February 9, 2006

PHP Training has begun. Since I completed the SIGIR Report, Jim wants me to begin learning Pete's job. I get to learn a little PHP along with HTML! I had Pete download all the software he uses and all the scripts he's written so I can go through them on my own. I also have a QA version of our online site so I can go through it, make changes to his script and see what results I get on the website. I spent a few hours sitting down with Pete and working through a request he had. I think my next step will be trying to do something simple on my own and then working up to something more complicated. It doesn't seem very difficult. It's just learning a new style. I think that most programming is very similar to each other - it's just a matter of figuring out the punctuation, quirks, etc.

After I learn this for a while I'll be moving on to learning scheduling with P3. Jason will be learning scheduling for a while and then he'll move on to working with Pete on PHP. Jim is trying to get everyone to learn a little of everything so that when people go on R&R, we don't lose a chunk of our productivity. We'll have the experts and then the people who just take a little longer at doing what they do :) haha. Pete lent me a couple PHP books to go over. Talk about interesting reading (rolling eyes). I think I'm going to keep them at work as references until I get them down. I'm not much of a technical book reader. Who knows - maybe working through these programs will motivate to take one of them home.

Mike was finally able to take a company laptop home last night and we were able to load his computer game onto it. He'll now be able to play his Christmas present. He got everything installed last night and to my surprise, he still went to kickboxing. Granted there was plenty of protest from him but he had promised and he kept it. Tonight we'll be doing laundry and I'll probably read my current book (Velocity by Dean Koontz) and he'll play his game, Battlefield 2 - a first person shooter game.

Tomorrow is my brother's birthday! I wonder if he's going to do anything spectacular in Boston..or if he's going back to Colorado to visit Katharyn. Either way - I hope you have fun Eric!