We have a new intern at Eden. Tom Crayford studies Software Engineering at Sheffield University and is doing a 2½ month internship with us, with the possibility of becoming an apprentice at the end of it.
In the style of Tom’s two recent blog posts, First day at Eden and Second day at Eden i thought i might also write about my day, since it was a particularly satisfying one. It just so happens to be two years and a month (760 days) since i joined Eden!
Straight after this morning’s stand-up meeting, I had a quick debrief of a meeting we had with a potential new client yesterday evening. Then i helped Todd to write an email. We draft our emails on Google Wave these days, which is often fun. Four of us were editing the email at once, which means we quickly get to something we’re all happy with before sending it.
I went out for a walk with Frances to pay in some cheques and buy some Friday Treats for everyone!
At lunch time some of us had several rounds of TypeRacer in preparation for Learn To Type Correctly Week next week! I think it’s incredible how so many people have got enthusiastic about learning to type well after Corey Haines announced it. If you don’t believe me, check the twitter hashtag, #learn2typewk!
Something quite unusual happened after lunch. We had a message from Richard Knoll at Mercia Cycling Club in trouble and needing help because the site was not responding. Richard had found us on Google after searching for Ruby on Rails. I agreed to look at it with Tom for an hour and see if we could figure out what was wrong. We determined that rubygems and Radiant had been upgraded on the server and we needed to tweak a few configuration files. With help from Chris and Spencer, the site was back within the hour! Chris then helped me to raise an invoice for an hour’s work.
It’s interesting that we can do anything from a fast restore of an unresponsive website, to projects that take several months from start to finish, requiring two or three pairs of developers working at a time.
Tom and i continued to pair together for the rest of the afternoon. We were able to add value to a project to help a charity in Cambodia. I always learn something whenever i pair with someone. Tom is no exception and i very much enjoyed pairing together today. We all have things we can teach each other.
Tonight i think i might learn a bit from the Ruby Kōans, possibly study a bit of SICP, and definitely see who gets evicted from Big Brother!