Goals

The new semester is right around the corner. I received an A in each class again last semester. That means I've got a full 4.0 going into my last semester. My goal is to hold that GPA until I graduate in May. I do not think that achievement will come easily, but I will do my best to earn it.

The winter break is rapidly coming to a close. This week is finding me spending a lot of time on my internship. I am creating a software program for my brother-in-law's farm. The program will track information for animals including their pedigree. A family tree, so to speak, will also be created for the animals. Based on their information, which includes monthly milk testing results, a variety of reports will be created. I've begun the planning stages by meeting with my brother-in-law and drafting up some Use Case diagrams and other planning documents. I plan to meet with him later this week to gather more planning information. I look forward to getting into the other stages including user interface and coding. Of course, I still need to do more research regarding if I will be doing the project in PHP using MySQL or in .NET and another database structure. As of now, I'm guessing it will be in PHP since I can easily obtain the tools once I'm no longer a student should I want to edit and/or maintain the application.

This brings up another goal. For the internship I need to put in at least 216 hours. I hope to have that accomplished a couple of weeks before the end of the semester. Since the work is for a member of the family, I can put in as much time as I need to when I need to. Hopefully this allows me to get the work done early. I plan to also support and/or add to the program after the internship is over also.

Everything else for the coming semester is nearly in order, including books, etc. I'm looking forward to learning more things. But I am also very anxious to apply what I have learned to real world projects, such as the one for my internship. I also have had projects on the backburner for personal use and cannot wait to get to those after graduation.

Spring Classes

In early November I was able to register for my Spring classes. They are as follows:

• IT Programmer/Analyst Internship
• AJAX and JavaScript Web Development
• Professional PHP Web Applications
• Web Application Development Using ASP.NET
• C# Programming In Visual Studio.NET

My C# class is going to be on the west side of Madison instead of at the Truax campus. This will be a nice change since the drive in will be shorter for me as it is my only class that day. And it will also be nice to see what that facility is like.

For those following my website (www.davidendres.com) and/or blog my remember that I was planning to take MATC's Ruby on Rails class. Over the course of the last semester I've decided to focus my studies a bit more and the .NET direction was the way I decided to do that. Although admittedly I did want to also get some mobile programming experience by signing up for Google Tools and Android Development, but that was not possible due to scheduling conflicts with other classes. I'm sure once I'm in the middle of Spring that I will realize that 15 credits is plenty anyhow! Besides, I can always come back for more classes after graduation.

Making Decisions

The semester is rapidly coming to a close. It's probably been my most challenging one so far. I'm looking forward to a few weeks off before starting up again in mid-January.

Over the course of this semester I'm finally realizing what I want to do after graduation. While I'm still open to just about anything I've been learning how to do at MATC, I'd most like to work with something in the .NET framework. I think there are several reasons for this. First, Visual Basic came fairly easily to me. Some of this is because of my prior experience with VBA in Excel which introduced me to a bit of Visual Basic, Object-Oriented programming and the editor environment as well. Second, I've really enjoyed working in the Visual Studio environment. It makes it so easy to see if you're making a mistake and structures your application in a nice visual way. I also like the ability to trouble shoot your bugs by stepping through code at run time. I know Visual Studio isn't the only environment to do things like this, but I've become comfortable working with it. One of the last reasons is just the intangibles. I've liked using Visual Basic. I look forward to learning C# and ASP.NET as well next semester. At some point I knew I had to make a decision and this just feels like the right one.

PHP is still an option for me though. I do like the flexibility and freedom the language seems to offer over .NET. And with more experience I can see it being a very powerful language for me.

I am also in the process of finding an internship for the Spring semester. I have started looking for part time jobs again. Ideally these would be in the .NET framework, but I would gladly work in any type of website creation or PHP environments too. I'm not restricting myself at all. Currently, I plan to create an application for my brother-in-law's farm for my internship. This is an application I will be creating regardless at some level for him, but the timing and scope will depend on my job search in the next few weeks.

The next few weeks are going to be busy ones, as always. The break will be a welcome one, but it will also find me busy catching up on my To Do list around the house, watching the kids, celebrating Christmas and gearing up for another semester.

Halfway Point

It's hard to believe it, but the first round of exams are mostly behind me. As always, they were very challenging. I still have to take the XML one and I'm sure that'll be just as tough.

I've gotten the second round of projects done and turned in for most classes also. As I've mentioned before, I really enjoy doing the projects. The projects are finally starting to get bigger in scope, which is great. For example, the latest PHP project had us playing a game of tic-tac-toe and storing the game to a database. Then we needed to be able to choose which game we wanted to replay and show a replay of that game, move by move.

The next round of projects has us building a shopping cart (PHP) and retrieving and working with data from a database (VB.NET). While we've been reading databases in PHP since last semester this is the first time we're really getting into doing that in VB.NET. It's similar, but different and I'm looking forward to it. While these projects are in many ways small in scope compared to those in the real world, they are definitely the types of smaller building blocks that we'll be doing someday on a professional level.

So far I'm still on track to keep my 4.0 GPA. It's getting tougher each semester though as the classes get more in-depth. It's my goal to keep that GPA until I graduate, but I know realistically it will be a tough goal to accomplish.

Last week was the IT Career Fair on campus. It was great to visit the booths of many of the areas companies. While several are not looking to hire programmers in the .NET or PHP areas at this time, it was still great to learn more about them and talk to their representatives. There were also some other companies that had potential positions and I look forward to talking with them more in the future.

It's getting to the point in the semester where there is no longer a clear busy period and then a lull. It's basically a fairly constant busy, yet manageable period. This should continue until early December when final projects are due and final exams come up. I can't believe how fast the semester is going, but I'm still enjoying learning everything they can throw at, so I guess that's a good sign!

Impressions

Now that I've completed the first four weeks of the semester I have a good feel for all of the new classes. I'm really enjoying my XML class so far. Not only is it easing us in to the topic, but in general I really like XML so far. I like how it is very particular about organizing and defining things. I think it is because it reflects part of my personality that I like it so well. Anyone who knows me, knows I like to have a place for everything and to be prepared well in advance.

My Object-Oriented System Analysis class is much of a logical continuation of last semester's UML class. This semester we take on a hypothetical case study. This makes us feel as though we are applying what we have already learned, which should be a great experience for transitioning to the work force as an Analyst.

We hardly skipped a beat going into the next semester of Visual Basic. It's amazing how much "rust" needed to be shaken off after just 3 months of time away from the language. But it all came back in the first day or two and it didn't take long to start learning new things. Each new thing is something exciting because I can start to see how all of this fits into a much large project. I absolutely can't wait to some day be part of a project with a much larger overall goal than the small projects we do in class.

Going back to PHP was much the same as Visual Basic. While I used PHP occasionally over the summer since my website required it, there were some aspects that I still hadn't thought about for the last few months. This also only took a short time to get back into and I feel the same way about seeing the larger picture of PHP projects. I look forward to the projects we will be creating later in the semester too, such as creating a shopping cart. It's these more practical, every day projects that make me feel like I'm getting closer to doing something that will soon be part of my career.

For those who have followed my blog very closely you will notice that I am no longer taking Linux Server. I decided to drop this class for Fall semester. It was not a decision I made lightly and I struggled over it for a long time. But I finally decided to narrow my focus just a little bit more at school. I felt the Linux Server class was getting me a bit too far off track by pulling me too much in a networking and administrative direction. In hindsight, while the decision was very difficult, I feel I made the right one. I also will likely not be taking Ruby on Rails in my Spring 2011 semester. Instead I will likely keep my focus on finishing up PHP and Visual Basic as well as taking a semester of C#. Next semester should also find me working my internship, and I'd really like to have adequate time to focus on that also.

It's hard to believe this semester is already a quarter over with. The first projects are due around this time for all of my classes. While the projects are always the toughest part of the coursework (except for maybe some exams), they are the part I enjoy the most.

Round Two

Today is the beginning of my second year at Madison Area Technical College. A year ago I was filled with excitement and wonder at what was to come. There were a lot of questions too. Mainly about what school would be like for me again.

This year it is once again exciting, but in a different way. I can see what is now ahead of me much more clearly and there is even a small "light at the end of the tunnel" now. It's far away, but it's there. Obviously, I'm referering to my graduation in May. While I'm enjoying learning, I am already anxious to take the next step and apply what I've learned at a job. I can't wait to become part of a larger team, whether it be a large programming department of some kind, or at a smaller company where I am part of the company as a whole.

This summer was a busy and rewarding one. My website is up and running at www.davidendres.com. I have a lot more recipes to add to that section of it, but it's off to a great start. I had hoped to work on other projects as well, such as some personal databases and games for the kids. Unfortunately time just didn't allow for it. My summer classes and watching both children full time kept me quite busy. I'm actually surprised at times I was able to create my website!

I'll update the blog again once I get some impressions of my classes for the fall semester. I'm particularly looking forward to advancing to the next level of programming in PHP and VB.NET as well as learning XML for website development.

Summer goes way too fast

I just realized that summer always goes by way too fast. It's hard to appreciate all of the good weather and to just remember to sit back and enjoy life once in awhile!

As always, summer has proven to be a busy one. Both of the kids are home with me this summer. It's great to be able to spend so much time with them. I doubt I'll ever get this chance again.

In June I took my first summer class, Job Search Preparation. I've had a few jobs since graduating from the UW back in 1996, so I didn't expect to learn much from this class. But I was proven wrong. I was glad to find ways to strengthen the layout of my resume and cover letter. I also discovered new ways of finding job listings. This is something that is always important in this economy.

I finished my Job Search class up in about 2 weeks instead of the 4 that it took place over, since we took a family vacation the last week of class. All four of us packed up the car and drove out to South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse, the Badlands, the Black Hills and many other local attractions. It was a great time!

This week I have started my second summer class, Dreamweaver. I think I'm really going to enjoy it. I've always enjoyed making websites and will really enjoy learning a powerful software that will help me make my websites even better.

I continue to make my own personal website via a text editor. Soon it should be posted at davidendres.com. I'm in the process now of putting the final touches on the look of the pages and loading many of our family recipes into the database behind the site. I look forward to what I feel is my biggest accomplishment of the summer once the site is first posted. I know I will be posting more recipes after it is initially posted, but the initial launch will be a major victory for me as a website developer. Getting the site organized and writing the PHP behind it took some time and was a great review of everything I've learned in my first year at MATC.