Patrick Jarrett

Two Days on the Road

For the last two days I’ve been on the road with two of my bosses at the new job. We’re on the way to Indianapolis for GenCon, but the biggest value for me coming on this trip is that I am being immersed in the business. We’ve had nearly 24 hours on the road, of which the vast majority of it has been spent discussing the business, how and why things are done, and for me to question, explore and poke around in the process to learn as much as I can.

We’ve discussed it from the top down and from the left to the right. It feels like what I imagine an intensive foreign language course feels like. I catch myself letting my mind wander and losing track of what is being said only to snap my mind back to focus and frantically try to fill in the blanks of what I missed. By the end of the day my mind is exhausted and I go to my hotel room with it swimming with terms, processes, ideas and questions.

One of the greatest things is that they actively encourage me to question them on processes or choices they make. They explain why they chose to do something, or if it is an idea they hadn’t considered they are quite willing to explore it and possibly test it.

I’m the second “real” developer they’ve brought on, and so Dave (the CTO for Cool Stuff) is already getting excited about having some help on managing the website. We hashed out a roadblock he’d been facing with an idea that I came up with, and so that will make it easier to do a new process that has been needed but not implemented due to the roadblocks.

I had a restless night last night and so I decided to begin setting myself up for some organization framework I knew I needed. I setup a Google Calendar to list out the ManaNation episode schedule, the Magic event schedule, and my travel schedule. I have a few other things I’m going to be putting on there as time goes by, but this is an excellent starting place for keeping myself focused and aware of what is coming down the pipe.

Like, right now, October is going to be a busy busy month. That’s definitely going to be interesting.

New Media Director

photo credit: ineffable_pulchritude

I am the New Media Director for Cool Stuff Inc. Cool Stuff has been the sponsor of ManaNation since 2008 and I am now working for them! I will be working on ManaNation for them, as well as other video and podcasts, and putting my skills to use to help them develop their business using some new digital avenues. I’m very excited about this opportunity.

So, remember that rollercoaster week where I proposed to Katie and then got fired? Yeah, let’s scroll back a few days before the proposal. The Thursday prior to proposing I went to Cool Stuff and met with them to discuss the possibility of selling ManaNation to them. I wrestled with this idea, but the bottom line was that at the time work had picked up and ManaNation was suffering for it. So rather than let the show die, I was looking to sell it and let a company that was able to – take it over. More »

10 days to Employed

I was unemployed for just 10 days this time. I was fired from MindComet on a Monday, and by that Friday I had received a job offer. I sat on the offer deciding how to proceed. I had one other interview for a position but I didn’t hear back from them. I contemplated trying to go it freelance but in the end this new job was too good to pass on. I can’t spill the beans yet, but I am indeed employed again and Monday is going to be an epic way to start a new job. We finished negotiations and I accepted the position yesterday, and we’ll make the announcement on Monday.

Just wait and see…

Shot after shot after shot

Last night was a progressive dinner style event for the Mindcomet employees which had a climax of a no-holds-barred shotfest. And I decided to just go balls to the wall.

Shots are really the optimal way to get someone like me drunk, any other option takes too much alcohol or time simply as a factor of size. I immediately took a buddy of mine and declared that I was going to go toe-to-toe with him. Now, the guy I went against is an experienced drinker and an irish/scotch American who did an admirable job. For a while I thought he had beat me but I held on to a self-declared victory, witnessed by some of my fellow employees before I headed off to bed under my own steam.

I think it was 23 shots of various concoctions when I called it a night. I was pretty drunk, drunker than I’ve been in a while, but still sober enough to change out of my clothes and confirm one last time that my alarm was set for the morning. It’s a company rule that on the retreat we are told to have a blast, party like a rockstar, but if anyone misses one of the meetings where we do true work then they are fired. So, the alarm clock was very important.

I woke up to the alarm and I’m feeling it this morning in the form of a headache but not too bad.

Today we’re doing departmental meetings in the morning before we all get into character for a mystery di..lunch! That promises to be entertaining as we’ve all got rather unusual characters. Then, after the lunch that evening we’ve got the company award show (it’s like the Emmy’s but cooler someone said to me when describing it.) So I’ll be enjoying that as well today.

Then tomorrow, we’re up at 3am to get on a bus to the train station before rolling on back to Orlando. But so far it’s been a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to today.

Pursuing Elegance

Programming is getting paid to do puzzles. Some are harder than others, some are put the cylinder in the round hole level of difficulty, others near MENSA level challenges. Over the past few days I’ve been trying to fix an issue which amounted to numerous hours trying to bang out a solid solution, in the end I went with the less elegant solution.

More »

Day 1 is in the books

I didn’t take any photos, my workspace needs more geeky decoration before I feel I can really share it with the world, but today was a great first day.

I met almost everyone in the IT department and got my hands into a few projects. I took part in a brainstorming session for a prospective client, worked on bugs for a current client’s site, and filled out LOTS of paperwork. It always surprises me how much paperwork it takes to become an employee. More »

Life Update, New Job

Three weeks ago I and Databanq parted ways.

I don’t wish to say more other than to say it was not my decision.

I then set out on a two week period of quietly looking for a new job and really questioning if I still wanted to do web development. More »

A New Game

I’m addicted to a new game. It’s the most hardcore and intensive game I’ve ever played. Sure it costs some money everyday and it is so in depth that colleges devote thousands of hours to teaching it every semester, and I’m just a self taught chump, but I’m finding myself getting deeper and deeper into it.

The game I’m talking about is, Marketing.

ManaNation is my vehicle and I’m simply tinkering with it. The tinkering is what gets me. Screw EA/Maxis’ The Sims, this is a new game which allows me more control over the actors, the variables and the results I see.

I doubt I’ll go back to school for it, though maybe one day. For now I am happy reading blogs and books on the topic, and learning with first hand experience as I build an internet destination.

photo credit: ladybugbkt

I still love Guitar Hero though.

Workplace Experiments

It’s no secret that I’m an entrepreneur with dreams of media mogul status one day. With that comes dreams of working for myself and having a workplace which fits my lifestyle. Namely 4 day work weeks. Trampolines. Ball pits. Community area. Etc.

Well 37signals just posted a blog post discussing some things they’re doing for their employees and I think it’s, well, pretty awesome. I’d love to work there. Workplace Experiments

Latest Project is live

Well I just pushed up my latest web design project. It’s quasi-side work as it isn’t directly for Databanq and I’ve put in 25 hours since Friday to be able to push the site up live this evening. It’s been a bumpy road, one which taught me several lessons that I shall sit down and share later this week (hopefully.)

You can go see the site: http://www.treatment4addiction.org

The design was done by Lissette, the designer for Databanq. I’m just the implementer.

Jesus I’m tired.

How I code

Have you ever seen a car burn rubber and then shoot forward? It spins out so fast, but when it comes to making a turn, the car has to give up noticeable speed to make up for poor control and cornering. Now take for example the same car trying to pull a very heavy load, the tires spin and spin and spin before it slowly begins pulling the load forward and making progress.

This is how I code. My goal is to finish the project as quickly as possible. However, if I’m thrown at something and I don’t solve it, I will keep hammering at it until I make a breakthrough. I mean, I’m tenacious. I’m not afraid to ask when it’s something I don’t know, but if it is something I should know, then I keep at it. Yes, I may talk out loud about it and possibly annoy the other coders at work, but we all have headphones for a reason – to block out the distractions and let us get stuff done.

Today I, with the help of my boss, R, hard coded in a solution my bosses wanted on their blog. It was immensely satisfying to do it and then go in and then tell them that the problem was fixed. Especially as my closing note before heading home for the day.

Programmers are notorious for taking their work home with them. We get struck by inspiration in the shower, or in the middle of the night, or while doing the dishes and I’m sure I would have come up with the solution tonight while at home had I not gotten it done at work.

I’m finding myself settling in nicely at work. I’m bringing attributes and skills to the table, and it’s always nice to be able to explain things like Trackback. A lot of people don’t get it, and I admit I didn’t get it when Six Apart (the guys behind LiveJournal and MovableType) rolled it out. In fact I disabled it because I didn’t like it!

Trackback is so straight-forward a little complicated but most people over complicate it. It’s a two sided system, designed to allow blog systems to communicate easily.

Before Tb, you had to comment on my blog for me to see your thoughts on one of my posts, so while your comment would benefit my blog, your own blog was unaffected except by the sparse traffic your comment link would generate.

SixApart came up with Trackback in 2002. This system is where you can write on your own blog about a post on my blog, and if you link to my post and both of our blogs have Trackback enabled, then your blog would contact my blog and let it know that you had written that post. My blog would confirm that the link existed and then make a mention somehow in my blog, showing your Trackback.

So now your blog entry is listed on my blog, showing your linking to it, and providing a snippet of the post usually, mimicking the comments that might be left. Now we both benefit (from an SEO standpoint and a community standpoint) through this system.

I wish I could come up with a good metaphor for the Trackback system but it seems I’m at a loss. It’s such a digital concept that I’m hard pressed to find a parallel in our analog mechanical transmission driven world.