Hey Tom, I’m trying to figure out a few next possible career steps in my life and I have a few questions for you.

1. What led you to leave [your old, stable job]?
2. As a UX manager, would a masters degree in UX sway your hiring decision? (Especially if all other candidate portfolios and work experience were equal.)
3. What was your undergraduate major?

Hey, [Anonymous Student]! Great questions. The first one is easy. In the words of Nephi, “I was led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the things I should do.” I hope that doesn’t sound too corny, because it is literally the truth. I would’ve been happy to stay there but the Lord prompted me to leave so I did. I left without a job or prospects and had to rely on God to find my next steps in my career. It was hard, but I knew it was time to leave—I knew things would work out. I encourage you to take advantage of God’s willingness to guide all aspects of your life, including your career.

I don’t have a Masters degree. So, I can’t really justify not hiring people who don’t have one. For entry level and junior positions, I probably wouldn’t want someone with a Masters degree, especially if they didn’t have real work experience. I’m very practical and prefer practice over theory. A strong portfolio is worth more than a Masters degree to me. That said, if you feel a Masters degree would be important to you, go for it. Just make sure that you have a good plan to pay for it. A lot of people accrue way too much debt when compared to their earning potential. Education is always a good thing. But it can be turned into an anchor by paying for it with your future. A Masters degree is not a guarantee of a job or higher wages.

My undergraduate major was a BA in Design. Which was Graphic Design back then, since UX wasn’t a thing.

You can celebrate with me! Starting on my birthday, I’m inviting all of my family, friends, acquaintances, strangers, enemies and anyone else interested to join me in 40 Days of Good Deeds.

To participate, do a good deed each day starting Nov 10 (my birthday). If you want to share you can send me an email, share it on social media, carrier pigeon, etc. Tag your shares with #40gooddeeds. Sharing isn’t required to participate, especially if you want your good deeds to remain anonymous. I hope you will share, though, even if you leave out the details. It will be a great birthday present to me to hear of everyone’s kind acts!

All in all, 40 Days of Good Deeds is a way for me to hold on to my youth a little longer by making the number 40 a good thing. I’m looking forward to spending the Thanksgiving and Christmas season performing and reading about acts of kindness and generosity.

One of the biggest drawbacks I found after upgrading to TextMate 2 was the loss of projects. I liked projects because I could group disparate resources and use the file chooser (?T) to open files without drilling through the directory structure.

With the latest release of TextMate 2, there is a hack to recreate this lost functionality – enable the file chooser to follow symbolic links. To enable this capability everywhere, I created a file in ‘/’ called .tm_properties. In this file, I entered the following magic:

followSymbolicLinks = true

Now, if I open a directory in TextMate 2 that has symbolic links in it, the file chooser will follow symbolic links to look for files as well as searching in regular folders. If you have a group of disparate files and folders that you want to work on together, simply create a directory containing symbolic links to all of your favorites.

I hope we get to see more of this soon.

Two years ago, I abandoned my career at BYU, packed up my family, and moved to Maine. It was crazy. In the months since, I’ve often wondered where it would all lead.

Now I know a little more about what lies ahead for me and my family. I just accepted an offer to come on full-time as the designer for LDS Tools, an administration tool for leaders and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. When I left BYU a couple years ago, I didn’t know what lay ahead. I put my trust in God and blindly stepped into the dark. Little did I know that it would lead me here.

As you may recall, I cut my teeth on mobile design with Gospel Library late last year. I wrapped up my part on that project in November-December 2012. In early 2013, I picked up work as a contractor for LDS Tools for iOS and Android. It is a great opportunity for me to design for another app that is used by a 1,000,000+ people worldwide. I’m even more excited that I will now be a permanent part of the team.

I am so thankful to be at this point in my career. I’m thankful for the challenges that lie ahead. I’m thankful to my family and Hannah’s family for your loving support through all of this. We treasure our family above all else. Thank you for your patience, sacrifice, and friendship. We love you.

It’s Art’s birthday! Happy Birthday Art!

Art is my brother-in-law. He is also an artist. The combination of his name and his chosen profession provided ample opportunity for lame jokes.

Nevertheless, he is a great guy and a great artist. We’re always glad to welcome another artist into the family.

Check out his art and wish him a happy birthday!

Art – Square Native.

Mozilla, the parent company of Firefox, is taking the Firefox brand to mobile devices with Firefox OS. Think of Android but without a publicly traded entity (Google) seeking to profit from it. Along with this OS, Mozilla is also announcing an app Marketplace, which is the thing to do these days if you’re launching a mobile OS/device.

I’ve postulated before about the need and viability of such a marketplace. A place where pure web technologies drive business. These moves by Mozilla have potential to upset the Apple-cart – tipping the scale away from native back to web applications. Mozilla certaily surprised me – I was picturing a simple web portal approach for an app store. This has a lot more teeth.

WebOS failed to make this happen with a corporate presence leading the charge. Can a non-profit succeed where a corporation failed? WebOS didn’t come with an app store, so perhaps that was it’s achilles heal.

I’m thinking of a friend this would be perfect for

Creative Good describes a method to manage email that I’ve been advocating for a long time. I’ve been at ‘inbox zero’ for years following these three simple steps. It is simple, easy, and it works. If you feel overwhelmed by email, I recommend giving this a try.