What's been going on for the last year and a half?

2011-02-03T01:32:00.000-08:00

Well, I think I have procrastinated enough! My first and only other blog post was back in July of 2009 and I guess I should follow up on my "progress" since then. I did go through most of the course work on W3Schools.org and created a crude website at www.vegashere.com. The website is basically devoted to resources in Las Vegas, such as casino job links and links to Greek and Filipino things, since I am Greek and my wife is from the Philippines. My grand plan was to fill up different web pages with specific content and use Google Adsense to get targeted ads on each page. It took a couple of months, but Google finally approved me and I did get ads on each page. So far I have made a grand total of $10.50. I can see retirement is right around the corner. I did submit my website to several different search engines and did attempt to insert relevant keywords into the meta tags.

I just brought up my site and all the ads on each page are public service announcements. This must be new, because not too long ago, there were normal ads on each page. How do I fix this?

I am most proud of the list of casino job links I put together, but I am nowhere to be found in the search engines if you search on "las vegas jobs" or "las vegas casino jobs".

If you search Yahoo! for "las vegas baseball cards", I am actually number five on the first page, and on Google I am at the bottom of the second page. The search for "baseball cards in las vegas" is on the third Google page.

But mostly I have used the site to store the pictures of baseball cards for my eBay auctions, which I ran regularly up to April of 2010.

So, how is my progress towards finding a job back in the computer field? Not so good! For a few weeks back in April and May, I did some consulting for a hopeful on-line poker site, but they ran out of money and offered me a stock deal. I had to turn that down because I like to eat and stock that may or may not be worth something in three years, doesn't pay the bills now. It's a real shame because I think I was a real good fit with what they were trying to do. As a poker dealer and player and a former C++ programmer, I believe I had all the tools to help make their site what they envisioned.

My website is currently on hold, since I have dealt poker at several different tournaments around the country over the last year. Traveling for two to three weeks at a time was a big sacrifice for me being away from my wife. Unlike some husbands, I actually like being with my wife and miss her terribly when I am away. But the money was good and necessary to help cover the bills my wife's salary did not. It does seem that my traveling will be significantly less this year, since the group I was working with no longer needs my services, despite the effort and sacrifices I put forth. But that is another story and this probably isn't the right forum to vent.

Now, what about getting work as a web developer? I thought I would first try to help some friends get started with some sort of web site, but after a few expressed interest, nothing ever came of that, even after some pestering from me. I was hoping to put together some sort of portfolio, so that I could then try to apply to web developer ads. I have applied to a few anyways, but to no avail. For now, my game plan is to just play around with my website some more and add a few bells and whistles and hope to get someone's attention.

But now I need to figure out why Google is only giving me public service ads...

This is the beginning!

2009-07-30T16:57:00.000-07:00

I recently decided that I wanted to get back into the computer programming business. In April of 2004 I got laid off from my C++ programming job here in Las Vegas and was unable to find another job in the months that passed and I eventually gave up. I was actually able to make a living playing video poker. Since this didn't provide any health benefits I decided to try and become a poker dealer and went to poker dealing school. To this day I have been unable to find a full time dealing job but I have managed some work. I dealt the World Series of Poker the last four years. I also have dealt in tournaments at the Venetian and the Orleans. I remain on-call to deal at the various Harrah's properties here in Las Vegas if they need me for marketing events or for the poker rooms if they get busy. Still, this hasn't provided any benefits or steady income.

Now it's been five years since I programmed and I suspected that the technology has long passed me by. So I began investigating going back to school. I decided that I wanted to learn web development. I found one of those web sites where you fill out a form and you get a list of all the schools that match your criteria. Even though I specified that I wanted to be called in the evening I started getting bombarded with calls every day at eight in the morning.

The first school I looked at was the University of Phoenix. I visit their office here and even filled out the FAFSA forms to see about financial aid. Since my wife and I hit many large video poker jackpots the year before, FAFSA would not offer me any aid. Of course student loans are available. It would take about two years to finish a degree, assuming they would transfer my credits from Notre Dame from back in the seventies. The loan amount would be $30,000 and I wouldn't have to start paying it back until six month after graduating. After awhile I decided the curriculum wasn't quite right for me so I looked elsewhere.

I then looked into ITT Technical Institute which has a campus here in Henderson near where I live. After getting the grand tour and taking some stupid test and signing a bunch of forms I decided against them too. They wanted me to go for an associates degree in web design and take all the classes on campus and pay $45,000. I really want to be a web developer and study on-line. So time to do some more research.

While trying to find the right on-line school I started to think about what curriculum I wanted to study. After putting together a list of all the things I would need to learn to begin web developing I came across a lot of free on-line resources. Between Wikiversity, W3Schools and others, I figure that I can probably learn everything that I need to begin creating web pages. Whether or not I will learn enough to land a job as a web developer some day is another story.

I have been studying the HTML tutorials on W3Schools. I picked up the internet domain vegashere.com from Fatcow and I have begun creating a crude web site to practice on. Maybe someday this could turn into a business or give me the skills to do this sort of thing for other businesses.

I know this is probably all boring, but you can continue to follow my progress through this blog.

Thanks for reading,

Jim

VegasHere Blog

What's been going on for the last year and a half?

This is the beginning!