I have been on vacation in Cocoa Beach FL. I will be back on Feb 22nd and cannot wait to start working at Nokia.
If you have seen my resume you will be saying (^*&%$%*&*(* and pulling out your hair asking why I would add yet another employer to my resume. I feel the same way! I have been trying to find the employer where I could be with for years and count on the stability. In 2008 I was working for Castle Communications and had been with them for over a year before getting the layoff e-mail. However starting Feb. 22nd 2010 I am glad to announce that I will be starting with Nokia after my trip to Florida next week. I am looking forward to working with the highly intelligent team that they have built and I am very excited to start with a company as large and stable as Nokia.
I am afraid I will not be allowed to really talk about what I am doing at work due to confidentiality agreements etc. however I will make posts updating you of things I have worked on once they have launched and are out of the reign of the agreements.
Most of you probably do not yet know but I have resigned from Tatto Media and have moved back to Namespace, Inc.. While I am under a confidentiality agreement I cannot state what I was working on at Tatto Media however what I can say is that I was working with the latest technologies such as CakePHP, JQuery, CSS, etc to work on the products that Tatto Media has to offer. Since I have moved back to Namespace Inc I have been reading up on a completely new framework. Most of you are probably thinking oh another PHP framework under your belt… That’s not the case at all. The new framework that we are using is a Java based framework called Wicket.
So far Wicket seems to be a very nice web framework and Java is very appealing to me from a developers standpoint. I guess the good part is that PHP is based on Java quite a bit so picking up the language has been rather easy. I have also applied for an editor account on Wicket by Example so you will find anything I write about Wicket on that site. I may or may not publish the articles on this site as well I am just not sure yet. Regardless I will post something here stating that a new example or article has been posted by me.
I am not going to outline all of the details of what took place in this post. Rather I am going to be posting the entire letter that I am sending to the Board of Trustees or CEO of Sovereign Bank. The activity outlined in the document that is being sent unprofessional to the point that I never want to even hear the name Sovereign again. Please read the letter to read about a very detailed incident that took place this morning at one of my local branches. To read the document click the following link: Sovereign Bank Experience
** UPDATE **
About an hour after I sent that letter to corporate I was again called back by the gentleman named Craig. When asked he informed me that Jonathan is *not* a member of the management team and that he was going to take care of this issue to his fullest extent. He told me that he could not tell me what actions would be taken due to corporate policies. I explained that I was not trying to tell him how to do his job and was not saying fire the guy. All I want done is whatever your corporate guidelines mandate. If that means he will get written up then that’s what it means. If it means he gets fired then so be it. However I wanted something done. He apologized deeply and stated that he knows I am not a customer of the bank but if I go into that branch (or any other) and do not receive amazing service he wants to hear about it. I am going to let things be as they should after a situation like this but I can sleep now knowing that something will be done because at-least now Craig’s bosses know about this situation so he will have to do something.
As some of you may know last month I accepted a position with a company in Boston. I have been taking the train to State St. every day while commuting to work. Today I learned a very valuable lesson about city people. Leave them alone, put on your blinders and ignore everyone and everything. Today as I got off the train I exited the State St. station and I noticed an older gentleman in a wheel chair trying to cross the street. This is a rather busy intersection and he was not using his hands on the wheels rather he was slowly scooting along pulling his chair inch by inch with his feet. I decided that I would ask him if he wanted any help crossing the street. I approached him and asked:
I have been working under contract for a company called Namespace in Lynnfield MA for the last 4 months and I am sad to leave however I recieved a job offer on Tuesday that I could not turn down. Starting this Tuesday I will be a full time employee of Tatto Media. I look forward to working with the team and seeing what challenges they can throw at me. I will miss working with the team at Namespace and wish them the best of luck with their product. They have been a pleasure to work with/for over the last few months.
I am not sure if you have ever heard of the company called Targus but if you own a laptop I am sure you have. They tell everyone that they are the global leader in laptop bags when you call their support line, you can also see it on their about page. About 7 months ago I dropped $60 on a new targus backpack for going to and from work with all of my gear. I made it a point not to buy the cheapest bag as I have had some horrible experiences when I have bought the cheapest items. About a month ago the seam along the zipper on the bag started to let loose a bit. I dealt with it for a while and now even when the bag is zipped you can still get the laptop, books, etc out of the bag without having to unzip it.
I am not sure if you have ever heard of the company called Targus but if you own a laptop I am sure you have. They tell everyone that they are the global leader in laptop bags when you call their support line, you can also see it on their about page. About 7 months ago I dropped $60 on a new targus backpack for going to and from work with all of my gear. I made it a point not to buy the cheapest bag as I have had some horrible experiences when I have bought the cheapest items. About a month ago the seam along the zipper on the bag started to let loose a bit. I dealt with it for a while and now even when the bag is zipped you can still get the laptop, books, etc out of the bag without having to unzip it.
I emailed Targus support about 2 weeks ago and never heard a response back from them. Today I decided to call into support to see what I had to do in order to get this bag replaced. The woman I spoke with told me they would replace the bag however I had to send my bag in before they would send out a replacement. This is understandable however I cannot do that because I use the bag every day to go to and from work. Without a bag I would have a hard time getting all of my stuff to work with me. I asked if I could provide a credit card to them and have them ship me the new bag and if I did not return the defective bag they would have my card to charge for the amount of the bag. This is how most companies I have dealt with work when it comes to having to replace items. The woman continued to argue with me telling me that there was nothing else that could be done. When I asked her what I was supposed to use to get my stuff to and from work her answer shocked me. She said “I guess you will have to go buy a bag and when you get the new one from us, return the one you bought.” That is a bit too unethical for me and I could not believe that a company would tell someone to do something like that. I requested to speak to her supervisor and she said there was not one available. Oddly enough after insisting I speak to a supervisor she got me on the phone with a gentleman by the name of Gary Carver. He also insisted that there was nothing that could be done about this situation. I have to send my bag in before they will replace it.
While I understand their point they need to understand that if you buy a bag you cannot go without it otherwise why buy the bag in the first place? They are dealing with a product that is heavily used by a lot of people and to leave their customers hanging like this does not award them good PR. Tonight I went out and bought a new Swiss Army bag and when I get the replacement from Targus I will rid myself of it and never buy another Targus product.
On a side note someone should tell Targus that ASP 3.0 is so 1990’s and they need to get with the times.
It has been in my plans for a few months now to buy a Nintendo Wii for the house. Dylan has always had fun while playing it at friends houses and I have to admit it is fun even as an adult. Yesterday I went out and bought the Wii which of course led to buying accessories and games for it as well. My fiancée Claire wanted the Wii Fit which is a board you can use to play games but also as a fitness tool. I added that to the list along with a couple games and the Wii Fit Personal Trainer game. In the end everything came to a total close to $600 which added up really quick.
The first thing Dylan did when he got home was to play the Wii. He choose some kid games and while watching him play I thought they were ok but not great. I had bought the snowboarding game and wanted to give it a shot. I do have to admit that using the Wii Fit to snowboard was a new experience for me. I have not been snowboarding in years but used to go all the time when I lived in Vermont. Snowboarding on the Wii Fit takes some getting used to as when you put more weight on your heels or the balls of your feet by your toes it makes you turn. It does take a moment to get used to it but after a short period of time I was able to control the character.
I am writing this to let all of my readers know that I will be temporarily offline for a bit. Due to being out of work I have had to resort to turning off the internet and going to the coffee shop down the street to use the internet. If you are looking to talk to me about a potential Web Developer position you can grab my resume from the site. It contains all of my contact details.
