CityVille 2 is live!

For those of you that are curious of what I've been working on over the past year, you can now go check it out at http://apps.facebook.com/cityville-two

This is a game that encompasses some of the most advanced internet technology available today.  From cloud computing to a 3D graphics game that runs in your browser (and doesn't require any special installation), cool game simulations to help make the game fun, incredibly fast load times for the impatient, and much much more.  It's impressive to see software systems this complex have the ability to reach over millions of players every day.

I worked on all aspects of this game from start to finish with about 50 other PMs/producers/artists/game designers & engineers.  My role as a software architect for this product involved building the animation system, particle system, some small pieces of the 3D Engine in it's early stages, integration with pretty much every external web service that the game uses like: Facebook open graph, Payments systems, zCloud infrastructure, all client/server interactions, storage of game state, and I helped drive adoption of the first Zynga game to fully utilize the new ZyngaAPI which is starting to become available to 3rd party developers at http://developers.zynga.com.

While I don't expect this sort of game is for everyone, go check it out and help support me and the soon to be biggest game on the internet.

Let's Play!

Emily has arrived!

Here's our newest addition to the family. Her name is Emily Anne Ryan and was born on June 4, 2010. She weighed 6 lbs 12 oz and measured 20 inches in length. Everyone is doing great!

Hello blogging world!

Is anyone out there?  I'm pretty sure that nobody looks at this thing since I never update it.

Go Cardinals

Sorry it's been so long since I've written anything... I've been sick off and on since Thanksgiving and have just been busy in general.

Anyways, this weekend we got to watch the Arizona Cardinals make it to their first Superbowl. Go Cardinals !!! We also had to watch the Steelers beat the Ravens for the 3rd time this season and that wasn't so fun... Hopefully my #1 team can beat the crap out of the Steelers. Go Cardinals!!!

Here's a picture of Thomas at about 17 1/2 months old.

Things have been going well at eBay (AKA Bill Me Later). I've been very busy at work developing solutions that allows Bill Me Later to work with USPS, the Discover Network, and coming soon PayPal/eBay. Bill Me Later continues to be successful and we're still growing in the down economy. It will be interesting to see if other credit card companies start trying to develop solution similar to Bill Me Later's transactional credit engine which has proven to be so successful.

Liz is putting her house in Scottsdale, AZ on the market this month so she'll be traveling out to AZ to meet with a realtor, visit friends, and eat at all of our favorite restaurants. Hopefully, once her house sales we'll have enough money to purchase a house here in Maryland.

I plan on going out to AZ around March 28th to visit friends and family. It will probably be a quick trip because I'd like to reserve some vacation for later, but I figured this weekend would be good because my friends Andrea and Sam are getting married that weekend.

Go Cardinals!

Consumed by Ebay!

For those of you who haven't heard... The company I work for, Bill Me Later, was bought by Ebay last week. This is a huge step forward for Bill Me Later and will allow us to grow our product across a global scale. Although Bill Me Later as a company will be merging with the PayPal division of Ebay, it will still remain as a separate entity. Bill Me Later will function as the instant credit and promotional financing engine for Ebay and PayPal! You can read more about it here.

Even though I probably would have preferred the IPO route for Bill Me Later, given the current market conditions, I think this is a great move for the company and I'm excited to be a lead developer on one of the largest e-commerce companies on the internet today.

Another plus... Some of the employee benefits that Ebay offers is pretty sweet! I personally dig the 4 week sabbatical they give every employee every 5 years. This means that I can tack on my vacation of 4 weeks + the 4 week sabbatical and have 2 months paid off of work every 5 years. The other plus is that we can now be part of the employee stock purchase plan which gives us the opportunity to purchase ebay at a 15% discount, very nice!

For the geeks out there...

Check out they Ebay architecture here. It's one of the most impressive IT architectures I've ever seen and I'm excited to be a part of it! You can find more details and podcast about it here as well.

Work is good

Well, I've been at Bill Me Later now for 6 months. Things have been going very well and have been very busy. I recently got promoted to the team lead systems developer for one of our components of the real time authorization engine called PayCapture.

PayCapture provides a layer between all of our merchants and the actual authorization engine to help our merchants integrate easily. PayCapture provides many merchants the ability to skip having to integrate with a credit card payment processor since it takes care of all those pieces behind the scenes. PayCapture also provides web services for settlement, hosts dynamic and static web content using Akamai technologies.

Only 5 more layers of management before I take over the company. If my calculations are correct then that's only 2 1/2 more years until I get there...

2 weeks off at the beach

I recently finished up my longest vacation ever. I took 2 weeks off and went with Liz's family to Bethany beach Delaware. I had an awesome time and got to know Liz's side of the family a lot more cuz we all took turns making dinner for 40 people. It was a bit crazy, but it actually worked out pretty well because they do this every year and they're pretty good at it by now.

I went golfing with my father in law Tom and went took out some jetski's with Liz's cousin Kevin. Other then that we just enjoyed time relaxing on the beach, reading books, and eating. I certainly can't wait until next year.

There are lots more pictures posted on my site that I've uploaded recently, but here's a quick slide show view of our beach trip.

Thomas' first birthday

My mom came to down for Thomas' first birthday. When she was in town we went into D.C. to see some of the monuments and even got to take a tour of the white house. Even though it was hot and exhausting walking all over town, we all had a great time. We already miss her!

Here's a small video taken from the birthday party we had for Thomas. Since he's alergic to eggs we had to make him a special cup cake without eggs. It actually still tastes pretty good, but I don't think Thomas cared for it.

More blogging ...

As you've probably noticed from my blog... I don't have much to say so my wife Liz has created her own blog and will probably keep it more updated then I do.

Anyways, if you're interested you can go check out The Ryan Family

Road to recovery

On July 8th at 10:05 PT Sara took her first free breath with her new lungs! Since then she has moved from the bed to a chair, changed rooms and has had some of her "decorations" (a term for all the different tubes, lines, wires, sensors, monitors, dressings and the like that "decorate" a person coming out of surgery) removed. The doctors are calling her a "Superstar" but that is an understatement! She is so strong and determined, a true inspiration to many of us. Although, she is still in a lot of pain she continues to work hard and make daily improvements. Amongst our excitement and joy we are sadded for the donors family and wish them comfort during this difficult time. What a selfless gift to give, life.

Our friend Sara

Mike, Sara and Thomas July 2007


It's a big day for our very good friends, Mike and Sara. Sara is in the hospital undergoing major surgery. Her long awaited wish is finally coming true. She will be able to breathe! We are sending positive thoughts and prayers their way. We miss them very much!

T sends hugs and kisses to Aunt Sara :)

Love you guys!

Go here for more details.

Thomas laughing

Here's a video of Thomas listening to his own voice and his dad barking like a dog. He was having a blast!

4th of July weekend

It was a big weekend for Mr. T. He got his first haircut! As you can see, he's not too happy about it either. He actually did pretty well once he got used to the lady cutting his hair.




















This was also 4th of July weekend and there is a parade every year just down the street from where Liz grew up. So Thomas got to be in the same parade has his mother did growing up. Here's a picture of Thomas all decked out and ready to strut his stuff in the parade.



























To see more pictures of Thomas at 11 months go here

1st Fathers Day

It was a perfect 1st fathers day. I got to sleep in... All the way till 7:30 AM. It was great! Then I cooked some cinnamon french toast with some special cinnamon bread that we got from this Amish market nearby. After Thomas got up from his morning nap, we all went out for a family jog around the block. It was a little warm, but manageable. Later in the day we pulled out this blow up pool for Thomas. He just loves the water! To finish the day off, we grilled some hot dogs and watched some movies.

Learning something new every day

Well, even though these videos are only a few days old, they're already out of date because he's doing much better then this now.

Here's a video of Thomas walking across the family room:


This video is funny just because you can see a little bit more of his personality and if you listen carefully, you can hear him imitating me as I'm playing around with him some when he should be trying to eat. :)

Here's a video of Thomas eating some bananas:

Family day @ Glen Echo Park

We had a beautiful day in Maryland today. It was about 80 outside and everything is in bloom. I can't believe how green and colorful everything is. So different then AZ.

We visited Glen Echo park today so we could take Thomas on the carousel ride and enjoy the outdoors. As you can see, Thomas is a very curious and watches everything.

If you want to see more pictures then go here

My new job at "Bill Me Later"

Well, it's been about 1 month now at my new job and I love it! I sit on the 3rd floor of an 8 story building in Timonium, Maryland. I'm one of the senior system engineers that works on developing all of Bill Me Later's software. My main responsibilities currently is development of fraud, authorization, and new authorization flows through our system that help support one of our newest customers Amazon.com. Bill Me Later is now on a large majority of merchant websites including but not limited too (walmart, apple, overstock.com, US-airways, ToysRus, and many more).

What is Bill Me Later?

Put simply, Bill Me Later (corporate) is the best way to pay when shopping online. You can access the Bill Me Later customer website for logging in and paying your bills here. This is where you manager your Bill Me Later account and choose to either get bills in the mail or pay your bills online through an ACH transfer.

Why use it?

• It allows you to buy stuff online without the need to have a credit card or bank account. You only need to know your date of birth and last 4 digits of your SSN #. How many times have you been in a different room then your credit card, but you wanted to buy something? It happens to me all the time, but now with Bill Me Later that will never happen again. It's so easy to pay that it's almost dangerous!
  
• It's the most secure way to buy stuff online as well because there is no credit card information stored on a customer website that could be compromised.
• All liability for purchases is put on Bill Me Later in case of fraud. And Bill Me Later has excellent fraud prevention techniques.
  
• No interest/payments for 90 days on most purchases. Sometimes it's even longer depending on promotions and merchants.
  

Isn't it the same as Paypal or Google Checkout?

No, they are quite different. Paypal and google force you to store your bank information and/or credit card number in their system (Not secure). And they do not offer interest free financing. These 2 options also require you to already have an existing credit card in order to use them.

Note: Since Bill Me Later is an open line of credit, be aware that if you don't pay your bill in full when it's due that you'll be charged interest. It works almost like any other credit card behind the scenes.

Learning to walk

I know it hasn't been long, but Thomas is already learning to walk. He can't do it by himself yet, but this little man is on the move and he's not even 8 months old yet!

Learning to crawl

Below Thomas is learning to crawl. He's almost got it down!

We made it to Maryland!

Well, we made it to Maryland last Sunday on the coldest day of the winter so far. It was about 18 degrees when we rolled up to our new home in Maryland. The following day we had a little bit of snow flurry which was pretty cool to see since it was really the first time I've ever actually seen it snow. It didn't snow enough for anything to stay on the ground, but I'm sure it will sooner or later.

The following day we had a good amount of ice rain which froze solid on the ground. This made it difficult to drive in and walk even. Again, since I'm from AZ I thought this was pretty cool. I probably won't think it's that cool in a few years especially since I'll actually have to drive in it eventually.

The past few days haven't been bad with temps ranging from 30 - 55 degrees depending on the time of day.

For those of you who don't know we're living with Liz's parents for a while and we have a full house of 7 people because Liz's sister Jen and her husband Matt are also living there temporarily. It's pretty fun living like the brady bunch.

Anyways, we love it here so far and are enjoying the change of scenery and weather.

Here's a video that I made of my trip across the country with my brother in law Matt. It's not a great video since I was towing a U-Haul trailor behind me, driving 75 mph, and taking video at the same time (not recommended for safety reasons)