Just a test
Our comrade in Dodger Blue, Jorge, the "oh, come on", Mir is now married.
He decided marriage and a honeymoon were more important than getting anything done at work, so we'll miss him while he indulges in the delicacies of Hawaii.
I don't want to still his thunder so check out his site for updates, photos and everything else mir-lated.
Thanks for making us a part of you special day Jorge and Jenn
Dary and I experienced our first quake today. LA old-timers Henry and Jorge experienced another one.
We're on the 31st floor in Burbank and the whole building basically bounced then started swaying. Surprisngly, the ordeal wasn't freigtening at all. We gazed out the window and watched people below scurry into the street.
The swaying lasted about 20 seconds and was pretty amazing. That said, I don't really want to experience anything more powerful than this 5.8 quake.
Hello my name is Henry Jackson, and I have just started working here at ESPN as a Web Developer, The first week I spent the time in Bristol , which was really nice, I got a chance to see the great facility in Bristol which is the home of the ESPN studios. I took the tour of the studios which was surreal. While I was in Bristol I was taught the ESPN way.
I'm learning a lot of great technology such as programming on the Mac, RSpec, Feed_normalizer.
I work with a bunch of really neat guys and I went to the ESPN award shows, which was great !!!
RubyGems 1.2 is available now. Everyone should update. In addition to a few bug fixes, it also removes the need to bulk update (which I think is pretty sweet).
Yesterday we got the opportunity to take a tour of the new ESPN broadcast center that is being developed downtown. It is located in the LA Live area which sits across the street from the Staples Center.
After having lunch at the Palms restaurant, where we sat a few tables down from NBA Commish David Stern no less, we walked down the street, put our hard hats on, and took walk around the new facilities under the guidance of ESPN's Rob Hunter.
It was great to meet Rob and get the opportunity to spend the afternoon chatting with him about the new digs. He has done many immeasurable things in his time at ESPN and his current task of overseeing this development project is just the latest. Rob took us to lunch and gave us a personal tour of the new facilities, so needless to say, we're very thankful to him and all the time he gave us.
The whole place is going to be amazing. From a technological standpoint, the amount of electrical power and fiber optic cable is mind boggling.
When complete, there will be an ESPN SportsZone restaurant, a broadcast facility with two studios, and general office space for ESPN personnel.
While on the tour I snapped a few photos with my iphone which you can check out here.
We are currently looking for a Sr. Web developer who:
- has Ruby on Rails experience
- is a big sports fan
- wants to work with AWS
- wants to prove Rails can scale
Here's the official stuff:
If you are interested please apply online at http://www.espn.com/joinourteam.
If you know anyone that might be interested please feel free to pass this information on.
Title - Sr Web Developer
Location: Los Angeles
Job Responsibilities
The ESPN Digital Media Community Product Development team is responsible for developing the digital products that support ESPN’s Community Strategy.
The Sr Web Developer is responsible for the design, development, testing, implementation, scalability and
deployment of Ruby on Rails-based applications to support the Community Product Development initiatives.
These applications provide functionality for many of the most successful and highest profile
sports-related features on the web.
Responsibilities
- Design, develop, test, implement, scale and deploy new Ruby on Rails based applications.
- Develop new features and functionality for existing applications.
- Support the existing Community infrastructure and applications.
- Provide support to entire team by developing functionality needed to create new web applications and features.
- Identify areas that require improvement and recommend/implement solutions.
Required Qualifications:
- Degree in Computer Science or related field, and/or equivalent work experience.
- At least 3 years of related experience with 2+ years experience with Ruby on Rails and web applications
- Demonstrated experience developing in a RoR environment
- Proficiency in a MySQL, SQL Server or Oracle database technology
- Experience working in a virtualized environment such as Amazon's EC2 would be a plus
- Understanding of multi-tier web architectures, and OO design patterns and concepts.
ESPN HQ in Bristol has 3 primary attributes: piercing cold, intimidating geese, and employees. Instead of covering my intense experiences with the former two, I'd like to talk about the latter and the cordiality and friendliness of the ESPN.com team. During my time in Bristol I met literally tens of people - many of whom I'd interviewed with the better part of a year ago. Some were famous (lookin at you Skip Bayless). Some were not (lookin at you Pat Alreth). Regardless, however, of their notoriety I definitely have a keener sense of how the .com group fits together as whole, including how .com fits under its parent group WDIG.
I met the majority of the staff of two major groups in Bristol: fantasy and the main site. After talking with Jaime Stella and Dave Weiner - the respective managers of these groups - and the producers and engineers they oversee I determined several points of integration with each. With the main site we could do a better job of promoting widgets, perhaps displaying actual widgets on index pages or adding a widget tab to player cards. With fantasy we should investigate the creation of an open social application so that users could display their fantasy sports data (rosters, results, etc.) on their favorite social networking sites.
Perhaps more important than all of that was my introduction to the glory, majesty, and brutality of Gator. Gator is a miracle. Created by Norse monks in the 12th century, it's a game that combines the best of soccer and handball in a chaotic and incomprehensible melee replete with bruised shins, pulled groins, and Cody throwdowns. Highlights include APs frisbee-sized bruise, my first Gator goal - a no-look, fake pass, leaping toss of epic might, and Schmidty admitting he's moving to Alabama. Roll Tide!
In conclusion,
Make way for geese.
I've set up countless WordPress blogs in my time.
The entire process took me about 30 minutes when I set up my first one a couple years back. And each time, through experience and code improvements, it was easier.
Until this time.
The difference was that this is an actual ESPN blog, created and maintained by actual ESPN employees.
The difference between a company blog and a personal blog is huge, especially, considering ESPN has never had a public-facing blog run by employees.
So, what will we write about here? I don't know. Pretty much anything related to sports, the Internet or working for ESPN.
A better question is what we won't write about here.
We won't cover any secrets. Sure, we'll talk about products we're working and are getting ready to launch, but we're not going to give away competitive advantages.
We'll also steer clear of any legal issues that have to do with ESPN that could potentially affect the company.
We won't flatly criticize ESPN. Think about it. When we criticize the company, we are criticizing SOMEONE or multiple someones we work with. It's just not cool to criticize a coworker in a public forum. If we want to talk about work done outside of this group, we'll try to interview the person or people responsible for the work and present their insight here.
We are developers and Internet fanatics who want to share our experiences and thoughts with The Community.
More specifically, we're Rails developers and Web 2.0 junkies. Oh, we're huge sports fans, too. So mostly, we'll be sticking to talking about our dealings with each and try to give you a feel for what it's like to work for ESPN.
Designed By :
