After working as an operational meteorologist for just over 4 years at MDA Information Systems LLC in Germantown, MD, I moved to Pittsburgh and got married to my wife who I had been long distant with for 8 years. Sadly, I had to leave my former workplace and the meteorology field to move to Pittsburgh, an area that has few options when it comes to companies that hire meteorologists. Fortunately, my brother has made a name for himself in the web development community and was able to give me a job for the time being.

I have worked for Brad Frost Web LLC for a week now and it has been a breath of fresh air not waking up at 2:30 in the morning. Some of my tasks have included:

Learning HTML and CSS via Codecademy with commentary/lessons from Brad Frost as well
Using Github, Git Tower, and dploy.io to push changes/additions to local web pages live in an organized and efficient manner that leaves a paper trail
Learning about Flexbox, Adobe Kuler, markdown, and other various tools.
Making changes to the Wexford Chiropractic site so the content is clearer and the design is cleaner
Assisting with leveling out/rebuilding the patio in the backyard and building a hammock
Recording a song everyday (post-work activity)

As with anything new that you learn, there are some obstacles to overcome. Some of these are:

Margins, padding, and borders definitely have me confused when it comes to positioning certain <div>s or text.
There seems to be a wide variety of tools scattered throughout the web, many of which I don’t how to use yet.
I start learning Javascript via Codecademy today. I’m sure there will be some obstacles with learning how to code a bit.
Working with your brother who has been in the web game for a while now is difficult when he pulls out language that you don’t understand.

Despite the weather community being quite a bit different than the web community, there are some similarities:

HTML and CSS are similar to programming languages (C++, Perl, MATLAB, etc.) that I learned at Penn State but a bit more logical (which I like).
Communication and language is key when it comes to your audience
Your product should get the message out clearly and efficiently while looking good as well.
The design of the weather website could help the user get his/her weather information or inhibit the process of getting the weather information

There is so much I have to learn about web design and development community, but thankfully because of my brother I have stepped off to a good start. The web is an ever-changing source of information that is vital to everyone’s lives, similar to a weather forecast. I will continue to do weather forecasts every morning (between 8 and 9AM usually), because I will always be a meteorologist. I am also grateful to have a job in something that is very important and something that I actually enjoy doing. I will try to post after every week so I can share my information with you, gain the web community’s insight, and show how well (or poorly) Brad can teach. Take care folks!