New Oceanfront Apartment - Virginia Beach

Just moved into my new apartment in Virginia Beach. The community I moved into, Saltmeadow Bay Apartments, is five blocks from Ocean Front and extremely nice. In my opinion this is the nicest community in Virginia Beach. The other tenants are really nice and it's comforting knowing you are in a safe location.

I moved this past Friday and Saturday (very long 2 days) and the only part that was exceptionally annoying was the move out of Reflections Apartment Complex. Carrying everything down three flights of stairs nearly killed me. The move into Saltmeadow Bay on the otherhand was quick and painless. We put everything on a dolly and rolled up to the front lobby, into the elevator, and through my front door.

I must thank my brother, my best friend Ricky, Stephanie, Rod, and of course Brittany.

Until next time... I'm going to go take a walk to the beach!

Nigerian Scammer Gets SCAMMED [PICS]

Nigerian scammer was expecting to receive a Powerbook. The notebook computer he received brings a whole new meaning to "Notebook Computer"



read more | digg story

New MacBook Pro

Seems like I have been buying a new computer every other week. Over my lunch break I decided to take a break from coding and run over to the MAC store. Needless to say I came out of the store making an unanticipated purchase. I picked up a new MacBook Pro and AirPort wireless router. The ease of use and the over all power and functionality is exactly what I've been looking for. I've installed Parallels and put on Vista (I've spent a total of about 45 seconds actually using it). Honestly the only reason I installed Vista was so I could install Zend Studio and Visio for work-related programming needs. Right now I'm working on setting up my configuration and customizing everything in order to take complete control of everything I need. I plan on installing Fedora over the weekend to make this thing complete (Mac, Linux, and Windows) on a single machine. No dual-boots on this machine just VMWare so I can run multiple OS's at the same time.

Never thought I'd become a "Mac Guy."

EmploymentGuide.com 2.0 Redesign

At 7:30 this morning the redesign of EmploymentGuide.com was released. The new functionality as well as the design has been in development for about 6 months. New features to the site include: enhanced user interface, job snippets, fast and accurate job searches.

Google Search Appliance (GSA)
(Learn more...)
The GSA offers the ability to bring Google's Search Technology in-house. We have amplified the functionality of the our GSA by extending to our users the ability to expand their search within a specified range (radius). Currently there is only one other site on the net that I'm aware of that uses the GSA with a custom radius search function.

Personally, I'm extremely proud as to how this project turned out. I have working with this new hardware for just under 6 months and it's amazing how far we have progressed. Being able to implement search expansion using a user-defined radius was challenging, and oddly exciting. :)


Job Snippets
This new feature is used in combination with our nationally distributed publication EmploymentGuide. How does it work? Simply put... a job seeker finds a unique number specific to a job found in the publication. From there they simply enter the number into our website for additional information. They may also find similar jobs in their area in order to help with their search.

Employment Videos
Located on the homepage of the site, users can view informational videos that shed light on potentially new and exciting career opportunities.

CareersInGear.com Released

Last week I was handed a copy of the very first volume of the CareersInGear publication. This publication is freely distributed in over 3,600 locations nation-wide. It was exciting to see the publication released after 4 months of development on its digital-counterpart. CareersInGear.com was released in early February and has already begun to takeoff. I'm pleased to see everything running smoothly and look forward to contributing to the success of this new and exciting business.

I would like to take some time to thank those individual who made this possible:

Vidur Patel, Matthew Myers, Harry Moore, Ian Phillips, Jim Bagley, Mike Bozeman, and Chris Baker

/ct

DMV Driver License Prank (Worth a look)

A couple Richmond, Virginia film students pulled a number of pranks on their local DMV. They wore a variety of disguises and were able to have their picture taken and were given valid Virginia Driver's Licenses. Take a look at these videos. I watched these videos a few months ago after hearing about it on the local news in Richmond.

Part 1


Part 2


News Coverage

Beginning My Career

It's been a long time since my last posted so let me take time to play catch up on what has been going on...

In May I graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Radford University. Shortly after my graduation I moved to Virginia Beach to begin my career. A friend of mine from college told me about her career as an Account Manager for Electronic Systems, Inc (ESI). Sounding like a good place to start I packed up and moved into a small, but nice, apartment in Virginia Beach. It didn't take long to realize that Sales was not what I was looking for. I needed something more hands on. After a number of displeasing experiences during my time at ESI I decided to place my resume on Dice.com. Within a week I received several promising offers for technical positions that fell directly into my field. After much consideration I signed a contract with Dominion Enterprises in Virginia Beach. I must say thus far I am quite impressed with the company, my peers, and the overall positive worker morale. Currently I am working at Dominion as a computer programmer. My main focus of work is the development and maintenance of large niche web applications and services. The company has allowed me to gain experience with some of the latest technologies as well as offered time for self learning projects relating to web development.

If you are interested in a rewarding career and live in the Virginia Beach / Norfolk area or are willing to relocate forward me a copy of your resume and I'll see what I can do. Please note that you must have knowledge of PHP, MSSQL and or Oracle, as well as Java Script.

ctwilliams at gmail dot com (Subject: Dominion Enterprises)