Rick Maher’s Professional Notes

Rewarding Continuous Improvement Internship vs Fun Easy and Interesting Web Developer Position
Starring Rick Maher in a Dilemma Role
With a good half dozen interviews behind me and a good half dozen more (at least) coming up regarding job positions for post graduation in May I am suddenly being confronted with a more immediate job decision.

I have been offered an internship position with Goodrich (www.goodrich.com) where I would work as a Continuous Improvement Leader. Basically this position would focus on what I learned I loved last summer in my internship with Honeywell (www.honeywell.com), six sigma, lean enterprise, Toyota production system, 5s, kaizen, etc.

Sounds great right? They even pay pretty decently.

Unfortunately (who didn’t see this sentence coming?), leaving my current position as the Web Minister Developer is not an easy decision to act upon.
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Head on over to http://asasu.net/usg/ to view the nearly completed website of the Undergraduate Student Government. The USG is the undergraduate arm of the Associated Students of Arizona State University (ASASU).

I expect the USG site to be the most comprehensive and largest of the three branches (GPSA and PAB being the other two).

It is being powered by a number of MovableType “blogs” working more as a content managment system than an actual blog. I pulled inspiration for this design/layout from a number of sources including http://simplebits.com, http://mezzoblue.com, and even the ASASU page created by Omar in the SDMU over the summer.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

My name is Richard Riley Maher (I go by Rick Maher). Sure I’m no red headed Patrick O’Sullivan, but my geneology traces rather directly back to the Gaelic Ireland, Tiperrary to be specific.

While in Tucson this past weekend at my grandparent’s house I came across the “Irish Family Names and Seals Map” by John Bartholomew & Son. I decided to do a little research on it and here are a few of the things that I found.

It turns out that the name Maher was has evolved somewhat from around AD200 as O Meachair to O Meagher in the 1600s to Meagher and finally, as recently as the late 1800s transitioned to Maher. The roots of the word Maher come from a Gaelic word meaning “hospitable,” and in fact were in an early “census” described as “being all descended out of the house of O Meager” translated to modern day english meaning that the clan was very family oriented. The Maher family was throughout the Gaelic times known as Maher of the Sword.

The Maher family coat of arms shown here, is “Azure two lions rampant combatant or supporting a sword argent pommel and hilt of the second, in base two crescents of the third.”

Also very interesting to me were many of the other coats of arms that were on the map and their obvious influence of current corporation logos.