Now, I don’t have a ton of money to hire full time developers, and I would prefer not to piecemeal out work to contractors. What I do have is plenty of real world experience in web developement and a little money. If I could go back in time and offer my college self a little bit of cash and an experienced developer’s time, I would have jumped on top of the opportunity. That’s exactly what I want to do with UT in Austin students interested in web development right now.

I envision seasoned developers willing to devote a few hours a week to be mentors to a small group of students (I’m thinking a one to three ratio). In exchange they would get a dedicated and agile team at a cut rate price. It would be a win-win symbiotic relationship, the mentors get some extra hands on their projects as well as management experience, and the students pick up real world programming and project skills as well as a little beer money. Mentors can certainly use this opportunity to network with other developers and entrepreneurs. They say the best way to find a good fit for a co-founder is to work with them, so why not work with them on a project together without spending a fortune.

This is still just an Idea, for now, but i think it could go places. If you’re interested in getting some extra help on your projects, or just want to make a difference let me know by filling out this google doc spreadsheet. If you have any constructive criticism, or good ideas please leave them in the comments.  I’m calling this idea a Geekternship though that may change if someone has a better title.

Signup to be a mentor

Yes I know i should import more often than once a year, but things just didn’t work out that way so here we are…

After importing a years worth of photos, confirming they were all in iPhoto and then selecting to clear my full camera (after they’re in iPhoto i take a backup with time machine, so its normally a pretty safe bet). I was not pleasantly surpised to find this lovely dialog box greeting me the next time i tried to open iPhoto.

All my other pictures show up correctly, but not my last YEARS worth of pictures!!!!

I’ve contacted apple and await a callback, i’m crossing my fingers that we can remedy this situation some how. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Update: looks like its only about 4 months, but thats still quite a while. And no apple has not been able to help yet.

That being said, I would like to start talking about some lessons learned from answering calls from NASA, ratheon, boeing, and the like and  the nature of problem solving and troubleshooting in general. It would be really easy for me to be a whiney complainer-bot who rips on “newbs”, but I’m going to limit my anecdotes and focus on the core of the issue, getting problems solved.

Problem solving, is an art. If you apply the right technique at the right time, you don’t even have to know that much about the product you’re supporting and its a topic that not many people give much thought about. Problem solving is supposed to come “naturally” and just happen. And as an intelligent person will tell you, that common sense is more often than not, not very common.

So stay tuned for my ramblings, I’ll try to condense them down and post them here in the days and weeks to come. Just keep in mind there is no magic formula to solving a problem, but if you ask the right question, you’ll get the right answer.

Troubleshooting Steps:

1. Google It !

Troubleshooting Techniques:

1. How to Start from the Finish

If you haven’t already done so check out their awesome video and If you want to know how to build your own, then head over to their How We Did It section.

Vroom Vroom!!

Normally I stay away from haunted houses for two reasons:

1. They’re normally lame

2. I hate waiting in lines for hours upon hours

But this haunted house was A) not lame, and B) had a scheduling system instead of a line. You buy tickets for a specific time before you go to the event, then when you get there there’s a nice fire pit, food for sale (hot dogs and such) and free massages. Oh, and did i mention free massages !!!

All in all, the Scare for a Cure was a massive win, and when you add in that it’s for a good cause, its just about the greatest thing ever.

P.S. If anyone has any clue what the Demons name may have been, please comment below.

I wanted an input that had the default text grayed out, when you click on it and start typing your text becomes black, and if you delete your text and click outside of the area, the input goes back to its default value. And back to gray. To accomplish this task, i wrote my own custom helper /app/helpers/application_helper.rb:

def default_text_field(name, value)

text_field(name, :value => value,  :class => "gray-input", :onfocus => "if (this.value=='#{value}') this.value = '';this.style.color = 'black';", :onblur => "if (this.value=='') {this.value = '#{value}';this.style.color = '';}" )

end

So now when i use it in a view like this:

<%= f.default_text_field :website, "Example.com" %>

My view acts like this:

The CSS needed for this to work properly is extremely simple:

.gray-input {
color: #7a7a7a;
}

Of course you can use another color if you wish. Hope you enjoyed this little tip, and I hope all your users fall all over themselves at the awesomeness of your sweet new inputs. Good luck, and happy coding.

Check out my photos on Flickr My Second Texas Ski Ranch Adventure