Today was my last day as an employee at my current (umm, previous) job. After 18 months full-time, plus a couple months of part-time consulting and advising, I've decided it's time to move on. I still believe the product has enormous potential, and I may be walking away from early retirement, but it's time to move on.
Starting Monday, I will be a Technical Architect at Fullhouse Interactive in Milwaukee's Third Ward. I'm excited for a number of reasons. I'll be working downtown again, and, while the drive is long, I'll be close to friends that I rarely get to see. Even with the extra drive time, I will be able to spend more time with my family because of my average number of hours will decrease. On top of that, I will also be working from home on a regular basis, which is a first for me. I'll get to learn some new things, and hopefully teach some things as well. I'm also getting to get back into consumer facing web development, which I miss.
I'm really excited for this new job. If you're near downtown Milwaukee, let me know and we'll setup a geek lunch sometime.
As I'm sure you have already read all over the web, today was also the last that Bill Gates will be working for Microsoft. While I'm sure he will probably never read this, I wish him all the best in his retirement. Now if only I could figure out how to retire as a billionaire so that I could spend all my time running my charitable foundation...
Over the last six weeks or so I have made three trips to California. I grew up in northern CA and most of my family still lives there wondering why I ever left to live in frozen "Wesconson".
The first of these trips was a whirlwind. I flew in on a Thursday night and drove out on Friday afternoon with my new truck. My parents were getting rid of their truck and I needed a new vehicle so it worked out nicely. I had a nice quiet drive across the US from CA to WI, making Twitter updates along the way from my phone.
The second trip, Kelly and I took Charlie (our daughter) to meet Pops and Nana (my parents) at Disneyland in southern CA. It was her first trip to Disney and she was so excited.
She got to meet Minnie, Mickey, Tigger, Pooh, and many more. I think Minnie was her favorite. She also got a fancy Snow White dress from Pops and Nana to wear to the parade on Main Street.
We got to spend about 6 days with my parents and it was the first time they had seen Charlie since last December. It was one of the most relaxing weeks I've had in a few years and I'm so glad we got to do it.
About a week and a half after we got back home, I made my third trip out to CA for a reunion trip, meeting up with some old school buddies at Yosemite National Park. Eight of us met, and some of us hadn't seen each other in almost 15 years.
I would try to describe it, but I guess the trip wouldn't really make sense to anyone that wasn't there. Lots of memories. Lots of stories. Lots of catching up. Lots of laughing.
We golfed (I just drove the cart because I suck at golf), took a ride on lazy river rafts, hiked and hung out around the campfire. I took a lot of pics and they are on Flickr. (These are actually my first pics ever on Flickr, even though I've had an account for several years now.) All in all, it was a blast and we are planning another trip for next year.
So there you have it -- a short version of the ~13,000 miles I've logged in the last few weeks. Each trip was a blast, but, for now, I'm glad to be home with Kelly and Charlie. If the Disney trip could have lasted another 6 weeks, I would have been OK with that, but the two trips by myself were rough.
This is pretty exciting. Chris Pietschmann, an MVP, a friend of mine, a committee member of the WI .NET Users Group, developer of Virtual Earth controls, and an independent consultant I have worked with in the recent past, has three MSDN Premium Subscriptions to give away, and he is having a coding contest to determine the winners. He is building a website for this contest at www.communitycodingcontest.org, but the site is not up yet. In the meantime you can get some basic info from this post on his site. The contest will run from July 1 through September 30, so that's three whole months to get something built.
The most amazing part is the prizes. From his blog post:
1st Place - 1 MSDN Premium Subscription with Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite
2nd Place - 1 MSDN Premium Subscription with Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite
3rd Place - 1 MSDN Premium Subscription with Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite
4th Place - Windows Vista Ultimate with SP1 and Visual Studio 2008 Professional
I am also looking for sponsors to donate additional prizes to give away.
I don't know about you, but I think I'd be happy with 3rd place. If you work for a company that would like to sponsor this contest, please contact Chris through his blog, or e-mail me and I will put you in touch with him. If you're a developer, get those gears turning.
I do have a question for Chris, though. Chris, why not sneak one of these subscriptions to me and have a contest to give away the other two???
We went to the doctor the other day and found out from the ultrasound that our correct due date is January 27, 2009. As of tomorrow (June 24) we will be 9 weeks along.
We're very excited. Unfortunately, Kelly gets very sick when she is pregnant and is on some nausea medicine that they apparently give to chemotherapy patients.
I'm very excited! Kelly and I found out the other day that we will be having our second child soon. We haven't seen the doctor yet, but we're estimating a January-ish due date for now. Once we get the "official" word from the doctor I'll update with that date.
You may have gathered from a previous post that we had a miscarriage late last year. So this news is especially exciting to us.
Woo hoo!
Found on xkcd.com, Geohashing looks fun.
Now I just need to buy a GPS, keep up on the Dow, and right a program to do the hash, split, hex to decimal conversion, and destination calculation.
I'm very excited because in a couple days I will be going with my wife and daughter to Disneyland in California. We are meeting my parents there for Charlie's first Disney experience, and I can't wait to see how excited she will be. She's coming up on 21 months and really shows her excitement -- she dances, stomps her feet (like those Irish tap dancers) and waves her arms. It may sound cute, but it's even cuter to see.
Also, between now and then I have a few phone calls setup. I'm currently on the market for a new job, and so far things have gone well in my search since I started 6 days ago. If you are hiring in the Milwaukee area, feel free to contact me. My resume can be found at www.scottisaacs.com/resume. It is slightly out of date, but 99% complete. If time allows in the next couple days I'll make it 100%.
Today (5/5/2008) is the seventh anniversary of my marriage to Kelly. I'm sure she will never read this, but I love her more than ever and am looking forward to the next 70 years (or so).
We picked this date because 5/5/2008 means the same in the US as it does in European (and other) countries that list the day before the month. Actually, that had absolutely nothing to do with the date selection. It was more like "what Saturdays do you have open around May" when we were trying to book The American Club.
I love you, Kelly.
If I told you that you had to put this necktie on this giraffe, what would you do?
The way I see it, there are three logical positions for this tie to be placed on the giraffe's neck: 1) at the bottom of the neck, near the body, 2) in the middle of the neck, or 3) at the top of the neck, near the head. Personally, I think choice #3 makes our business giraffe look the most professional, although with choice #1, the tie is more likely to be out of the giraffe's way, especially while it is bending down. Perhaps choice #2 is a good compromise, though -- it's less stuffy than #3, and although not as convenient for the giraffe's bending tasks as #1, it doesn't look like it will interfere too much. Here are my depictions of each of these choices for visual comparison.
So, in this hypothetical situation, what would you do? Why?
Perhaps I'll share my own thoughts about this in another post someday.
I have finally updated my OPML file, which is always linked from the sidebar of the site. If you have any suggestions for other blogs I might be interested in, please let me know.
Just got a book in the mail from Amazon: Embedded Programming with the Microsoft .NET Micro Framework. It was only about $6 from the "Used and New" section of alternate sellers.
An upcoming project at work is currently planned for Compact Framework, but, if my limited understanding is right, hardware needed for the Micro Framework is cheaper. So as long as it will perform as needed, this might be the way to go.
Has anyone done any development with the .NET Micro Framework yet? Any pointers or pitfalls?
Well, here it is, 9:15 PM on April 14, and I'm just getting started on my 2007 tax return. I have already installed TaxCut Pro and found all the tax documents that Kelly had set aside for me so that I would do this a couple months ago -- as if that's some big redemptive accomplishment.
Life just gets in the way too often. I need to find a way to change that. Maybe next month?
Update: It's 11:45 PM and I'm done other than confirming some numbers tomorrow. Two and-a-half hours is record time for Isaacs family tax return prep. I'm just hoping I didn't miss something important.
If you're in the Milwaukee area and have nothing to do today (4/5/08), why not come to Deeper in .NET? It starts at 8AM and will go until right around 6PM. We have 5 great speakers on the agenda so come on by and see what's going on.
A friend of mine is going to school in an "MBA for professionals" program. I'm not sure if it's public knowledge or not, so no identifying links here. Anyway, in an e-mail today, he mentioned that he has class tomorrow, and that got me thinking. Every few months for most of the past decade the thought crosses my mind that I should look into doing the same thing.
So far I haven't done anything about it for a number of reasons, mostly falling into either the money category or the time category, some into both. But I'm still interested in doing it someday -- at least I haven't ruled it out.
So, here's the question. Is it worth it?
If you've done it, are doing it, are thinking about it, or decided against it, I'd be interested to hear why. Also, if you are a person that does hiring, I'd like to hear what you think. Would you take an MBA over experience? Or is experience king? Realistically, it will be a year or two before I'm ready to go for it. So that gives me plenty of time to get tips from all sorts of people.
If you have any thoughts, you can leave a comment or contact me.
Deeper in .NET 2008 is 3 days away -- this Saturday! I can't believe it myself. The time has flown by and I'm amazed that everything managed to get worked out. If you haven't already, go register to attend -- you won't be disappointed.
Also, we just made an announcement on Monday that we are adding an Attendee Party after the conference. Just stick around at the hotel for a while and enjoy the food and fun. At the time of this writing, there are only about 40 spots left at the party, so if you want to go, be sure to sign up right away.
You can sign up for both the Deeper in .NET 2008 sessions and the Attendee Party at www.deeperin.net. Tell all your friends, coworkers and clients that they should come. I hope to see everyone there!
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