Mingle

After ten years.. bye PHP.

decalshark — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 15:46:33 -0500

So I’ve been coding, programming, scripting, and whatever you want to call it in PHP for a decade now.

Around three years ago I first looked at Rails and laughed. What do I need with this scaffolding crap? I write my own code. I don’t want to generate my code and then use it… what if I need “x” and “x” instead of what they’re giving me? I laughed and threw it away because at this time, I didn’t understand.

This past July rolls around. I take a job at a company called Grazely and begin to rewrite their entire site and structure from scratch using a PHP framework called Yii.

Yii had a generator. Had scaffolds. Had ActiveRecord and CRUD principals. At this time, I had no idea that it was (in a way) a PHP version of Rails. Database associations (has many, belongs to, etc)… I learned all these fancy things in PHP… and was amazed.

December rolls around. I began working at Curebit and started to learn Ruby and Rails. The syntax was all new to me, I had no idea about Ruby.

I come from a direct C syntax family. I’m used to semicolons at the end of every line.. C#, JavaScript, Java, PHP, etc.. but I’m also used to omitting them with VB.NET.

So just in general… Ruby was new to me… and it took about three weeks to finally get the hang of Ruby… but I’m there now.

I’m constantly seeing the abilities of Rails and using them more and more, and it’s amazing.

Things are so much easier in Rails than they are PHP. ”10.days.ago”, “10.minutes.from_now”… makes my life so much easier.

Will I ever go back to PHP? Probably. I still use it every now and again for various things… do I like Rails more? Yes.

After a decade of coding PHP… I think it’s time to officially lay it to rest and say hello to a new life with Ruby and Ruby on Rails.

Hypocrites

decalshark — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:56:23 -0500

You don’t want the government in your life. You don’t want them making decisions for you. Yet, you push and push and push to support things like banning abortion.

The moral opinion of yourself should not justify imposing on our civil liberties. You may think that drinking is wrong, smoking is wrong, or getting a tattoo is wrong… but why should the government impose on our freedom by saying, fine… it’s wrong… just based upon your opinion?

We have the freedom to do what we want in America. The freedom to do things that are legal, but may be immoral or “wrong” to certain cultural sects.

Age Fourteen and Music

decalshark — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:31:28 -0500

I haven’t blogged in forever.. been busy with a lot of crazy things, including a new job.

I read and heard an awesome and interesting thing the other day that had to do with age fourteen and our music choices.

Until age fourteen, we’re not really conscious of our music choices. It’s around this age that we begin to go away from what our parents put on the radio, and begin to make our own music choices.

Not only listen to music for ourselves, but also listen to music that our friends are listening to… and begin to like them just to become socially accepted.

I never thought about this, but definitely agree based upon my own experience in 7th, 8th, and 9th grade.

It also goes on to say that no matter how much older we get, although we may “dev” into other music choices and begin to like other music, nothing will ever affect us or please us as much as the music that we listened to at age fourteen.

Really interesting to think about… and is very true in my life and my experience.

The secret to the best Kool-Aid..

decalshark — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 11:51:18 -0500

Happens to be hot water. Put some hot water in the bottom first.. stir up your sugar and Kool-Aid powder and it dissolves almost instantly.

Let it chill for a bit, and you have the best tasting Kool-Aid that you’ve ever had.

I think this has to be one of the highlights to my week. Great...

decalshark — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 11:20:00 -0500

I think this has to be one of the highlights to my week. Great start to a Monday.

Photo

decalshark — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 20:25:55 -0500

My beautiful girlfriend :)

decalshark — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 22:00:32 -0500

My beautiful girlfriend :)

Haha, this is pretty funny.

decalshark — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 14:35:52 -0500

Haha, this is pretty funny.

My black Friday experience at Walmart..

decalshark — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 13:30:00 -0500

So, found a nice deal I had been watching about a week from WalMart. 4GB Xbox 360 with Kinect. $100 off. Originally $299, now $199 on Black Friday.

Sale starts at 12AM.. lies.

I got there at 8PM, thought it would be a good time.. 4 hours before the sale began. I printed off my map and dashed off to Walmart with my girlriend.

Casually strolled through avoiding people I knew, found the Wii line… browsed some more and finally got to the Xbox line with no one there..

I asked the Walmart associate standing there, “Is this the Xbox line?” and to my

surprise he said “Yes, but they are all sold out. There were only thirty and unless someone doesn’t want one, you’re out of luck.”.

So they didn’t publish what time they actually went on sale to get the tickets. I figured four hours would be a good time to get there.

It was a “take a number and you can leave” kind of system, which was stupid.

Either way, I got home… found the same bundled package offered by Toys R’ Us online on eBay for the same price of $199 with free shipping.

So this Black Friday, kudos to you Toys R’ Us! Screw you Walmart.

I have to say, this made me laugh out loud when I saw this the...

decalshark — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 13:13:27 -0500

I have to say, this made me laugh out loud when I saw this the other day… reminds me of my grandma and sounds like something “a” grandma would say.

Dear Panthers...

decalshark — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 15:05:45 -0500

I would like to remind you that the game is split into 4 sections… that doesn’t mean you play just the first two..

Thanks.

I love my Spree candy canes. They’re so dang good....

decalshark — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 11:41:52 -0500

I love my Spree candy canes. They’re so dang good. Although I miss my orange and purple Crush ones.. dang you Walmart..

When life hands you lemons..

decalshark — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 15:10:00 -0500

When life hands you lemons.. don’t make lemonade. Mark them up by retail price 10%, sell them at your stand on the corner, use the profits to buy even more lemons, then branch off into selling lemons AND lemonade, then start selling some tomatoes next to the lemonade that you purchase with the sales from the lemon and lemonade.

Eventually you end up owning your own grocery store, living in a nice house with a nice car, that’s how America should work.

All too common, people use up the lemons that life gives them and have no more lemons to use to grow.

So in summary.. when life hands you lemons.. don’t use them.. make more lemons.