I’ve been working with computers since 1982 when in high school I was introduced to basic programming. Though my father had worked with computers for many years, it was not until that time that personal computers were becoming prevalent. Since then I’ve had some formal training but mostly trained myself. I now work as a programmer, IT consultant, and I do personal computer repair and virus removal. It came to my attention from a client that even though I had this website, it was not doing enough to showcase my talents. I couldn’t agree more, and immediately took the site down and started building a new one. I started by putting together some notes on a Google calendar about the different things that I wanted available, one of which was a blog, but the blog was supposed to be about building the website. So in order to get the cart before the horse, rather than build a blogging module for my website, I decided to install Wordpress and get the information out there. So here we are …
I hope to have many posts, in multiple categories. There will of course be posts and hopefully code for modules that I develop and add to the website, but there will also be information about what I’m doing daily or weekly. Maybe info I learned about removing a virus, or what I did this week to get work in voice over business. I also want to track my progress in my professional life. One of my calendar items is to learn Agile Project Management and to apply those techniques to the development of the website. All in all this will showcase my talents and act as a resume. So let’s begin.
Poolczar is a nickname I was dubbed with by a friend who felt that my billiards skills helped to promote fun competition at our local yacht club. The name has stuck, though it’s not something you would hear people yell across the street at me. I like to use the alias online and hence the blog title, Poolczar says. Maybe that name will stay, maybe it won’t, who’s to say. Your comments are welcome but there is not going to be a vote on it, it’s my decision and that’s as fair as I can be.
My true love, aside from my wife, is computer programming. Creating something, challenging yourself, learning new technology, solving the puzzle, these are the things that I enjoy about programming. However, throughout my career I have found myself in a position where I needed to maintain the computers and networks that I was programming on. A talent which came naturally to me and has been a considerably equitable talent to have. From time to time I hope to make a post about the different jobs I’ve had, in more detail than a resume, but an easy read. If well categorized one could choose the posts most suited to their inquiry about Poolczar and have a customized resume in front of them. If not well categorized, it should be a fun read anyway.
So we begin. Here is what the base of the website looks like right now.
There is registration capability using MySQL with minimal access restrictions. I’m currently investigating using LDAP for authentication and access control lists, but will probably continue with database authentication. I started to configure this website with a configuration switch between LDAP and DB auth, and found http://codeutopia.net/blog/2009/02/06/zend_acl-part-1-misconceptions-and-simple-acls/ by Jani Hartikainen very helpful. By the way, I’m building the site on Zend Framework in case you were wondering. So this is the beginning, and hopefully we will soon have a very functional website up for you to enjoy.
I’m not sure what the next article will be about, so you’ll just have to check back.
Poolczar