Loss of Integrity

I posted about my new job at Integrity back on January 4^th. I'd been working there since December 17^th and having a great time as a contractor for them. But we parted ways on January 10^th and I've been looking for other work since then. I have nothing but love for that company and my coworkers there, so hopefully they are open to working with me once again in the future. Before I move on from there I did want to cover a few quick notes about what the work I did while I was there.

The first small project I did was a single page listing of codes. Integrity had previously created a mobile game for Coors Light called Silver Bullet Throwdown. In the game, you can enter codes from beer cans that give you advantages or temporary cheats. I was given a list of codes that Miller's employees were going to use internally for a promotion and made a simple page with the codes in a straight bullet list. That was super easy.

The big project I spent most of my time on after that was for a regular client of Integrity called Contegix, an advanced hosting provider. They had a massive redesign in the pipeline that had already been done by other folks at Integrity, but I started work on the mobile version of the site. There's a fancy theme switcher WordPress plugin for the site that detects a mobile user and changes the theme to a much simpler and functional one designed for a cellphone. Between myself and a few others on the same team, we hammered that out as quickly as possible. The content was already in place and many of the design elements were the same from the desktop version. There was an existing composition designed for the mobile theme, so most of the work was stripping away elements from a copy of the desktop version and minimizing the width of the template to fit a handheld. This week, Integrity posted to their blog about the completion of the project and I'm proud of my contribution there.

There were a few other projects I contributed to but none I need to go into for my sake. But what I'll remember most about this job is the team contribution aspect. I got introduced to a lot of new tools that I'd not used much before; Git, GitHub, Coda, CodeKit, Bootstrap, LESS --not to mention the whole idea of web development on a Mac, which I've missed doing for too long. But the biggest enjoyment for me came from working on a great team and sharing skills, tasks and responsibilities. I'll miss that job.

Oh, and another cool thing about working at Integrity was the classy location. I've always loved the Delmar Loop and the Tivoli theater is the most iconic building there for me. The office was on the fourth floor of the same building and the window behind my desk looked out right at the big Tivoli sign.

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How cool is that?

Integrity - Front-End Web Developer

My new job posted a quick bio about me as a new hire, based off of a few details I gave them and what they'd learned about me already. I was pretty happy with the way this turned out.

Integrity - Integrity hires Jim Arconati as front-end developer

The Integrity team welcomes Jim Arconati, a front-end developer.

Jim, or “ArcoJedi” as most call him, is a happily-married father of three who was born and raised in St. Louis. He plunged into the web world in 2003 while working at MonsterCommerce in Belleville, Illinois. While there, he dabbled in everything from ecommerce to design to sales.

After leaving MonsterCommerce in 2009, Jim worked with the Ferguson-Florissant School District, American Optometric Association and SoTel Systems.

ArcoJedi is a nickname Jim and his dad coined in 1996. He was called Jedi throughout college because of his love for Star Wars. After creating an email address by the same moniker, it stuck.

When Jim isn’t schooling his friends on Star Wars trivia, he plays trombone for a jazz/rock band called Dirty Soap.

Happy is the Integrity team to have you, Jim!

Job Hunting: Some Stats

These are some personal statistics, specific to my job hunting, followed up with some details. In roughly 85 days of being unemployed, I've applied to 94 different job listings. I've had about a dozen job interviews, some promising and some not so much.

Barring some sort of disaster, I'm starting at a new company on Monday. I'm not going to post the name, as I don't want to jinx it at all. In case you haven't heard there was one company that I interviewed with back in October that I got a semi-official job offer from via email. This was on Halloween at about 4pm if I recall correctly. We all celebrated, ate dinner, took the kids trick-or-treating and everything was great. Then a few hours later I got back to my email and noticed that at about 6:30pm, there was another email rescinding the previous job offer. At first it was "temporarily" then it was permanently. I don't really know what happened there, but that's life. So you can understand if I don't celebrate quite yet for this job until it becomes a little more real.

Something else I forgot to mention was that I had a temporary contract job for about a week working IT for a company hired by (another company hired by) an insurance company here in St. Louis to do computer station moves. They were moving several dozen employees from one floor to another and our job was to make sure the computer systems (PC, monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc.) were properly packed and secured. Then on the other end of the move, we'd unpack them at the new desks. The individual user's personal stuff would be packed in boxes that someone else was moving. The actual lifting of the packed hardware was also handled by a different company and stuff so it had to be relatively well orchestrated. My job was simple; go to desk F1-104 through F1-120 and pack up the stuff. Then go to F2-060 and start unpacking the computers on that row as they arrive. Attach monitors to the adjustable arm on the new desk. Once the users had their computer on, install the drivers for the nearest network printer. It was actually fun and simple enough for me to do. It was just nice to work again even if temporarily and I got some good feedback too.

Additionally, I've taken on a voluntary web design project for St. Francis Health Services. Still a little early to post anything in more detail about that, but I'm doing it for all the right reasons both selfless and selfish (e.g. padding my portfolio).

Other than this, job hunting is not fun, never fun and I'm looking forward to being done with it for awhile.

Unemployed

I first posted about SoTel Systems back in November of 2010 when I started my first day there, and I haven't really posted about the place much since. As of today, I've been no longer employed there for three weeks.

Regarding blog posts, I haven't posted anything here about SoTel. But I had posted roughly 100 blog posts on www.sotelsystems.com in addition to updating almost all of the 600 content pages on the site for accuracy, content and format. I could go on and on about my time there and I must say it was a great job. In the interest of brevity, in addition to managing the main site, I also did the following:

• Planned and launched two ecommerce sites; one for refurbished telecom hardware and one for VoIP and video conferencing services
• Planned and launched a number of pay-per-click marketing campaigns
• Planned and prepared to launch an internal intranet site
• Planned and prepared to launch a partner portal (twice)
• Oversaw the renewal and expansion of our portfolio of domain names
• Implemented new search feature on main site
• Implemented new slideshow feature on main site
• Planned, built and launched all major social media campaigns
• Planned and launched an acquired company's web assets into an entirely new re-branded company
• Oversaw and collaborated with a talented graphic designer on various projects
• Oversaw and collaborated with two interns on various projects

I'm sure I'm missing something. This is turning into a bit of a résumé, which was not my intention. Come to think of it, my résumé should be posted here, as I'm actively looking for work.

The main thing is that I wanted to say was that I made some really great friends at this place, which when it all washes out, I'm really going to miss seeing every day. But it's a small world and I'm making a point to catch up with them when possible.

In the meantime, I'm updating my résumé and my portfolio and continuing my job search. Onward and upward is the only way to go.

Currently Reading: The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman.

Currently Listening: Army Of Me (Sucker Punch Remix) by Björk, From the Album "Sucker Punch: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack"...

SoTel Systems

I started my first day at SoTel Systems. My new job position is Website Marketing Manager and this is a pretty big responsibility that I am so very excited about.

I could gush about my new boss, my new coworkers, my company laptop, my company cell phone... But right now, I've got to get prepared for tomorrow, so goodnight all!