CompSci Grad Not your typical graduate

If you've been following my recent blog posts, you'll know that I have been working on moving into the mobile application development industry. I've had a few experiences in the past few weeks that might interest anyone else looking for iphone development jobs. Your experiences may vary.

Happy New Year everyone!

I woke up feeling like it was time I wrote a new blog post. I figured I'd reflect on the post masters work world.

So did I need a masters to get the job I have? Absolutely not. Apparently work experience is far more desirable than education. Some employers consider grad school some type of work experience, but these employers are few and far between.

The job I got right out of school was a Drupal job (surprise surprise). I did have a couple of years experience using Drupal, so it wasn't a problem for me to find that work. Since the drupal stuff wasn't what I spent 3 years in grad school for, it was a little depressing knowing I didn't have to be in grad studies to do what I was doing. The part that really hurt was when I was passed up for doing something that my grad studies actually prepared me to do for someone else that had more experience in mobile application development.

Happy Holidays Everyone

I haven't made a blog post in a while, so I thought I would come back and give a quick update on what's been going on.

I did finally get a MacBook pro. I ordered it the day it came out and it was shipped to me and arrived in about 10 days. When it did finally arrive, I have to admit, it was the best computer related purchase I'd ever made! I am now a mac fanboy. It does everything I need it to do, and everything just makes so much sense. It was far more expensive than any laptop should be today, but I guess you pay a premium to have a premium machine. I run parallels on it and use it for Drupal, iPhone (I'll go into that later), and Android development. I kick in the horsepower when I do my photography stuff and some video editing stuff. I'm amazed how useful the system is right out of the box. Everything I've installed on it so far is for personal use. Eclipse, MAMP, Vuze (for downloading software), twhirl for twitter, and Adium for chat. Of course the software development utilities for iPhone include Xcode and Interface Builder. I just hope this laptop lasts longer than 3 years. Though, I'll probably want the newest version of the Macbook Pro once it comes out. I have to be strong and resist it! I'll hold on to this for at least 5 years before I get another one. But for now, I am a apple guy through and through.

So yesterday I started my vacation from Twitter and Facebook. Why the vacation? Quite simply I found myself on them constantly. Both at work and at home, I would load up my browser of choice and 1 of the tabs would be facebook (http://www.facebook.com), and I would have twhirl (http://www.twhirl.org) up receiving my various tweets.

Taking a break from facebook isn’t a new idea. As many of you might know I took a break from facebook for a week about a year ago this time. I found myself browsing facebook photos mindlessly and wasting hours of potential study time clicking viral links all over facebook. This is kind of the same reason why I’m taking this break. The new facebook layout encourages looking at walls, photos and profiles with their new tabbed page layout. And now with the ability to comment on news feed items, it just made it that much more addictive. Also, there was a social issue that I can’t go into too much detail about. Maybe some day I’ll talk about it.