Eighteen months ago, I sat down and wrote out a description in bullet points of what my ideal job would be like.  I described my position, the company, and my co-workers.  My previous job had many of those qualities.  It was a good job at a good company, but it wasn't everything I wanted.  I wanted to change things, but they weren't mine to change.

I've been at SafeNet for about 7 weeks now.  I realize that's not that long, but so far it seems like every single bullet point on my description of an ideal job has been satisfied.  Here's my list from June 2010.

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Categories: Professional | Work

If it wasn't for dominoes, we wouldn't have the "domino effect".

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Categories: Professional

The other day I signed up for Vizualize.me.  Once I got over the fact that they misspelled "visualize" it looks like a pretty nifty little service. They make a graphical resume for you, like the one to the right. I'd always wanted my very own personal infographic, and now I have one.

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Categories: Professional

Jason Bock will be speaking at this week's WI .NET Users Group meeting.   Evolutionary programming and computation have been used in the past to produce amazing and unexpected designs, yet a lot people don't know how powerful these concepts are. This session will describe these principles and show how you can use them as you develop .NET code by using LINQ expressions. The meeting is on a special night this week: Thursday, August 11.  More info and registration is at the link abo... [More]
Categories: Community | Professional | UG

So I was wondering something tonight.   What would happen if the worst 10% of people in any given profession found a new line of work?  Would there suddenly be a shortage of programmers, for example, if the worst 10% of all programmers quit their jobs?  Perhaps, but I'd bet that most would not be replaced. So what would happen if the best 10% of people in any given profession mentored someone?
Categories: Professional

I'm rebuilding my computer after a hard drive failure, and I keep running into issues where things I've taken for granted are missing – things such as the "VS Command Prompt Here" Windows Explorer context menu items. Years ago, Scott Hanselman posted INF files to add VS 2005 to the context menu. Using that as inspiration, I've created a version of the file for VS 2008 and another for VS 2010. For what it's worth, I tweaked his VS 2005 file because my copy of VS is installed in "P... [More]
Categories: Development | Work | Technology | Software Projects | Code | Professional

This is the fifth in my "Rules to Live By" series.  Like every other professional, in every other field, over the years I've picked up a lot of things that make my life easier, or better, both professionally and personally.  Most of these things can be summarized in a sentence or two, and I've decided to call them "Rules to Live By".  As much as any other reason, they are here to remind myself of things that I've decided to believe in, even if I don't feel like it one day. RTLB #... [More]
Categories: Business | Community | Personal | Professional | Rules to Live By

In case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t been a very faithful blogger over the last several months.  I wouldn’t say that I’ve abandoned it, because I haven’t, but other things have definitely taken priority. Aside from the typical “family and work distractions”, one thing in particular that has disrupted my blogging is Twitter.  I am much more active on Twitter, and you should follow me there. In the meantime, don’t unsubscribe from the blog just yet.  I have a few posts in mind f... [More]
Categories: Personal | Blogosphere | Professional

Have you ever been in one of those meetings where it seems that everyone in the company is there, even though they don’t need to be?  I think everyone has and it is especially frustrating when you are one of the ones that doesn’t really need to be there. Well, based on a web site I saw a few weeks ago (the link escapes me at the moment), I wrote a little Windows Mobile app that will calculate just how much any given meeting is costing you and your clients. It’s a pretty simple application... [More]
Categories: Development | Work | Technology | Software Projects | Tools | Professional

I have an HTC Windows Mobile phone (touch screen + keyboard).  For the last several weeks, I’ve been using a trial version of Twikini to access my Twitter stream. I really got to like it.  There are a few things I’d like improved.  For example, on refresh it seems to have to get the whole stream and reload it rather than just getting updates since the last request.  Also, it does a timeline refresh after I tweet instead of just adding mine to the list on the client side.... [More]
Categories: Personal | Community | Technology | Blogosphere | Tools | Professional