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No, not a girl, the language. I doubt few have not heard of Ruby or Ruby on Rails. I personally had never used Ruby up until about, oh, say Monday. Later this week I will be putting my first Ruby script into production. I’m a little worried not having used Ruby for all that long, but I must say I’m quite impressed by how easy it is to do things in the language.

I was pushed to Ruby after all the other languages I normally use for web scrapping failed as I wrote about on Sunday. Today was initiation day, and my script passed on its first attempt. We had to change one tiny requirement to make the script work appropriately, we’re waiting to hear back if this will inconvenience our client. Hopefully all will turn out well. The script is very snappy and is going to easily replace and hour or two of a skilled workers daily routine making them more productive overall. Today’s change was to compress two files in a ZIP archive for a single file upload. Never having zipped a file in Ruby I wasn’t quite sure how to proceed. A quick Google search, one gem installation, and 4 lines of code later, Success! I’m thoroughly impressed by the ease with which most common tasks are completed. It reminds me of what I love about PHP without the ; at the end of every line or the excessive ( )’s. I will definitely have to explore Ruby a bit further to see what else I might be capable of doing with it. Who knows, maybe I just found the language I needed to move some of my stalled projects forward.

Today I watched a biography on Philip Glass. I recently stumbled upon him as a composer after this last season of “House” used a small orchestral piece of his in their intro. I immediately jumped online to figure out if anyone recognized the piece, sure enough several others had beaten me to the question and there was a response. I browsed through the Amazon MP3 store to find that Philip Glass was not some new guy on the block. So I started listening to various pieces. I was drawn to his piano works first having so an affinity for piano pieces. I quickly fell in love with his 5 pieces of Metamorphosis. I couldn’t stop listening to them. For the last several months I have played these pieces nearly every day. The other day I went back to the Amazon store to find some more pieces to grab, and in the process came across a new biography that was recently released in the last few months. I decided to check it out and was thoroughly inspired by his cavalier attitude about his accomplishments and his different take on things. He reminds me of what I love about Tim Burton, a fresh take on things that you’ve seen before that never cropped up in your wildest dreams. I like to think I take a similar approach with computers, always wanting to push the envelope in terms of what I can dream up. My problem comes in with accomplishing those dreams. I still lack necessary skills in several subject matters that are holding me back. Luckily this is a problem that can be remedied.

On a side note, I have decided to add a small goal for the end of this year, to have read 25 new books. I have already plowed through roughly 5. I loved reading when I was little, and my Kindle has renewed that passion. I don’t think I have ever read through 25 books in 6ish months before, so I think it will be a great challenge for me.

Work has been zapping all of my time over the last 2 weeks. Amazing how that happens. I’m successfully 2 weeks in. I’ve noticed some major changes since I’ve started. I can definitely see my impact on the network as a whole which is very rewarding. I recently came across a problem that I was having a huge issue solving, and that was automating the upload and download of files from a client’s site. Now, I’ve done this dozens of times before using Perl’s WWW::Mechanize library with little to no problems. This time however I was quickly disappointed with a “You need JavaScript support” response page from the client’s site. I guess I had never tried to automate a JavaScript heavy site before, so I thought little of it and moved onto something else, Curl I thought might have support for this. Short of manually constructing some post backs with much time and little likelyhood of success I dropped that idea. Quickly running out of ideas I turned to full blown programming languages, HTTPUnit for Java. This also lacked Javascript support. Running low on Open Source esteem I turned to Microsoft’s .NET WebContent object. Immediately was shot down again with lack of Javascript support. Just about to concede defeat I came across a small forum where somebody had asked the same question. Turns out that Ruby has a gem (a.k.a. plugin for us non-ruby savy folk) named “watir” that controls  Firefox or IE like a human does. Now this sorta sounds like a macro, which I had looked at prior and had turned down because of the lack of control and feedback. Watir isn’t a macro though, every step through the code can throw exceptions, and you can handle them and report back your findings. It’s actually really fun to watch the code execute because you can see it find the form fields, click them, fill them out just like a human. I put together a small script to simulate logging in and had great success with it. So, for all those out there looking for a way to script a Javascript based web page, watir is a great solution. The only drawback is that since it acts like a human the machine is occupied while performing the script, so I’m going to create an Ubuntu VM to run the script in so I don’t have to waste a desktop with the task. A small price to pay to free up several hours of someone’s day at the office. I’ll let you know how the finished script works with the uploads and downloads.

As for this weekend it was quite fun filled and packed. Friday night we attempted to cutover to our new Dell servers which didn’t end up working out, we had major issues with the MySQL replication that had previously been quite content. As a result we decided to delay the cutover. After that, Rubio’s for dinner, then to the movies to see Transformers 2 which was very good (some quirky stupid stuff, but for a sequel very nicely done). Saturday was an all day geek-a-thon with Izzie. We went to the SoCal Code Camp at UCSD, which turned out to be a bit lackluster. We had envisioned something a little more informative and with more depth. Plus we were the only ones in our age group there. After that we cruised into the Gas Lamp district, had dinner at the House of Blues, and then went to the Sophie 103.7 birthday bash concert at the House of Blues. The concert was excellent. Today, I’m just lounging around. Getting some laundry done, and cleaning up. All in all a nice relaxing weekend after several weeks of non-stop go, go, go.

Well, I have survived the first two days of work. Luckily there is plenty to do, so the days are going by rather quickly. I still have this strange feeling like I’m ditching school or missing something. It doesn’t quite feel permanent yet. I’ve got several large projects which should keep me occupied and learning for the coming weeks. I’ve been trying to figure out what to do at home. With all my time being MINE finally, I can’t seem to figure out what to do with it. The last couple of days I’ve been playing video games, I find this to be the most cost effective form of entertainment at the moment, as everything else that pops into my head involves buying expensive equipment. I’m moving along in my latest book “The Soloist” which is quite good so far, I can’t wait to finish and then see the movie. I might have to buy myself some new toy to try and occupy myself, or to retrofit something I already own. I hate to waste my time with games, but it seems like my only option since I’m going through books and music so quick they’re no longer cost effective.

Everything went great with our big server migration at work. Very few complaints, we still have a few lose ends to tie up, but that is to be expected. Well, I have a few things on my list to finish up, so I might as well get to those. If I can make some side money maybe I’ll get one of my toys, or perhaps I’ll be a responsible adult and save the money like I know I should.

So, Graduation was Friday. I am officially done with school. Immediately following graduation I went to lunch and then to work for the next 9 hours. The day after that I worked for about 5 hours and then was off to Palm Springs. I had a great dinner and went to see “The Taking of Pelham 123″ which was excellent. Went swimming for about 45min and then left for home. So, tonight should be the first night I get to catch up on sleep in about 5 days. Tomorrow morning is the first day of work meaning I have to be up way earlier than normal. Hopefully my body will catch up to me.

The big question now, is what am I going to do next. I have planned on a few things, most of which are already on my Goals page, but I’ll go into a bit more detail here. For the next couple of months I’m going to be saving up a down payment for a condo. The timing seems right, and I think I’ll be able to get something pretty nice that I can fix up or just upgrade in general. My plan is to purchase the condo by mid September, so I’ll probably start looking in mid August. The rush being that Obama’s first time home buyers stimulus tax rebate is only in effect for this year at the moment, and you have to close on your home purchase by November 31st. So, with 60 days or so of escrow I don’t want to cut it too close. My basic requirements for a place will be 2-3 bedrooms, >=2 baths, and a community swimming pool. I don’t want to be too picky to ensure that I have a good group of places to look at. Once I find a place my plan is to rent 1-2 bedrooms out depending if I get a 2 or 3 bedroom condo. This should help me offset my mortgage cost.

As I mentioned earlier I am starting to work full time at IMARC on Monday. So, I will be able to check off my full time job with benefits goal then. I’m hoping I can get a lesson or two of flight school between now and getting my own place, but that might not be realistic with the ammount of money I need to save up. So, I might have to put this plan on the back burner for just a little while longer. I definitey will not be dropping this, as I can’t wait to get back up there flying. As for Piano Lessons, I will be enrolling in the Introductory class at Saddleback for the fall semester. I’ll take these in the evenings which should be fun.

I don’t know if I’m still in shock that I have absolute freedom from school, or if I’ve had no regard for school for so long that this is the norm. I have noticed I’ve been remembering things that I had to drop because of school such as Piano Lessons, playing the cello, and other things which I now find myself excited to start again. At the moment I’m trying to decide what I can do to bring in extra income, I think I will start consulting on weekends and evenings again to try and beef up my down payment and to allow me to have a little fun now that I’m free of school.

So, after struggling for nearly 48 hours straight to get my last 165 assigment completed and turned in I gave myself quite the weekend in my book :). After working all day on Friday I split from work and headed over to The District to meet my bro, his girlfriend, and Izzie for dinner and a movie. We had Lucile’s and then went to see “Up”. Bother were excellent. Saturday morning I went for doughnuts with my Dad, we walked on the beach trail afterwards. After we got back I got ready and headed up to Fullerton for my first flight lesson. I will definitely be going back for more. I flew a Cessna 172 plane from Fullerton, out over Long Beach, down the coast over Balboa Island, inland back over Santa Ana, over Disneyland and back to Fullerton. I haven’t stopped thinking about going back since. The owner of the flight school started talking to me and asked about school and all that. After hearing I was a Computer Science major he recommended “The Last Lecture” to me as a great read. So, after getting home I snagged that on my Kindle. Started reading through it. Saturday night I went out to dinner with my dad and brother to Fred’s for dinner and then we went to the movies again and saw “Hangover” which was absolutely hillarious. After I got home I read through the end of “The Last Lecture” before finally going to bed. This morning I woke up, went to Starbuck’s with my dad for breakfast. Headed over to Walmart to pick up oil and an oil filter for the Jetta. Changed the oil and rotated the tires on the Jetta. This afternoon my dad an I took the Jeep out for fish n chips at a local Mexican restaurant we hadn’t been to in several years. From there we cruised up to the Toyata dealership to check out Tacomas. Cruised on home after that and played some video games. Then we went up to the Irvine Toyota dealership to look at one specific Tacoma, which turned out to me incorrectly described on the web. Swung by the Spectrum to grab some T-shirts. Got home, watched Antitrust and had a great steak dinner finished off with a Coldplay concert on TV and now here I am. By far one of the best weekends in a long time, and very welcome after a not so fun week. Here’s to a great last week of school. Graduation is on Friday.

We are fast approaching the final week of classes. I still have a good amount of work to complete, but feel that I can finish it. Today I picked up my cap & gown along with tickets to my graduation ceremony. Even no it still feels kinda creepy to think that school will be gone. Having been in school non-stop for the last 8 years, no matter how much I hate it, I know it and can do it. With this chapter of life closing, I have a very strong compulsion to continue my education finally with the subjects of my choosing. I have decided that I will take an Intro to Piano course at Saddleback in the evening starting in the fall semester. I played when I was really little, and had to stop because of school. Come to think of it, I stopped a lot of things because of school in my past. Projects, hobbies, dreams all placed on the shelf early on. I have only recently begun to see what I left on that shelf and am reinvigorated at the thought of being able to pursue these items without interruption. I also am considering taking flying lessons. I was an avid Flight Simulator player when I was younger and never saw it going anywhere. After doing some research and being inspired by a friend whom flew when they were in their late 20’s, I too would like to experience the freedom of flying my own plane. I’m hoping I can get in on a demonstration session this Saturday. It will tell me everything I need to know in terms of flying a small plane and whether this is something I really want to pursue. I’m very much looking forward to it and hope that I might have found myself a new hobby with untapped potential. For now, I must continue working on my Huffman compression algorithm :(. More to come soon.