 15 hours a week and having to do homework. Then lastly, there was my teacher. I’m not going to name any names out of respect, but it just seemed as though the teacher did not know what was going on. They made it hard to follow what they were teaching so it was hard to know exactly what they expected of us.
But I managed to get passed that all and get a really nice paying job and graduating on time, when I wanted to. My graduation is Friday June 13th at 10am at St.Lawrence College. All are welcome.
Nothing else has changed for me. I am still living with my grandmother Sandy right now in her two room apartment. I live in my room between jobs. Oh yes, that’s right! Not only am I working 9 to 5 at MoHLTC, but I am also still working at Starbucks at the Chapters on Princess Street. I figure that working there will help me to pay off my student loan a little bit faster as well as help me get the things I want; namely an apartment/house of my own, a car to travel to and from work. I have a few extra things I want as well, but until I have a permanent full time position somewhere making some really good money, I don’t have any plans to travel. There are many places I want to go, but I want to have some savings for my future first.
I have so much more information that I should update, but I think I will cut this short right now and try and make smaller updates so I don’t lapse on making updates like I have been. I have been hearing things about twitter and how it is a good little tool to quickly update people on the day to day things I am doing between the larger blog posts everything else. I might get into it, but I’m still not sure about it. Let me know if you have any good or bad experiences with twitter and I will see what people have to say about it.
Peace for now.
I applied for an Systems Officer level 2 (SO2) at the Ministry of Health almost a month ago now. I have yet to hear anything from them and am beginning to lose faith that I will even get an interview for the experience. I would love the job as I am doing ok for money, but am not able to get a part time job as there are not enough hours in the day to get everything done.
I know they said they will only be contacting those candidates that they have selected, but I have not heard any buzz around the office of any interviews in process. Hopefully things have just been slowed down by bureaucratic crud and I will get an email or phone call some time soon.
Getting this position will give me one of a few options. Either I take the job full time and forget my last year in CPA and everything else. Or I try and work something out with them so I can still go to school and finish my last year and still work as many hours as possible the rest of the week. This would mean I would have to drop my position as Director of Tech and Trades, but I would be willing to do that as getting a job with the Government is more important to me.
I just hope they call soon and it does not get to late.
Update: Does not look like I will be getting an interview. Guess I will have to keep trying.
The past four months work at the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care has been the greatest time of my life. I have learned many new things and a completely new language. I came into MOHLTC not knowing anything and really feeling like I was out of place and not suited for the position. Over the past four months I have thought my self how to code in WebFOCUS and the ins and outs of some of its features. I have also learned how to write technical, architectural, business and system documentation. The past months have been a great learning opportunity for me. I have also been involved in many meetings and it really feels as though the rest of the staff have come to treat me as one of their own. They all know that I am still very young, (21 is young when it comes to programming computer programs) but they have all been there themselves and are helping me along as much as they can.
I have also strengthened my use of SQL as I have had to do some SQL pass-through for some of the programs I was writing for a particular project. I was nice to get to know something better as I was forced to use it even though I did not know it that well. I still feel like there is so much more to learn but it will all come with time and there is only so much I can learn at one time before I start overloading myself.
I would just like to thank everyone on the HNS team that I have been apart of for the last 4 months. Thank you.
Some of you may or may not already know, I have switched to the “dark side” of computing. I purchased myself a black MacBook at the beginning of July and loved every minute of it. There are so many things that it does natively that windows needs smarter people to program for it. Yes I installed Windows on it because I am going to be using it for school as well and I need the application I use at school on there, but I have not used Windows on my Mac for the past 4 weeks.
Yes I know it does not have all the software out there that Windows does, and I know it does not have many games built for a Mac OS, but I am not going to be playing games on my Mac, that’s what I have my tweaked out PC for. I am loving the battery life on it as I am able to watch an entire movie (approx. 1h 45m long) with full backlight and still have another hour and a half to do what I want with it.
It’s a lot smaller then my last laptop, but I wanted that. I don’t need large screens on a laptop because they take p too much battery power and are to large to fit into my laptop backpack. I have yet to find a down side to using my Mac and I am learning more and more as I go along. Having to re-learn all the short cut keys and then some to make navigating around on it fast has been challenging, but it’s been a welcome challenge since I have learned most of the Windows short cuts.
The nice thing too is that I can still transfer files to and from my PC using either my Mac or my PC as the host. They make everything so nice an easy to find that even for the very novice at computer use in general can navigate and do some really interesting things with it.
I can’t wait till leopard come out as a few months down the road, and once I hear of a good review from everyone, including my cousin, I will be purchasing a legal copy and upgrading my OS on my MacBook.
Here is a recent article I wrote introducing myself to the student body at St. Lawrence College in Kingston. I wrote the article for the NOMAD so that the students could find out who I am and a bit about me since I am the Director of “The School of Computer and Engineering Technology and School of Skilled Trades and Tourism”. (Man they need to change the name to something smaller.)
Tall, brown hair, brown eyes and a wonderful smile. These are only a few of the things I have to offer. I came to Kingston in 2003 because at the time my mother had separated from her husband. I had just gone threw flight training at the Moncton Flight College and earned my powered wing with cadets and my private pilots license with the government of Canada. I took a year off to earn some money for my future at College. I finally quit once I was accepted into the Computer Networking and Technical Support program. This was going to be the best two years of my life. That was until I lost interest in my third semester. Since I only had one more semester to go, I decided that I needed to stick with the program and graduate with distinction. And that I did. In 2006 I graduated from the CN&TS program with distinctions.
During my last semester, I decided that there was another path I wanted to take in order for me to further my growth with technology. I wanted to take the Computer Programmer Analyst program. So I enrolled in to the CPA program and was automatically placed into the second year of the program because the CN&TS course and the CPA course have the same first year (apart from one or two courses that I have ended up doing). I am currently in my last year of the 3-year CPA program. I am currently working for the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care down beside the Live Venue Entertainment Center (LVEC) or what every they have changed the name to now.
Once I graduate from the Computer Programming Analyst program, I plan on moving off to Ottawa and looking for a job in either one of my fields. Hopefully finding something with the government. For now I am going to place my focuses on being a great student director and getting another diploma with distinctions. Thank you for electing me as your student Director of the School of Computer Engineering and Technology and School of Skilled Trades and Tourism.
Things have been going well since I started April 30th. I have been here a month and a half and I have learned a LOT of things while I have been here. I am always busy doing something for the proof of concept and for stuff moving forward. I am working with WebFOCUS which is a new spin on an old language. The mian purpose of WebFOCUS is creating reports to send out to clients that want them. Having no previous knowledge of this program before starting here, I think I have got the hang if it for the most part.
I am really enjoying the 8 to 4 work hours and having the weekends off. It lets me see Amy when she is not working on the weekends.
My boss is great. He is very laid back and very personable. I could not have asked for a better position for summer employment. I love coming to work and I get paid really well for being a new employee. I know it’s all the hard work that I have done over the years is starting to pay off and it feels good.
Well, my lunch break is over and I must get back to the grind of trying to build a new application. I will hopfully be updating more as I get more free time to myself. I am really busy with school and a possible move (I will talk about those in another post when I get the time to talk about them.)
