This last year has been huge for me after buying our
first home and leaving my full-time job to start my own consulting
business. I am going to review some
highlights before setting some goals for the new year.
We saw in the new year in Williamsburg, Virginia where
Melissa's cousin was getting married.
Unfortunately our departure back to Chicago was hampered by typical
holiday delays and we ended up being re-routed.
After the physical therapy for my ankle tendonitis, I
joined Team in Training in January to train for the San Diego marathon, based
on my success the previous year in San Francisco. We trained through the bitter cold with our
eyes on June 3rd. The organization
raises money for Leukemia and Lymphoma so imagine my surprise when a week after
I signed up we discovered my wife's Niece had developed Acute Lymphoblastic
Lymphoma at the age of 3. It made me
even more resolved to succeed and I began my fundraising effort to generate
$3,900.
I received my Green Card in February after 7 years of
immigration turmoil. It was such a
relief to finally be able to stay in the country I call home.
In February the Chicago Flickr Meetup Group finally
opened the gallery show we had been working on called Digitally Entwined.
As the founder of the group I took the lead role in executing Bernie's
great idea and 15 of us put together an opening night that drew a croud of over
300 people. The artwork was outstanding
and several people were able to sell some work.
I also attended the Frameworks conference in DC in
February where I got to spend quite a bit of time with the Webapper guys. Later in the year this resulted in the contract
offer that allowed me to leave my job and become an independent
consultant. The conference was fantastic
and sent me back to Chicago with a head full of ColdSpring and many good
things.
I ran a personal best at the Shamrock Shuffle 8k in
March, finishing in 39:03. We've just signed up for the 2008 race so I can try to beat my time. Realistically though after 3 months of 50 hour work weeks with no training I'll be happy to finish.
In April I received an intriguing email from recruiter at
Google and began a 2 month mini-marathon interview process culminating with a
flight to San Francisco, a day of interviews and some waiting. The Googleplex was a fascinating place and
the recruiter Ryan took me for lunch in the acclaimed cafeteria and a couple of
games of pool. I had 4 phone screening
interviews over the period and after the onsite meeting I waited a little over
a week before I finally heard that the company had changed direction and were
no longer hiring for the position. This
came as a bit of a shock and as my wife put it at the time "it felt like
we'd been dumped". We'd put a lot
of eggs in the Google basket and even planned to move out to San Francisco if
it came off so it was a big family decision to do it. After a few weeks of sulking I turned around
and decided that we should make some changes, starting with buying our first
house to put roots down in Chicago and ultimately to plan to resolve my work
situation where I had been frustrated.
June was a big month starting with the completion of the
San Diego marathon five hours and forty-nine seconds. It was nearly an hour slower than my San
Francisco time and resulted in some more ankle pain. It was great to finish despite the heat and I
spent the rest of the month limping around.
I gave a presentation to the attendees at Web Content 2007 where my
Google Technologies presentation received top marks despite a line-up including
Jason Fried and Salim Ismail. Shortly
after that conference I flew to DC with three other Duo employees to attend CF
United 2007. Another great conference
filled with exciting ideas and excellent tutorials even if I did end up being
coerced by my co-workers to sit in the dunk tank.
By July my ankle was fully recovered and Melissa and I
were training for the Chicago distance classic - a half marathon and my wife's
longest race ever. We trained throughout
July and into August when finished together in two hours twelve minutes,
holding hands as we crossed the finish line.
We had an incredibly relaxing week in Cape Cod where Melissa's family
had rented a house and I even got to see humpback whales breaching. It was a nice break after all the house
hunting we had done and brought us back energized and we found the place we
wanted to buy. We signed the contract
later in September and moved in September 29th.
A week before we moved I received a call from Nat at Webapper asking if
I was available for a contract. After
mulling it over and working out if we could afford to do it, I handed in my
notice and accepted the 3 month contract, starting one week before we moved
house! It has always been my dream to do
this but the Google situation, growing frustration at the office and finally
having a green card all resulted in the big move. The day after we moved I spoke at CFUnited
Express on Amazon S3 and EC2.
During November I spoke twice to the ColdFusion online
meetup group about Amazon S3 and EC2, splitting my CFUnited Express
presentation to allow me to go into more detail. Later in the month we headed back to
Manchester, England for thanksgiving. I
know that we don't celebrate thanksgiving in England but my Mum made a turkey
and we celebrated anyway, including teaching my Nieces to draw turkeys by
tracing the outline of their hands. I
met my new Nephew Archie for the first time on this trip and we also made it to
Birmingham and Todmorden to meet the new babies that had meant my two good
college friends Kirsty and Taanya missed our wedding. Beautiful children all round and I even got a
little broody myself!
December flew by as my contract with Webapper came to an
end I was accepted to speak at CFUnited for June 2008. We spent the holidays in Boston and came back
in time to celebrate New Year's Eve (and our five years of knowing each other
anniversary) at a friend's house after some Singstar karaoke.
What is in store for 2008? Some things I already know like the CF United
presentation and I have been asked to be a mentor for the early bird Chicago
Marathon Team in Training group. We'll
be starting later this month and will ramp up slowly over the next nine months
to get ready to run the marathon here.
I'll know for certain in the next week or so but I'm really excited to
be able to help other people raise money and train for their first
marathons! My personal goal for the race
is to beat my 4:06 personal best but if the weather is as hot as the last
Chicago marathon I think I'll just be happy surviving the race!
Now my Webapper contract is over I have been working on
some other projects but my goal is to find another short to medium term
contract around the three month mark. In
the last 3 months I've been working 50 hour weeks between my clients but without
the contract I'm down to about 60% utilization in the coming month so if anyone
has any projects they need an experienced hand with, let me know! I've been using my spare time to learn Flex
to broaden my skills. The Webapper
contract I was the CF and DB guy writing the service layer for a Flex front end
and it certainly gave me a better appreciation for the potential of Flex. I worked in a vacuum, using test driven
development to build CFCUnit tests before coding each method and using those to
gauge my success with no interface to refer to initially. This is a practice I want to pursue in the
new year and continue to work with Cruise Control for continuous builds and
test execution.
We donated all the books we had in storage we had read
between Christmas and New Year so my goal for this year is to read the 26
fiction titles that remain. At one every
two weeks it will definitely be a challenge but I think I can do it. I just need to finish the last two Harry
Potter books first. My last goal is to
beat my wife at Singstar. We bought the
Singstar 80s game after Christmas and have been addicted ever since. It's essentially Karaoke for your living room
but you are scored on your performance based on pitch and timing. I have only managed to beat Melissa at
Blondie's Heart of Glass using a falsetto voice so I'm desperate to improve to
save my dignity ;-)
