Author: Robert

Lately, I’ve been reading Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg. In the second chapter, Charles explains the factors that make a great team. He cites research from cognitive and behavioral scientists as well as corporate research such as “Project Aristotle” conducted by Google. The results of…

If I had to choose one thing that I’ve developed the most during this internship, persistence is a strong contender. In all my previous work (coding and otherwise) I was all about getting to the easiest solution. These days everyone and their dog are building frameworks, APIs, plugins, and bundles so if you’re willing to…

At the start of week five, I’ve noticed something. I’ve noticed that things are going a lot smoother. Now that I’ve gotten some experience working on several parts of Punchmark’s framework, and am generally familiar with their database structure, I am much sharper in my work. Today I experimented with what I’m calling “The Art…

Pretty early on in my internship, I discovered my “place” in the business. The reason that this small team needed to hire an intern for a summer. To fully understand my role in the business, its best to dissect the roles of each employee and examine the gaps. Ross We’ll start with the founders. Ross,…

As we approach the start of the 5th week of my internship at Punchmark, I’ll reveal a bit of the specifics behind what I’ve actually been working on. SMS Notification System Punchmark would like to allow their clients to opt-in to SMS notifications for their store’s website. This way clients (jewelry retailers and vendors) can…

Charles Duhigg author of The Power of Habit is back with a new book to bring his discoveries about the psychology of productivity. In Smarter, Faster, Better Charles uses his extraordinary Pulitzer Prize winning storytelling to recount his research and studies with renowned psychologists and productive people. I have not read Smarter, Faster, Better but…

Last week, the Punchmark team attended JCK Las Vegas to promote their services to big time jewelry retailers and vendors. This left me out of the office for about a week. Naturally, I moved into a local coffee shop for that time and set up my mobile office, grabbed a small black cup and a…

Build to Last “Bodge” is British slang best defined (by me) as, “to throw together hastily without worrying about long term consequences. Append “-ed” to the word and you’ve officially described every line of code I’ve ever written. Every project, assignment, or programming challenge I’ve ever encountered was solved by bodging together whatever I could…

I’m starting my 3rd week working as an intern at Punchmark. I’ve developed some opinions and reactions about how I feel about the experience so far. First, allow me to take you through my work day. 07:00 – Alarm goes off. 07:30ish – Get out of bed and shower. 07:45ish – Dress, groom, breakfast, YouTube,…

I wanted to write about how my experiences and learning from the classroom are helping me in my internship. I really wanted to. I’ve thought about it for days. I cannot. Day one of this internship: Sat down. Read email. Registered Twilio Application. Wrote PHP script with GET and POST requests. Made a looping MySQL…