Chris Page – Software Engineer

As usual, it’s been awhile since the last post. As for pictures say a thousand words update:

Not pictured: “open bar, rock. the lockerz staff enjoying said open bar, rock. hundreds of lockerz fans enjoying the concert, rock. a great meal at the cafeteria in NYC, rock. oh, and Manhattan, ROCK!” Needless to say we had a blast! Thanks to all those supporting Lockerz, and all those who worked hard to throw an awesome launch party, as well as all those who continue to work hard every day to take the company to the next level!

In other news, we’ve been pouring our blood and sweat into work and home – doesn’t mean it hurts though My long time heterosexual life mate visited from Chicago over the weekend – we had a great time and already miss his company. In addition to his visit, my long time friend, college room mate, and colleague, Drew Kerrigan, stayed for 2 weeks as he joined Lockerz this month and is relocating from NoVA! A special congratulations to him!

So now we have at least 3 huge Diablo 3 fans ( Anthony, Myself, and Drew ) ready to pour vacation time down the drain

One last note! Happy birthday Peter!

Lil Wayne loves Pitt too!

Two weeks down, this blog is due for an update – time has been flying!

As far as home life in Pittsburgh goes – ROCK. I’m currently staying roughly between one of Carnegie Mellon and Pittsburgh University’s campus intersections – the architecture is gorgeous. I enjoyed a meal at the famous Primanti Brothers down the street, learned the public transit ( a work in progress… ), and discovered a few open mic hot spots I’ll be hitting up eventually – oh, and Lil Wayne at the Post Gazette Pavilion was also ROCK! I’ve had numerous other experiences and visited quite a few restaurants, but won’t detail all my eating habits here

As far as Lockerz goes… ROCK ON! I’ve made some new friends, thoroughly enjoyed many philosophical discussions, and am getting knee deep into working on the next best thing. Today was a moment for Lockerz history – as we saw an incredible traffic increase this morning – ranking 4 on Google Trends around 10 a.m.

The boost seemed grass roots in nature, as people are catching wind and telling their friends, who are telling their friends. The most personable for me was Amber’s friend made a comment about needing a Lockerz invite to join the site, not even realizing I work there. Small world? Needless to say, he got the invite.

I won’t detail much else about the job – you’ll have to keep tabs on the site! Need an invite? Let me know.

Night shot of Pittsburgh, PA - our new home city!

I’ve been quite busy lately!  Amber and I decided to leave Morgantown, WV to pursue better opportunities wherever we may fall.  We bunked up with family for a few weeks… a grueling thing with a 2 month old.  Thankfully, it didn’t take too long to stumble upon the next big thing!  Spending so much time increasing my online presence has paid off – as I received a call a few weeks ago from Lockerz CTO, Peter Meulbroek.

Peter and I exchanged a few phone calls – I could tell there was something “right” about the vibe I gained.  Three weeks later I drove into Pittsburgh for a lengthy yet fun and relaxing 5 stage interview – their idea is spectacular and the team was very talented and cool with a work hard and play harder mentality, perfect.  I realized “I’m going to make this happen”.  Thankfully the team at Lockerz shared that realization, and I’m very proud to announce that as of July 27th 2009, I will begin my first day as a ground floor Lockerz technical team member!

This proves it… I’m a startup junkie!

Things are moving very quickly, with only a week to relocate, and it reminds me of one of Amber’s favorite sayings:  “Good things take time, Great things happen all at once.” – this seems to hold true for me, a man of extremes to say the least!

Everybody involved in the process made it feel absolutely “right”.  I’m super psyched about the challenging workload ahead, and Amber and I both have never been so happy with the direction life is taking us!

Go check out Lockerz.com!

I’m a father!

The day it started, I wasn’t particularly busy – which was great – and was testing video conferencing solutions with Matt O’Donnell, a long time mentor, colleague, and friend.  Amber called a little concerned, but calm, and said “I’m in the elevator coming up to the office… I think something’s wrong”.  Matt & Christina had a baby just one week before, so Matt was working from home, and Christina and baby Morgan were hanging out on cam chatting along with us.

Amber had already left a message with the doctor, a return call didn’t take long.  We were instructed to go ahead and come in, the sooner the better.  For fear of missing out on the epidural, we soon headed for the hospital!

After an hour of medical student surveys, and some cafeteria food ( which is awesome at Ruby Memorial ), the doctor came in and said “admit this girl – she’s in labor!”.  Friends and family drove in from long distances to support us with laughs and smiles – Doctors poked and prodded… we waited.  At 6 a.m., she was in full labor!  I’m pleased to announce that at ( exactly ONE minute from Amber’s prediction… which is a little spooky accurate in itself since we took bets on the date over a month before ) 9:46 am, May 7th, 2009 – The Page Family welcomed it’s first born, Gabriella Noelle Page!

Gabriella has been in great health the entire time and progressing well, Mommy is recovering like a champ, and Daddy couldn’t be happier!  Much gratitude goes to our family, friends, and the amazing staff at Ruby Memorial – we couldn’t have gotten here without all of you!  Now the real fun has begun!

So I haven’t updated this blog in at least 6 months, and it’s been a very busy time indeed.

Snapped a shot along the Shenendoah in the fall

So first things first, I got married May 23rd to the beautiful Amber Ellifritz, now known as the beautiful Mrs. Amber Page ( us on the right ). It’s been a wild and wonderful ride. We are now expecting! She’s 4 1/2 months at this point. We find out the gender in 2 days, then I plan on throwing a Baby Blue Victory party between now and Christmas

It’s clear I want a boy.

Shortly after we married, we moved to Charles Town, WV. From there, I picked up remote work and since have churned out FirstString.com – a social network for high school athletes. This has been an exciting project, we started it in Typhoon PHP, the www.shockwavelabs.com Framework, and a good 80% of it is still written in that framework, we are now writing new components in Ruby on Rails, which I’ve grown to adore. It’s not perfect, but it is feature rich and gets the job done.

Speaking of Ruby, it presented a learning curve. The below image depicts said curve:

Studying Ruby on Rails

As you can see. It was easy. I recommend everybody give it a shot.

[ ... ok my break is up, I need to go back to some projects, but I'll finish writing on this post at a later time ]

Google, April Fools!

How many people got caught by Google’s April fools joke this year?

“Virgle: Earth has issues, and it’s time humanity got started on a Plan B. So, starting in 2014, Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will be leading hundreds of users on one of the grandest adventures in human history: Project Virgle, the first permanent human colony on Mars.”

I managed to get Mary, COO at Moguldom, to fall for it. Hehehe! Everybody else was on to my scheme though, oh well! I love Google.

Starcraft 2

I was practically born on the original Starcraft and Brood Wars expansion. I spent much of my teenage life perfecting the Zerg rush, and eventually mastered the Terran defense with a wonderful firebat-drop counter attack. So I was quite excited yesterday when Dan sent me a link to the new units in Starcraft 2. I like what I see. At the very bottom of the Tauren Marine page there seems to be a spoiler hint, though I can’t be certain. Will mercenaries be apart of the new game?

So many questions! Though, I’m glad it’s still at least a year away from release, as I have a lot of business plans to knock out beforehand! It’d be a shame to make a mistake and drown all the potential in a video game. Though, it’s not just any video game, Starcraft 2 looks to be the nectar of the gods IMHO.

The New Relics – one rock’n band!

Aside of Google’s games and video games, everybody go check out The New Relics. They are a Morgantown, WV based band, and they pretty much rock. I saw them a few times when I lived out in Morgantown, they are touring up and down the east coast these days. I’m on a mission to hook them up with a Venue in Shepherdstown so they have an excuse to come play for me. I’ll be posting MySpace bulletins, and what not, if it pans out, so you locals better show up!