Today, I get an email titled “Opportunity Knocks” from a local company in town, giving the same old canned message that was spruced up a little to be marginally personalized.  I was told he searched for “php developer phoenix” and he found me (I rank #1 for that search term).  Ok – I read on – and it was basically a soft recruitment letter – pretty standard.

I responded back that I wasn’t looking for full time work, but I’d be open to any contract/freelance work, as I had recently left a company to go back out on my own. He responded shortly after and said, “How about sending me a resume and I’ll set up a few face-to-face meetings with the peeps here?”.

Hmmm…

Well, I don’t have a resume, I haven’t updated my resume in years. Hell, the resume I used to desperately get a job with 944 Magazine was the same resume I had that I made in high school – clearly it worked, but it was old, outdated, and is a constant reminder of “old business”.  If you know me…Craig…this is directed at you haha…you know that I loathe “old business” methodologies – not all, but most.  I still prefer the good old “hand shake and a promise” – something about that just screams “business” to me, but everything else, meh, I can do without.

Apparently I said something to ruffle the feathers, because after my response of “Look at the links in my sig – that’s my resume – I’m pretty confident in the wealth of information you’ll find about me as a person/developer/etc on google”, I was told that I was “being arrogant, cocky and feeling entitled” and that those “are not a qualities we are interested in”.

Whoa…what?

Whoa what? Being arrogant and cocky? I think you completely misunderstood my last email, and now you’re telling me that I’m an “apprentice” because I told you I don’t have a formal “resume” anymore? I’m not an old dude with a pony tail – nor a web developer that wasted years in college and have 9 million microsoft/google/etc certifications – it’s all worthless – real world experience is where it’s at.

Wow – this went downhill pretty quick…and FYI, in the “real world”, a piece of paper listing accomplishments is still just a piece of paper – the proof is in the pudding, and you’ve yet to see any of my work (you’ve seen my blog and probably DateDesigner.com) – neither of which I care to “defend” to you.

The only arrogant person in this conversation is you right now…you probably need to chillax a little. An apology for flying off the handle is appreciated.

It gets better – I just got this response:

Fair enough: I apologize for “flying off the handle”. Let me get back on my broomstick (apparently, I’m a witch?).

We do require a resume. Sorry, I can’t ask other managers and the co-founders of this company to “Look at the links in my sig – that’s my resume”. Seriously, that doesn’t cut it. To dignify and respect their time, they should only have to review a single-source document of your accomplishments (aka a “resume”). Everything they read online *could* be 100% BS (just as a resume could be), but it starts the process down the right road. No one has time to look at countless websites that have some reference to who you might be. Down the road, if we were truly interested, we would dig deeper (verify work history, check references, etc.).

You’re right, never saw any pudding. Also, I wasn’t being arrogant, I was being condescending (which was wrong and I apologize for that, too). Guess I was expecting to somehow be “wowed!” by your claim of being a “jQuery Expert”.

I reached out to you because you appeared to have an acceptable amount of experience in web development. I failed to conclude that you were a master of your craft. Being that you are, you are clearly out of our league as we are really just looking for someone who is pretty darn good at what they do.

Sorry to have bothered you.

And my response:

Again with the “crafty” email response – and a dodge at just apologizing, tucking your tail, and moving on.

I never claimed to be a jQuery expert, I mentioned that my budd had said that. That was meant to be a joke, but clearly that wasn’t conveyed – or understood. I don’t claim to be an expert at anything – I do however know that I’m pretty f***in good at the skills I do possess.

My flip flops, t-shirts, and bedazzled jeans don’t do well in corporate culture – neither do resumes and obviously me – this is why I’m a full time freelancer. I loathe “old school” business methodologies, and can’t stand to be a part of them.

A bit of advice – especially in an ever competitive tech industry, hire people, not resumes. You could have easily brought me in to “meet the peeps” with a bit of information about me – you know, doing your job with recruiting, you gather information and report it back to those that control your strings. But now, you’ll just be on the hunt for another drone – another resume submitter…someone whom which I’ll never be again.

Thank you again for yet another captivating response XXXXX, I’m really looking forward to the next one!

Yes – now I’m just being an ass, but hey, it’s the amusement that I needed today. Back to the grind – see ya on the flip side!

RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|sitemap\.xml|robots\.txt|user_guide|blog|public|favicon\.ico|LiveSearchSiteAuth\.xml)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]

If you notice, I have some other stuff in there to not exclude from passing to index.php like a sitemap.xml, the user_guide directory, the blog directory, a “public” directory (that I use for css/images/js), etc.

You set that in your .htaccess file first, then go into your config.php file and set this:

$config['index_page'] = "";

Basically, what that does, is that removes the whole site from processing through index.php in the URL bar (it still goes through there as far as I know, but doesn’t show it), specifically when using Codeigniter built-in functions like redirect().

Figured I’d share that little nugget of knowledge…happy coding!

CodeIgniter – PHP MVC Framework

My first shot at CodeIgniter was with DateDesigner.com (by persistent recommendation from @strebel).  Wow…once you grab the concept of the MVC framework, CodeIgniter makes your life tremendously easier when throwing together a site.  I literally thumbed through documentation and built DateDesigner.com in 30 days (scratch to launch).  I have learned how to set it up better and have learned a lot after putting together a few more sites with it (Twitrratr.com, FindMyDogADate.com, BajaSurVacationRentals.com), so now when I go back through some of the DateDesigner.com code, I curse myself a little as I refactor.

Have you built any sites with CodeIgniter?  Do you have an cool plug-in’s for CodeIgniter that you can suggest?

jQuery – Javascript Framework

Now – I have sucked at javascript for going on…ummm…ever?  It was actually @chuckreynolds that intro’d me to jQuery, but at the time, I still didn’t get it – because I was just too lazy to take a good look at it.  Well, again, my first shot at jQuery was on a simple interface tweak in DateDesigner.com, but it has spurred off on to nearly every site I work on now (including all of the 944 web sites internal/external).  There are a plethora plug-in’s available for jQuery – I’ve recently worked with jCarousel and a few others.

Do you have any jQuery plug-in recommendations?  Anyone know of any where I could essentially paginate images in 2 columns like a book/magazine w/o using flash?

The original site was created in ColdFusion and has been active for quite some time, however, the good people at BajaSurVacationRentals.com were experiencing not only downtime, but they have been overspending with Google Adwords to essentially “buy traffic” (not conversions), and have been hitting a cap when trying to expand.

My friend Erica, who is the Director of Sales & Marketing there, approached me about how they could expand because she was consistently hitting a wall with their current developer.  I took a look at the site and suggested that the site be written in PHP using the CodeIgniter framework to ensure that even if I get hit by a bus, there are more PHP developers out there than there are ColdFusion developers, and PHP is not so much of a dying technology.

Erica wanted to keep the look & feel of the site, so I basically spruced it up a little, and completely re-wrote the whole site (custom CMS included) in PHP & CodeIgniter.

We’re currently working on an SEO strategy to build traffic mainly organically instead of paying thousands of dollars buying traffic from Google.  After a little over 1 week after launch, the site is ranking quite highly on popular keywords for cabo rentals per my reports from the best keyword ranking tool out there.

I’ve heard there are some good deals to be had on both airfare and villa rentals in cabo these days…maybe you should go check the site out and plan a trip down to cabo?

Oh yeah…they also are on twitter as @caborentals – follow them for special announcements and so forth.

As a web developer, I have many things that I factor in when developing a new site, or adding on to an existing site, and you know, people could really save some cash if I didn’t have to spend extra time making Internet Explorer play nice like the other browsers do with no “extra” help.

Let’s say that some normal markup would take about 10 hours…well I’ll quote it out as 13+ just because of that extra bit I’m going to have to spend on making Internet Explorer display the same way that the other browsers do just because they conform to standards.

So do yourself a favor…if you want to save some development costs, spread the word, Internet Explorer is the devil as far as XHTML/CSS is concerned – it just HAS to be different and it is costing YOU more money.

I think Microsoft did it that way, because you know you didn’t pay for that Office software you are using…so they are just stickin’ it to ya in another way! hahahaha

Download Firefox or Download Safari – and save your soul!!!

Thursday night is the kickoff party and is hosted by Amare Stoudemire of the Phoenix Suns featuring DJ Vice, DJ Reach, DJ Ross One, & DJ OB One – purchase tickets here.

Friday night includes a live performance by Fabolous and features JD Webb, DJ Fashen, & DJ Jazzy Jeff – purchase tickets here.

Saturday night includes a live performance from two time Grammy award winner Common.  The night also includes Courtside Chaos hosted by Dwayne Wade of the Miami Heat, and various fashion shows – definitely the night to be at the W Hotel in Scottsdale – purchase tickets here.

Sunday night features DJ Solomon & DJ Irie with a special live performance by Nina Sky and Talib Kweli – purchase tickets here.

Its going to be a fun weekend for sure…and just in time for the NBA All-Star Weekend, 944 just released the latest issue of Game which is your best resource for Super Bowl, FBR 2009, and NBA All-Star coverage!

Noticeably, the “ratings” system for all dates have been removed.  The ratings for each venue remained, but until Brent and I can figure out how to make the ratings system fit in better with the site, I just decided to remove them all together (no sense in confusing everyone with ratings that look like crap and don’t make any sense).  I also cleaned up the date detail pages and venue detail pages – they were in desperate need of a revised look from its early beta days!

The builder section was also switched up, completely, primarily due to making it easier to use, but also for the DateDesigner.com revenue model.  I’m actively selling the top 5 listings in each category in each market (segmented by zip codes) for $10 each per month – awesome revenue model eh? LOL  So if you are a venue that’s listed, and you want to be top 5 in that category for a particular market, email me from the DateDesigner.com contact page.  Also added to the builder was an open text box for location search, as well as having results for nearly anywhere you can think of in the United States that could possibly be on the web, and thus being able to be picked up by the DateDesigner.com builder tool…

The next biggest piece that I was working on was for SEO purposes.  Get the titles/descriptions/url’s all working together to create awesome content for web crawlers to index…and so far, its working out great – just ask Chase, he’s the SEO nerd and he’s telling me that the changes are starting to pay off…

So that’s pretty much it…oh…and we’re having a contest – “Build the Best Valentines Day Date” – head on over to the home page of DateDesigner.com for more details.

Love…Peace…and Hair Grease…

$500 and 10 hours later…FindMyDogADate.com was reborn in CodeIgniter.  I literally rewrote the whole site instead of using what was already pieced together and produced one of the cleanest coded sites ever.

So…do you need to find your dog a play date?  You can register on the site, give your dog a profile, and find other dogs around you.  The site also uses UserVoice.com for feedback and bug tracking, so if you happen to have a suggestion or find a bug on the site, let your voice be heard and click on the “feedback” tab anchored to the left of your browser.

I successfully launched Date Designer at the beginning of this month.  If you don’t know what Date Designer is all about, to start, it’s NOT a match-making service.  The service I’m offering is to answer the question of “what should we do?” AFTER you’ve gotten your date.  Currently there are about 40 good dates entered in to the system and the number of users registering and using the system is increasing daily.

Date Designer was recently featured in the AZ Republic with Gangplank HQ, Authority Labs, Simple Seating, and Get Whuffie.  I was also interviewed on video by the Phoenix Real Estate Guy.

I also attended PodCampAZ last weekend – talk about a fun time!  Met a ton of new people, got the word out about my projects, and discovered that Jeremy Tanner (@penguin) is all about man-hugging and Andrew Hyde (@andrewhyde) is a lot quieter than I had imagined!  You guys are welcome to stay at my house anytime you are back in Phx!  And on a sadder note…I still didn’t get a chance to meet Justine…I guess my indirect game didn’t work out so well…<sad face>…

Another project I’ve been working on, that was created out of the recent Startup Weekend in Phoenix is called Twitrratr.com.  Basically, Twitrratr.com is a search engine of sorts that searches tweets on Twitter and then analyzes the content of the tweets to determine positive/neutral/negative tones and opinions.  We’ve gotten a ton of press about the site already and we’ve only been live for about 2 weeks or so!  The Twitrratr.com team consists of myself, Chase Granberry, and Mike Luby…all of which…are full of so much awesome, I’m pretty sure if we ended up getting our asses kicked by a group of rogue ninjas, we’d bleed awesome.

Update on my relationship status…single…yes ladies…I’m still single…keep those phone numbers coming…<crickets>… :-/

And that’s about it for now…I gots ta get to bed…Nate’s wedding is in t-minus 13 hours!!!

$xml->customer[0]->emailaddresses[0]->emailaddress;

Makes life WAY easier by having that, however, I am currently struggling with an XML issue using SimpleXML and the XML data I am working on out of a Highrise account.  The thing is, in PHP, a valid variable can not have a hyphen in it, so if you come across an XML element named “first-name”, you can’t directly reference it using the method above.

What I’m thinking I’m going to have to do here is some PHP magic via old school PHP4 programming.  I wrote a quick and dirty XML parsing app for Brent (@iboughtamac) a few weeks back…I think I may use some of that code to scan through the elements and rewrite the element names w/o the hyphens.

Anyone else experience this issue when using SimpleXML?  Any ideas you can throw my way?