Semper Progressus

This is the first time I've even looked at LJ since...I don't even know. So apologies if I missed any news that didn't get cross-posted to Twitter. (I told you people not to make me join that!) But like, this place has gone to hell. Ads for games all over the front page, and in exchange they lighten the load on their servers by reducing a page of my friends list from 20 entries to 10, and I can't go back more than 2 measly weeks without digging into calendar view or whatever it is? Dag, Russians. Dag. You could run a better site on Google App Engine</cheap-plug>.

I'd try to read LJ via RSS but I think I'd miss anything friends-locked. I don't even know...

Most of you who read this have probably already heard, but if not: I've received an excellent job offer from Google at their NYC office, which I'll be calling to accept first thing in the morning! (Then giving notice to my current employer second thing in the morning.) It's a significant pay bump now, and will be very good for my career in the long run. I'll be starting on whatever date aligns with an upcoming new employee orientation. (I'll know exactly what date that is by the end of tomorrow's phone call, but they do 2-3 a month, so it won't be excessively long.)

I'm very excited (almost as much as viridian and my mom!), and want to extend big thanks to jayeye for the referral!

To those of you working in the city who I don't see often enough, we'll have to arrange lunch dates.

Updated 1/13@11:32 - I start on Monday, January 31!

Not really. My bank, Chase, hasn't ported their awesome mobile banking app to Android. Even though doing so would be really remarkably easy. If you need someone with iPhone and Android development experience to do it, Chase, drop me a line. I can probably squeeze in some time for consulting work.

(Really, as long as they're going to keep sponsoring these, I'm going to keep giving these answers.)

No, because my bank - Chase, who sponsored this question - is one of the only banks without an Android app. Come on, guys, get with the program! I personally write apps for both platforms, so I feel comfortable stating with some certainty that it shouldn't be that difficult to port over.

I'm probably going to skip Tuesday's primary. The only big thing is attorney general, and when I'd lean towards one candidate because he mentioned a Star Trek fan club in his past, it probably means either I'm too ill-informed for my opinion to matter or the candidates are too similar for anyone's opinion to matter. Or both.

The general election, on the other hand, is going to be a humdinger. Governor, attorney general, both senators(!), and of course the good ol' house. Until we moved in January, I'd been able to happily reelect Nita Lowey every other year since I became old enough to vote. Now I'm in the 20th district. It's the "upstate" district Kristen Gillibrand represented before her appointment to the senate. In this case, I suppose "upstate" is a fair label, as it extends from literally the end of my street on its southern edge all the way up to Lake Placid, and a chunk gerrymanders west to within 20 miles of Binghamton (map). Our current rep, Scott Murphy, won his special election to replace Gillibrand by a couple hundred votes. He's a blue dog, which is a bit of a disappointment, but of course the whole district being right-of-center means the Republican candidate is a total douchenozzle (less tax on the rich, less regulation on business, cut the deficit while increasing military spending, etc, etc, etc). I was a little worried by "decorated army colonel with a PhD from Cornell" but Murphy has a massive fundraising lead and polls show him 5 points ahead right now.

As per usual, I suspect I'm more optimistic (though with enough sense of reality that "less pessimistic" might be more accurate) about November than most of my friends on here.

Hey, Android users!! My 1st game is in the market NOW!! Search for AppDevGuy. There's a free demo and a full version for $1.99.

Lost Chrononauts.

( some spoilers )

I conceived and built a working prototype of this class of device years ago. Then did nothing with it and moved on to something else. Ah, well.

I passed my first Microsoft certification exam this morning. I'm now a Microsoft Certified Technical Specialist in SQL Server 2008 Database Development.

I'm clearly out of practice when it comes to taking tests, though. I was actually nervous on my way there! I don't remember ever being nervous about an exam in my life. It didn't help that the first questions were in the area I know least.

BUT! It's done, and wasn't close - I needed 700 points, and scored 910. Now I'll take some time to relax (maybe see what's up with work and my raise and whether I'll need these to plaster on a resume sooner rather than later) and decide which to go for next. It'll probably be either the next level up in this track (MCITP in SQL2008 Development) or I'll start the DBA track (MCTS in SQL2008 Administration). I'm planning to stick with database for now because I'd like to familiarize myself with the brand-new .Net Framework v4.0 before going for any software development certs, so I can get the most current ones.