J2D3

SternHalma

My brother moved to Los Angeles last September from our hometown, Pensacola, Florida, into my house here in Hollywood. My two roommates, my brother, and I turned the former (parlor / christmas tree / keg room) into his bedroom, making him our fourth roommate. Fresh from college with a BS in CS, as anxious as he was to start his career, he first needed some time to relax and adjust to life out here in California. I thought he really needed to take his time and patiently figure out just what he was looking for in a job, rather than rush ahead and risk falling prey to whatever job might be looking for him. Also, while academics are important, the most useful assets in landing a job are honest accessible skills, and the confidence necessary to convey that you possess those skills.

So, since I have no shortage of programming project ideas and no shortage of old hardware to mess with, I set my brother to work on an old server that I’d been wanting to turn into a standard LAMP box for use “around the house…” you know… for experiments. I also thought that the basic LAMP developer skill set, along with some AJAX sprinkles would be beneficial for him, and shortly we had come up with a fun and challenging project for ourselves, SternHalma (commonly known as “Chinese Checkers”).