BrianReese.com

I’ve bee busy with work lately. Our second major web application project is nearing completion of the first phase. We’ve included almost all of the features we think the client will want and are in the process of preparing the project for the client to test. In the mean time I’ll be working on some change requests for our other clients.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about how to continue to develop my skills. I’m beginning to regret not taking the object oriented programing class when I was in college. To make up for the perceived lack of knowledge I’ve picked up a book and have started reading it and am trying to figure out what I should do to help make the information stick. I’m also hoping to have a Microsoft developer’s certification by the end of July or the beginning of August and would like to get a database certification as well. I’ve also realized that with all the applications we are trying to push to the web, I have very few design skills. I think what I have made so far is pretty good, but there is definately room for improvement so I’ve been looking for books and web sites to help me improve.

I’ve started coaching t-ball again. I’m the assistant coach for the Pirates (who don’t do anything). We’ve had 1.5 practices so far and I have not met the whole team yet. Hopefully next week we will have 7-9 players. The kids are doing very well, they seem to catch on pretty quickly, hopefully we will keep finding ways to challenge their skills so they will be able to continually improve.

House hunting has started to drive me crazy. There are so many options. I could live in a condo, a townhouse or a regular house. Aside from a good neighborhood, I really do not want to have to maintain a yard. Hopefully I can find a house in a good neighborhod with a home owner’s association that does the yard for a reasonable fee. The HOA maintained yard really contradicts with my not wanting to live where the HOA has a lot of rules. I don’t want to have to get permission to use my property, if I’m paying the mortgage I think I ought to be able to do what I want (within reason, I’m not going to create a dump or paint my house bubble gum pink). I have heard of neighborhood’s where the HOA will not let you work on your car unless it’s in the garage with the door closed.

Seems like it’s time for an update.

Well, I just noticed under my last entry, it seems I still get comment spam. I’ll have to figure out what the deal is with that so if anyone actually reads this they don’t get confused. I also need to work on getting my photo gallery linked to the main web site. Hopefully I will be able to make some time to update my web site.

Work has been really busy. We’ve been working on a new project that allows attorneys to update their cases remotely. The project has been really interesting. I like working on it because it has a couple different parts that are like mini projects. Once I get a little thing finished for one part of the project, I can move on to something else. I also like that the other developer and myself are able to make most of the decisions on how to implement minor and not quite major aspects of the project.

We also have a video archive project coming up. A lot of our code from the previous project can be reused but it will have some of its own hurdles. I’m thinking about dedicating some time and space here to explain how to do some of the more interesting parts of the project.

In my spare time I’ve taken up coaching T-Ball again. This year I’m the assistant coach for a K-1 team, the Pirates. Hopefully practice will start next week once I attend a short class required by the church.

This weekend I will be going to the men’s retreat with the church. I’m hoping to get some spiritual nurishment along with meeting other men in the church. We are staying at the Wyndham Palace Resort and watching some basket ball friday night.

I’ve also started looking into the possibility of buying a townhome or a condo. Orlando is a pretty “hot” market right now so prices are a lot higher than I had expected them to be. I’d really like to find a townhome with a garage. I’d rather not buy a house because I do not want to deal with the outdoor maintenance. It seems the best option to get exactly what I want is to buy something that is being built, so I keep driving around looking for construction sites for townhomes.