summer recap

wow, has been a while since last time I wrote…. and I hate this kind of holes in the history of a blog. What happened… well first of all, I left Don Quixote fighting the windmills without me, without the help of my snoring reading his adventures.

I started my new job. Yes, everything went fine… suddenly after getting one job offer, I got other two… so I took my decision, and I’m still fine with that. I picked the job with lower salary and more friendly people…I still think is the right decision… the only inconvenient I found is that commuting 60 miles twice a day is a pain in the rear…. stupid SoCal train system..

What am I doing? well, lot of cool stuff of course! Mainly I worked all summer on mobile application.. which of course means also iphone. I touched also some C stuff, I read a ruby book and wrote some scripts, wrote my first rails appliaction, understood and used a Perl script, I’m still a Java guru. I’m starting appreciating Tomcat, but I still consider it my enemy (few days ago I started a java web app with glassfish), I restarted using Ant.. So now you know, I like to do a little bit of everything. Next plans, some useful RSS stuff, a Waves application…. probably release a first version of WebVault working at least for one OS and one browser (btw, I like the Firefox but it’s killing a lot of work done for WebVault). And what about Android? we have the first phone, I think we should try to use it…

yeah, I’m forgetting something… my Neo Freerunner, openmoko… I have a new OS and a new Kernel on my MicroDrive… waiting for me to be loaded into the phone and see how it looks like.

wow, would have be easier finish reading Don Quixote… but i don’t like easy.

So now you know what I’m doing, or at least, now I confused your mind and you know I’m doing something… dunno exactly what.

Time to go to sleep.

Lot more new will come soon…

Continue…

Fortunately, it was a mistake, a misunderstanding. My hiring process is still running…. not fast but it’s running. I’m waiting some news… hopefully good news in a day or two.

It’s incredible how, while some of my work colleagues are really scared about my wish and possibility to leave (because I’m gonna leave two project in their hands… 70K lines of code… nice demonstrations but a huge TODO List…) my employer is happy that I’m moving to a better job. Really! He is going to save some money… and of course.. he is also going to lose a good developer (that’s not correct.. I’m judging myself).

Since I come here in US the first time due to a sponsorship between the University of Bologna in Italy and UCI, my employer he is also asking me almost every day if new Italian guys are planning to follow my path. I don’t have the answer.. I’ll talk with my advisor in Italy soon about that, but the really funny and good thing about that is that he admits that we (Italian/European Computer Science guys) are stronger… a lot stronger than the average level here in US if we are talking about design and programming. Sorry, you can agree or disagree, but this is a great truth…. and I could give you a lot of examples.

BTW, Don Quixote is starting his fighting with the windmills… that knight is becoming my hero! In same moment I feel like I am Don Quixote and the windmills are the US VISA Process. Enjoy!

U.S. VISA

Sorry folks, I’m really upset.

My VISA is expiring in few months, so I’m looking for a job, and of course an extension of my VISA.. or a new one, or a green card, it doesn’t matter. I found a good job, in a really nice location, close to downtown LA and Pasadena. It was March, end of March. After few days they called me to give me this wonderful information. We are slow in the process, we are not able to apply for a H1 Visa for you. But we are working hard to get a legal status for you, such that you can stay in US and we can hire you. Ok… I’m not getting a H VISA.. but looking at the good thing.. if the transfer my current VISA, a J1, I can start immediately to work for them and I don’t need to wait till October.

We spent all April faxing and emailing form, application form, passport, several documents they needed for the transfer. I am happy, I’m ready for the new adventure, and, as they suggest, I talk with my employer. He is happy for me, he is gonna help me preparing all the documents, but of course before to release me he wants some achievement. Ok… I’m still really happy.

After one months of talking about transferring the J VISA, I write them that a need their J program number, because the International Center needs this number to complete the transfer to another institution. And…. wow the answer is… we don’t have a J program! But what the hell, we are talking about transferring J VISA since March, and now only now you thought you don’t have a J program. And you are lucky that a pool of attorney… not one…is working on the VISA applications.

Sorry, but I think I have good reason to be upset, and also if I don’t have one, I really am.

Bits about me

I think it’s time to make a decent presentation.

My name is Roberto, next Sunday I’ll be 26 years old. I am Italian but I work and live in US from October 2006. Without many details about my position, let say I am a Software Engineer at the University of California, Irvine but I don’t want annoy you with my skills, this is not a resume.

I love Soccer, I played soccer for almost 15 years, I have broken my bones playing soccer, I had a lot a satisfactions playing soccer. But I am also starting enjoying Basket. Of course, NBA is more a show than a sport, but I’m starting following it as much as I did with soccer years ago.

I don’t read much, honestly I don’t read, except online newspapers. By the way, why we do not stop to print newspapers, magazines, books and use only online version, that’s not clear not me. Internet access is almost anywhere, and we would save a lot of trees. But I’m not an environment-guy, so let go ahead. Anyway, I’m reading Don Quixote, few pages per day, I’m planning to finish it before the Italian soccer team will win another world cup.

Due to nine hours of distance between Italy, I have few contacts with my friends. Mainly because I like Skype and I don’t like MSN Messenger, while all of them like MSN Messenger. Probably we can fix this problem. But I’m still in touch with them because they are using an online forum to organize parties, dinners, whatever. The forum is in Italian, take a look if you wanna waste your time: http://lasacrasede.forumer.it.

Now, my hobbies. I like coding, usually I have a lot of ideas which I forget before to realize. The last one is implementing a famous Italian card game, “TreSette” using Ruby. But the best part of the history is why I have this idea. Basically I play cards every day with my girlfriend and she will never beat me, I would like to create a better adversary. Status of the work: nothing done, I’m still waiting for a good heuristic to emulate a decent way to play. I miss you Magro, you were a good adversary. Of course, because you are really luckier than me.

That is it for today, but soon I’ll tell you about the VISA problem, about my current job and potential future job, about Facebook and whatever in my mind.

Ok, I did it.

Well, yes, I created my personal web page. Nothing special. Take a look if you want: www.ics.uci.edu/~gamboni.

I used my preferred editor TextPad and only simple HTML. So, I solved all my doubt. Now that I have a page, I’m curious to see how many visitors I’ll get. I would say a number between 0 and 10 the first two months, but I have plans for the future. But right now I don’t know when the future will arrive.

Starting

Well, in some way it has to start, so I’m writing the first real post. I just created a scratch of website using Google Page Creator and I realized that Page Creator is not anymore reachable from Google web site. Well, I’m not and I’m not gonna be a Page Creator fan, but it’s weird. Anyway, I just promised myself I’ll create soon a good personal website, with all the information I want to share and all the links to my blogs. But, I’m still not creating the web site, and I already have too many questions? Some technology in particular? Which editor? Public or free domain? I know, I’m not gonna spend time for this! That’s me, a lot of ideas and not enough time!

Hello world!

This is the first post, this is the “Hello World” of this blog. That’s cool.