Avid Web Developer

It’s been a little over a year (April 6th to be precise) since I first met Jim McFadyen. Jim is a Web Development Manager at Critical Mass, or should I say soon to be former Web Development Manager. He’s found an exciting opportunity that I only merely dream of. Perhaps it’s because I don’t sleep well during the night without a mattress. He soon will be enjoying the sun down in California working at Yahoo!

Jim was one of my interviewers when I first applied to Critical Mass. The other interviewer was Aaron Glenn. And I tell ya, I got smoked by all the tech questions they threw at me. Literally. Not only did Jim interviewed me, but he was one of my superiors right off the bat. First the tech questions, then my amateur questions and annoyance. I seriously thought Jim saw of me as an empty knucklehead asking why my Apache wouldn’t start up. But due time, I came to respect Jim for his awesome talents.

If there’s three things to remember Jim by, it would be his JavaScript, his humor, and my futon couch. Lets start with the first one.

JavaScript

Being fresh meat at Critical Mass, I recall seeing a prototype navigation being built by Jim this one day. The navigation looked like a watch crown, and it used JavaScript to rotate the navigation links around. It was pretty neat. Jim showed me the code to make such a feature run. Pretty impressive. Jim then told me he could fix up the code to run a bit better. At that point, my brain couldn’t decide if he was either mocking me or I was just that much of an amateur. Nevertheless, he was the first to drill the usage of the DOM object and DHTML into my head and use JavaScript to string them all together; A skill that I’m working on improving.

Humor

When Jim is serious, he looks serious. But he’ll always crack a smirk when you do something retarded. Such as inserting an improper Doctype. He tends to let me figure out my mistakes and when I do realize my error, he’ll crack up a joke. Good enough that it’ll make myself look ever dumber, but get a little giggle out of it too. Awkward mix I’d say.

My futon couch

Now, this one’s an awkward way to remember someone, or rather Jim would remember me most by this. During the Rolex redesign site celebration, the team went out to small restaurant, and there I mentioned to Jim that I recently moved out on my own in downtown Calgary. Though as I type up this entry, I’m still not fully moved in yet after 5 months. There are a few lot of things that I still need to get for my apartment. One being the biggest, a mattress for my bed. Jim had a big kick out of my story of me sleeping on my futon couch. I don’t even lay it down flat when I sleep. It’s just too much work to prop it back up. And as for my blanket sleeping bag…well, lets not go there. But no worries Jim. It’s a major milestone in my agenda of things to do. Most likely that by the time I get a mattress for my bed, my rent lease would be up.

Overall, Jim’s a pretty awesome guy, when he’s not swinging around that pirate sword at work. I’ve learned quite a lot from him and can see that there’s so much potential that can be reached in this industry. So here’s to you Jim, and may you find the grass greener there in California. Maybe someday I could be working for Yahoo! also. Which ever comes first, Yahoo! or my mattress.