Weekly review: Week ending June 22, 2008

Posted on June 22nd, 2008 by Sacha Chua

More Drupal work! This week, I wrapped up the first phase of my project at work. I’m starting to feel comfortable with Drupal–particularly the thorny combination of CCK, Views, Domain Access, and PHP code. I’ve deployed the code to the quality assurance server, documented my installation procedure in a script, and even set up a convenient administration interface to help the testers put the system through its paces. I’m starting to feel like a proper software developer. Oh my!

I gave a presentation on social networking for new hires on Thursday, and I learned a lot while preparing and presenting that presentation. I don’t have any presentations scheduled until mid-July, when I have three presentations scheduled in one week (two replays and one new presentation on technology evangelism). Time to start preparing for them…

In self-defense and krav maga class, we practiced groundwork, side kicks, back kicks, and getting out of side head-locks. I’ve got a long way to go before I can kick as well as the others do, but the guys make it fun. We often warm up with a shoulder-tapping game, which I like. I sometimes forget to breathe, though, and that makes me tire faster! <laugh> Gotta work on that.

It’s been quite an indulgent week on the personal front. On Friday, W- and I made up for long workweek days by taking off early and wandering around downtown. He introduced me to Burrito Boyz, this hole-in-the-wall burrito place that seemed to be quite a favorite among students and clubbers. Yummy! And then on Saturday, W- and I went on a classic dinner-and-a-movie date: an absolutely scrumptious elk steak dinner at the Corner House restaurant (the soft-shell crab starter is also not to be missed) and a movie (Iron Man, which got great reviews on RottenTomatoes). We even squeezed in a concert. Video Games Live happened to be playing near the movie theatre, so we listened to a number of segments before watching the movie.

I plan to spend the next week helping the quality assurance team test the system we’ve been working on, transferring some of my work to the new hires coming on board (I already know one of them! =) ), and preparing for the next few weeks. From mid-July to late August, my schedule’s going to be quite a whirl. Presentations, working remotely in Ottawa, then off to the Philippines for Diane’s wedding… Lots of stuff going on!

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