A Geek's Life...

...is never easy. Always having to stay on top of the latest and greatest technologies while not letting the old ones go to rust may be the thing that drives more people out of the field of technology than anything else (offshoring and downsizing are probably right up there with it, though).

So, after my bicycle and I got banged up back in August, I decided it was time for me to get out of any job that required me to lift greater than 50 pounds of metal and silicon over my head on a regular basis. My company was "re-on-shoring" at the time and building out a new software development team in my office so an opportunity as a Systems Engineer for the product development group opened up and I took it.

Many of the skills and much of the knowledge that I have from my old IT days comes in handy on a very regular basis, but there's so much more on top of that stuff that I need to add to my repertoire. I learned Java back in 1997, but haven't used it much since, so a refresher is due. Websphere, SOAP, DB2, MS SQL, Weblogic...all of these things need to fill my head in some meaningful way - and quickly! - in order for me to succeed at my job.

Luckily, I am the sort of masochist that likes this type of challenge, so I'm digging in deep and fast. As I begin to form some coherent thoughts and put them into words, some future posts are sure to follow on the world of J2EE architectures....

Until then, try not to die. ;)

While I'm Silent Here...

I've been awfully busy elsewhere. Check out Manitou Art. It's my first Flash site, which I'm building for my wife (she designed it all in Photoshop and I'm publishing it with Flash). While I find Flash pretty intuitive, things can take a lot of time. I can sit down and start work on a gallery, feel like things are going smoothly and quickly, only to turn around and find that while I've been working my cat passed away from old age, wife left me for another man and I've grown a beard that's touching the floor. Gotta watch out for that in the future....