What...Where....... I'm Back.......

I know, strange title. I just wasn't sure what to call this post so why not put the questions that people would ask.

What have I been doing? Well, going stir crazy would probably sum it up pretty good at the moment. Between work, family and other craziness, its been since January 15th that I last posted. I thought about it yesterday and couldn't believe it had been so long. **hangs head**

On an update note, I was learning Ruby, but due to my work actually having an online training site again, I have signed up for a bunch of Perl courses. I love Perl and structured training being a better way to learn than OYO (On Your Own) for some things, I am quite pleased that they have available the courses that they do. I have put my Ruby learning on hold so that I can take the courses I signed up for.

The courses are actually quite good and give a lot of examples and coding tips/tricks. Yes, the information is in books like the Camel book and Llama book, but without the extraneous stuff. I have been going through the courses and learning the straight up basics and also reading the Llama book on the side. Learning all of the syntaxes and how to use the control structures, sub routines, and functions ahead of time make understanding what Llama book is putting forth a lot easier to take in without having questions flow through my mind about how something actually works or its syntax since those questions are already answered.

I just finished the part of the course that covered Regular Expressions and I must say that I understand them a LOT better now than I did before. Now, delving into the Mastering Regular Expressions book is more enjoyable because I have a basic understanding of how to assemble a regex to match what I need to. Granted, I am no professional regex'er, but I can wing it while I get more experience doing so.

The training site also has other interesting course such as a number of XML courses that I will definitely be taking. So, Ruby is kind of back-burnered until I finish the other training.

Where have I been? He he, either at work or at home watching the kids while my wife is at work. And to think that this is all due to bills. Once we get all those pesky credit cards paid off, she won't have to work so much, but that is still off in the distance.

With any luck, I will now have the time to make more regular updates to this blog, and maybe even post some useful code snip its that I have picked up.