I let February 15th of this year slip by without an update. I guess that simple fact illustrates how little time I still have for blogging these days. Fortunately for all 2 of my readers out there, a significant life event is happening and I wanted to take a moment to write down a few thoughts.

I'm changing jobs.

I haven't done that since 2005. I've been with my current employer for over 8 years! Not only is that a long time in my line of work, but it's also more than half of my 14+ year career. Now, if I sat down with the intention of writing some grand retrospective, then I'd be here for weeks. The point of this post is to just to provide some context to this point in time so that I can look back on it in the future and say either "wow, look what you gave up", or "wow, this was the turning point", or maybe just "hmm, cool". So I'm going to stop writing here and start listing out random bits:

Over the course of 8 years...

I've sat in 3 separate buildings and 4 separate desks:

• Building 1: Desk 1: (on base, no photo)
• Building 2: Desk 1: (photos pending)
• Building 3: Desk 1: Cube
• Building 3: Desk 2: 1, 2
• Building 3: Desk 3: 1, 2
• Building 3: Desk 4: 1, 2

I've worked on 5 different projects (not including lots of little things):

• ESORTS (WebForms, VS 2003/2005, MSSQL 2000)
• EMS (WCF, WebForms, WinServices, WinForms, VS 2005/2008/2010, MSSQL 2000/2005)
• OUID Registry (MVC, VS 2008, MSSQL 2005)
• NRRIF (WCF, MVC, WinServices, VS 2008/2010, MSSQL 2005/2008)
• NRH (MVC, VS 2010/2012, MSSQL 2005/2008)

The following is a random list of work-related things from the past 8 years. I am intimately familiar with most everything in the list right now, so it will be interesting to look back on it in a year or more to see how I feel then, and how much I can recall. The sad part is, the way my mind works, I've probably already forgotten about so many wonderful things to include here. Nevertheless...

• Positive
  • DI
  • IOC
  • NSIS
  • NRRIF (OpsWeb, Publication Manager, Publication Verifier, EDS, EDS Consumer, WSN)
  • COP (NRH, UnitPicker, ARCGIS)
  • EMS
  • Icinga Monitoring
  • Yammer
  • OSQA
  • DKS
  • 5 Choices
  • JPopsuki TV
  • Phil the Philodendron
  • 311
  • Foosball
  • Ultimate
  • Bally Total Fitness
  • P90X
  • PRT
  • Qdoba
  • The Office, BSG Extras, An Idiot Abroad, and at least 3 episodes of Defiance
• Neutral
  • Standing Desk (made it a year!)
  • Unit Testing
  • CAC
  • TFS
  • WIG
  • WWPA
  • EM4
• Negative
  • Two-way SSL
    • Could not establish a trust relationship for the SSL/TLS secure channel.
    • The HTTP request was forbidden with client authentication 'Anonymous'.
  • SIPRNet
  • semi-annual PII training
  • CMMI
  • Work Items
  • Halogen
  • Inspire!
  • JUM

And here's a list of things that I'm extremely excited about with regard to the new job. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out.

• ECMAScript 5 (and maybe 6!)
• HTML5
• CSS3
• AngularJS
• node.js
• That small company feel
• More meaningful work (to me, anyway)

Two old posts from when I started the job that were interesting to read:

• May 8th, 2005: one day before I started (2nd paragraph)
• May 11th, 2005: two days in

Those posts make me want to write more.. from reading about my old Archos MP3 Player, to The Contender, to Malcolm in the Middle, to turning the clock off -- ha! My days speed by so fast these days, I don't even have time to check the clock.

One final thing to mention is that I'm fairly certain a large part of my success with InnovaSystems can be attributed to my friend (and maybe yours), Chris Johnson. Not only was he instrumental in getting me the job, but over the years he has been a consistent source of inspiration and drive. He sang my praises more times than I can count, and not only was he the best boss I've ever had, but one of the best friends I've ever head [sic]. His presence may be the hardest part of leaving this job -- hopefully our paths will cross again in the future.

And with that said... here's to it... the future!