It has been in my plans for a few months now to buy a Nintendo Wii for the house. Dylan has always had fun while playing it at friends houses and I have to admit it is fun even as an adult. Yesterday I went out and bought the Wii which of course led to buying accessories and games for it as well. My fiance Claire wanted the Wii Fit which is a board you can use to play games but also as a fitness tool. I added that to the list along with a couple games and the Wii Fit Personal Trainer game. In the end everything came to a total close to $600 which added up really quick.
The first thing Dylan did when he got home was to play the Wii. He choose some kid games and while watching him play I thought they were ok but not great. I had bought the snowboarding game and wanted to give it a shot. I do have to admit that using the Wii Fit to snowboard was a new experience for me. I have not been snowboarding in years but used to go all the time when I lived in Vermont. Snowboarding on the Wii Fit takes some getting used to as when you put more weight on your heels or the balls of your feet by your toes it makes you turn. It does take a moment to get used to it but after a short period of time I was able to control the character.
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I am writing this to let all of my readers know that I will be temporarily offline for a bit. Due to being out of work I have had to resort to turning off the internet and going to the coffee shop down the street to use the internet. If you are looking to talk to me about a potential Web Developer position you can grab my resume from the site. It contains all of my contact details.
I have been doing nothing more than interviewing the last few weeks. The interviews have all been set-up by technology recruiters for the most part. I am finding that I am being sent to interview for jobs that are not under my skill-set for the most part. For instance I interviewed with a company who told me the position was a front end developer position. I could have completed the tasks required for this position however when I was on the call I was asked only one question about front-end development.
Have you ever used the Blueprint CSS Framework?
I had never heard of this nor had I heard of a CSS Framework. Really all CSS is are definitions so a framework struck me as odd. I was also interviewed by a Java Developer who said our backgrounds have nothing in common so he was not sure what to ask me for questions. This is when I went over my background and what I had been working on.
My question for my readers is this. Since most interviews are not asking technical questions, how can I probe for them to show the Interviewer that I have the knowledge necessary for the position? What are your thoughts and what have your experiences been?
Yesterday we found out that a friend of ours passed away. We were unclear on what exactly took place yesterday but we have more of a picture now. We have been told that he was out fishing at a lake in NY when he had a seizure and fell into the water. He will be missed a lot by all of the kids he was around. He loved playing with the kids when we would stay up in North Adams. We are still unclear on all of the details of how it happened, information is still trickling in.
Our prayers go out to his family and friends that he has left behind. Rest in Peace Elmer, you will be missed.
I have updated this post to include Matt & Christina’s Video right on the page so that you don’t have to leave to watch it. Thanks to Matt & Christina for the video.
As some of you might have noticed I have removed my resume page from my site. It started to become too much to keep altering the resume page on top of my word version. Instead what I am doing is offering a PDF version and a Word version.
As most of you know I was recently laid off from my job working on politics.com due to budget cuts. I have been hitting all of the major sites to get my resume out there such as Dice, Monster, Craigslist, HotJobs, etc. I have a few interviews lined up but it does get a bit discouraging when you see things like on this Craigslist Post. The issues with this post is that you can tell it was a non-technical person who put it together. Shouldn’t a company have someone with a wealth of technical knowledge try to do the hiring? Should they hire a recruiting company to do this?
I am sure they will fill the position it just made me laugh a bit when I saw things like the following in the job posts ideal areas of expertise.
* Classic ASP
* Active server pages
* CSS
* Stylesheets
* Development
* Programmer
* Application
* Install
* Troubleshoot
For now the search will continue. If you are a recruiter for the Boston area or know of one please feel free to contact me or pass on my information.
Today is my son Liam’s 4th Birthday! Happy Birthday Liam!!!
Tonight when we were on our way home from picking up the boys, we stopped in Montpelier Vermont. We could not stop laughing long enough to take a picture of the sticker silhouette people on the windows. Funny though it looks to be registered in New York State. Even Better!!!
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The other day I found another web developer with the same name as me. It seems that there are more of us in the world….. I wonder just how many Joseph Crawford’s there are who are web developers? You can see this guy’s site. It seems he has a year on me when it comes to web development. Is there a way to search people in the US and figure out their careers other than a Google Search?
Today Dylan came up to me and was talking to me about his Playstation Portable. He said “Joe, remember when we were at that house with the little girl who played my game?” I told him that I did and he said she lost my game. At first thought I checked all of the PSP game cartridges to make sure they were all accounted for. After a moment I realized he meant a saved game.
Now before I go on I have to explain that to dylan saving his game is hitting pause and turning the game system off. When he turns it back on it magically remembers your game and you can just un-pause.
After a moment of silence and calmly looking around he says “OH MAYBE SHE DIDN’T!!!” He starts looking around frantically. Oh yea the game is right here, maybe she didn’t lose the game he said. He opens the system and takes the game out… I laughed and said “Nope! But YOU just did!” his response was exactly as expected!
