chromium extensions

Once I'm done with this semester, aside from some work-related learning, my personal learning will revolve around making Chromium extensions. There is a preliminary guide at http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/extensions.

For those who don't know Chromium is a new open-source browser developed heavily by Google. Chrome is Google's rebranded version of Chromium that Google actively promotes and distributes.

I now use Chrome about 50/50 with Firefox. It is much faster and stable than Firefox. One of my favorite features is that one tab can crash, and it doesn't bring down the whole browser. That one tab closes, and the rest of the browser keeps going. Also, if I close a tab all of the resources it was using are gone, unlike in Firefox where you can close all of your tabs and still have a large memory footprint from the tabs that you closed.

At work we have an application that crashes quite frequently. It is especially bad about crashing when you have it open twice in the same browser. Now that I run it in Chrome it crashes less, and when it does crash it doesn't disrupt every tab I have open.

The largest setback to Chromium/Chrome is the lack of extensions. Extension support is in development, but has not made it to the release version of Chromium yet. I am very spoiled with Firefox's AdBlock+ and Customize Google extensions. I used to not see any ads. Now that I'm using Chrome a lot I see them again.

Another setback is that their Linux version is still in heavy development. In Linux it is just Chromium.

It actually runs very well in Linux for browsing, but it doesn't yet support addons (no Flash, Java, etc.) It also doesn't have any preferences yet. Aside from that viewing pages is fast and reliable. With my hopes to learn extension development comes another problem. Even though extension support is in the development builds for Windows, it is not in the development builds for Linux. This means I will need to use my Windows virtual machine to learn development. Hopefully in four weeks when school is over this will have changed.

One of my favorite things about extensions in Chromium is that they are written in HTML, Javascript and CSS. The work learning that I mentioned above is the need to become much more familiar with using these three technologies as I plan on using them full time for my job. I am hoping to become an interface developer for our web applications. So this ties in real nice with Chromium extension development.

One great thing about Chromium on Linux is that the nightly trunk builds have been setup in a repository on Launchpad. So I simply put added the following to my software sources:

http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

And then run the following from a console:

sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 0xfbef0d696de1c72ba5a835fe5a9bf3bb4e5e17b5
sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude install chromium-browser chromium-browser-dbg

Now every day I get the latest version of Chromium for Linux. I have slowly watched it grow over time. It is exciting to slowly watch the features get implemented.

RSS feeds for any professional

While looking around monster.com today I noticed something really cool. While I plan on keeping my current job for a long time to come, I believe that any professional has a duty to themselves to always be congnicent of what kind of opportunities are out there. In this spirit you can now get RSS feeds of job postings in your area. So on monster.com I selected Tallahassee, Fl and IT/Software Development and then clicked RSS Feed button below the job listings. Now, every time I go to check on my current feeds I get updates for new software development positions in the Tallahassee area.
dice.com another job hunting website that specializes in IT Jobs has the same feature and I signed up for their feeds as well.
Again, I'm not looking for another job, but I would hate to know that the perfect job was out there with an opening and I was ignorant of it. It is also just generally useful to know what the industry out there is currently looking for in software engineers.

Google Notebook

I started using Google Notebook today to keep track of my pending tasks at work. It is a perfect fit for my needs. Last week and this week I have been swamped with work and have had a difficult time keeping track of everything. My geny reminded me of Google Notebook so I gave it a try and it is a perfect fit.

One day I will wake up in a Google house, eat Google food, and use the Google restroom and I will be too complacent to realize I've been pwned.

"Open Source principles and Shared Community Development"

Within my group of contractors, the state had ceased funding for our DBA position (whose last day was last Friday) and they are now opening up a position for a senior programmer. One of the listed requirements listed for this position is that the person will fully understand "Open Source principles and Shared Community Development." That is a pretty cool requirement IMO.

Hardy update

I had too many problems with Hardy on my laptop. The wireless driver has been compiled in to the new kernel, but doesn't seem to work. I can get it to work by installing Gutsy, grabbing all udpates, and them upgrading to Hardy. This will let me use the Gutsy kernel on Hardy. The only problem is that programs that need kernel modules, such as Virtual Box, only have kernel modules for the Hardy kernel in the repositories, so they won't run.
There where also some various other problems such as the volume and screen brightness buttons on the laptop had a long delay before the changes took affect.
The biggest improvement with Hardy on this laptop is that video acceleration works flawlessly. In Gutsy if I turn on video acceleration I cannot playback videos. So every time I want to playback videos I have to turn off video acceleration and then turn it back on when I am done watching videos. The easiest work around for this is to simply not use video acceleration, which just means no wobbly windows or desktop cubiness.
On the girl's desktop it has been running Hardy since it was Alpha. Thing where shaky in the beginning, but now it runs very well. I am very happy with it's performance on their machine.
At work I use Wubi. It install Ubuntu inside of Windows, as opposed to requiring you to repartition your hard drive or anything else drastic. It then gives you the option on bootup to run either Windows or Ubuntu. If you choose Ubuntu it runs Ubuntu from the data that is stored inside of Windows. It seems to run great, by initial reaction, but at work I do have to work and not play, so I haven't had much of a chance to try it out. I am going to have to find all the Windows apps I run for Windows in a Linux form. We do lots of Oracle and Java stuff and most all of that is built in Linux, especially the Oracle stuff. There is some other software I'm not so sure about. I will have to do some digging during my lunch breaks.
Very soon I will be doing a clean install of Hardy on my desktop. I'll blog about how that goes when it goes.

Last day and first day at jobs.

My last day at Corrections was last Friday. My last call involved helping a tech in the field with a mainframe printing problem. Another tech, Dave, sent a print job on the mainframe. After he submitted it she logged in as her and sent the exact job and it printed. I checked the queue on the mainframe and his job was still sitting there in queue to process. The mystery was why is his still in queue if it was submitted before hers?
It turned out that he had submitted another job that was hammering the database, and his other jobs would not print until his first submitted job, that was hammering the database, finished. I also could not cancel it because we had no way of knowing what it was doing to the database and didn't want to force quite something that would cause the database to become corrupt.
Of course my last call would have to be something out from left-field.
My job at DMS is going great. We are converting COBOL code to IP/SQL that calculates billing for calls. State agencies use a system called Suncom for their voice and their data. The process for billing calls is kind complicated, but is currently handled by Cobol. A previous employee had rewritten it to Perl, but it needs to be in IP/SQL to be consistent with everything else. Rick had converted the Perl to IP/SQL, but with lots of bugs. My job was to work through the bugs. I squashed the last one this morning, and spent the rest of the day taking all the data we compile and throwing it into the database. The database it is going in to will be handled by other code that is currently running in Cobol and will be translated in to IP/SQL as soon as I get this part finished.
I am really digging my job. I am picking most of this stuff up pretty quickly, and I'm really enjoying it. I have even been able to clean up some stuff that wasn't done the way that is "best practice." So it is nice to be a newb, but still have something constructive to add from time-to-time, even if it's only small things right now.
I hate meetings, and we seem to have at least two a day. It sucks to be completely mentally entrenched in to fixing some problem, then to have you yanked from it for an hour, and then trying to figure out where the hell you where before and get back in that groove. It disrupts everything. Once I get my barring, though, I will probably be the one in the meetings talking everyone's ear off, instead of sitting there trying to figure everything out, because that is how I can be when I get in my mind that something needs to be done this way or that way.
Other bonuses to this job is that I don't have to wear button-ups all the time. Polos are sufficient. I can also grow my hair out longer. Oooh, oooh, and I get to put Ubuntu on my machine once I am out of rookie stage.
I am pretty overwhelmed. I am very much a novice programmer right now, and on top of that there is a lot to learn outside of the programming about the organization and how the different systems work, as well as who is who and what is what. I just have to take it in a little at a time.
Overall everything rocks. The real benefit will come this Friday when the check deposits in to my bank account. Woot!

Got the job!

I got a call last night that I now have the job. I have an offer letter and all the paperwork. I start May 5th. I will be starting out working with Oracle SQL. I have been reading over my Java book, but will bring out the Oracle book now. Apparently the job will be using Oracle pretty heavily.

Anyhow, assuming no hiccups, this rocks hard. Woot!

Job!

The job I had applied for, got the position, and then the state wouldn't fund has contacted me. I went in for another interview yesterday. Apparently there is one other applicant they are looking at.
Some of the Tybrin employees where there, but it was for me to be interviewed by the client. I think it went well enough. He wanted to see my personality, work ethic, and ideals. He asked two of those open ended questions, which I always find kind of silly.
The first was how I defined progress. I talked a lot about reorganizing priorities to make bearucracies run smoother.
The second one was more or less designed to throw you off. He said, "A white rabit runs up a tree, falls, and then turns red. Why?" My response was because he died. Not exactly a PC answer, or probably the best one to give in an interview, but it's what came to mind. He said I was only the second to answer the question, with the other being, "How could a rabit climb a tree?" I guess that's good that I'm only the second to answer it. ...
I spent a lot of time discussing my personal opinions on work style, education, and personal experience with computers. I think I did well on each of these.
The interview was very layed back, and I think I did good at giving the impression that I am smart, layed back, and easy to work with. I think these are accurate impressions to give, and my current co-employees and employer would agree.
I really look forward to landing this job, first off because it will mean I'll be making real money finally. Second because it is the exact kind of work I really want to be doing. It is a mixture of different kinds of programming work, database, coding in multiple languages, and web design. They said the current push would be SQL querries, which is also good as I've been doing a fair amount of work personally in SQL and just took two classes in it. I feel that currently SQL is my strong point in the different things I would be doing at Tybrin.
So Kim and I are being cautiously optimistic.

New Job!

About three weeks ago I was doing my bills and becoming increasingly frustrated by the fact that we haven't really splurged on anything in a while and still weren't coming out very well. So I went to careerbuilder.com and started applying for jobs. I applied for all sorts of IT jobs that weren't helpdesk and seemed like that may pay well. I even applied for stuff that I was clearly unqualified for.
Of at least fifteen jobs, I heard back from two that they didn't feel I was qualified, and I only got one interview. It was for a company called Tybrin that does contract programming for the Florida Department of Management Services.
The interview went well enough going an hour over as we just talked tech stuff. I thought that was a good sign if they like me enough and thought enough of my opinions on technology to just sit and chat.
Two weeks went by and I didn't hear anything so I left a voice-mail message. They returned my call and asked me to come in that day before 4:30 so I did. At this interview they asked me to throw up some SQL code and diagrams, which I did. They where impressed that I formatted my code properly making certain stuff uppercase and indenting properly. I wasn't sure how well this one went as I hadn't worked in SQL for about four weeks and I had to think about a few things to get it right.
They also asked if I knew the software development process. I read the Ubuntu, Mozilla, and Gnome blogs daily. I have followed the devlopment process of each of these three peices of software for quite some time. Using that knowledge I was able to lay out something that made sense. Even thow it wasn't put the way a formal text book would have put it. I didn't have many official names for the processes except for Alpha and Beta releases. It sure did make countless hours of reading seem all of the sudden worth while beyond mere entertainment.
They said they where going to make a decision on Friday. I contacted them on Tuesday and they said they had a meeting on Wednesday to come to a decision. Yesterday I contacted them again and they said I got the position.
So in about two weeks I will FINALLY be programming. I've wanted to be a programmer since high school, and have been going to school to do it for quite some time, but I still don't have my degree.
I should have me degree in about a year, maybe less, so tacking on the job experience I will be gaining first hand, I should really be making my way into the industry properly.
Tybrin has had a contract with DMS for ~15 years, but it is renewed on a year-by-year basis. So every January there is the possibility of of finding yourself without a job. Barring any extenuating circumstances I plan on staying with Tybrin for as long as possible. I like the people there so far, and the work seems right up my ally. The good news is that in the event that the contract does not get renewed one year I will have experience under my belt to get another job programming.
So overall this is extremly great news for us. Kim and I are bouncing off the walls about all the new things this will enbable us to do. Not get a plasma TV or anything like that, but we can start paying bills without fretting. Woooo!