The Feeling

Sometimes you get this feeling that you are part of something big. You can feel it underneath you, growing, expanding … consuming. There comes a point where you need to commit. That is where I find myself. I could bail out now and preserve myself, I could end up in the whitewash a horrible mess … or I could ride this wave and experience everything it has to offer.

I am choosing to ride this wave!

(photo credit http://goo.gl/lNqOh)

Hang Flat Panel

As of late (last 9 months) I am not a big TV watcher. However I happen to come back into possession of a TV that I own. And so it was time to get this little baby off the floor and put it where it belongs. You must understand that this was something that I have delayed because it just really didn’t matter. Anyways time to mount the TV. I ordered the wall mount late on a Tuesday night and who coulda guessed that Amazon had a shipping center in Phoenix?? Mount arrived Thursday afternoon!

So very excited to tackle a project and work with my hands I set forth on Thursday night…and it went a little something like this..

CIMG1839

This was the borrowed TV that I had that needed to go.

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Trying out Smunch at Gallo Blanco

I have been getting much more involved into twitter related events lately. Over the last few months I kept seeing references to something called #smunch. Well this time around I was actually in town, had the time to go and knew a few of the tweeps that would be there. Keep in mind when I say knew, I just mean I have conversed with them via twitter.

The event was setup via twtvite. I have seen this used for several events and it is great for tweetups. There was one slight problem I found out later. The event was setup in Mountain Standard Time. Arizona doesn’t use Day Light Savings Time and thus my Google calendar is set to Mountain Standard (Arizona) Time. So I was in downtown Phoenix an hour early. No worries though I just stopped by LUX coffee and ended up running into several friends.

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Shooting Stars

shooting-stars-at-maito-jalisco I have just spent a week on the beach in San Diego. I have only been here a couple times and usually very short trips and usually filled with busyness. So what has this trip done for me? It has made me realize again that sometimes you only get that one fleeting moment to see life at it’s greatest. And when that thing happens you have to be awake(mentally) enough to see it. Further you have to be able to appreciate the little things that life has in store for you.

The closest thing that I can relate it to is a shooting star.

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Change is in the air

If you follow me on twitter you may have noticed a theme over the past several weeks about opportunity, change, risk, etc. Over the past several months I have come across several opportunities and none of them have been the right fit. That is until now.

I started working at my current job with Take Charge America a little over a year ago. Now it is time for this to come to an end so that a new chapter in my professional career can begin. I really love the fact that I have nothing bad to say about my current employer, they have been awesome to me and I couldn’t have asked for anything more.

So if my job is so great why change? Mostly because the new opportunity presents three key factors that I just couldn’t pass up. Growth, freedom and compensation. I will be working on a new project from the ground up, literally we will be putting together the development/test/source control environments in the coming weeks. Also it will be done in C#/ASP.NET which is my strongest skill set right now. Further it keeps with my strong belief in web applications. We will be creating a web app to replace a desktop application that is currently installed in 4 different states. I have always believed in the zero footprint nature of web applications and will be working for a company that feels the same way. Freedom, once all the initial planning and design process has taken place I will be able to work remotely a large percentage of the time which will also allow me to travel while working. Compensation, it never hurts when there are more digits in your paycheck 🙂

So wish me luck, there is incredible risk in the move I am making but with that comes great possibilities!

ship

“We rest here while we can, but we hear the ocean calling in our dreams, And we know by the morning, the wind will fill our sails to test the seams, The calm is on the water and part of us would linger by the shore, For ships are safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.”

Which Web Browser is the Best

This is more involved than just picking one for me. I converted to using Firefox exclusively years ago. And this had been a perfect solution for me up until last year.

Firefox has a couple of plug-ins that I just can’t live without. Firebug and IE Tab. Many times I will use Firebug to dig into other websites to see how they are building their pages or what technology it is based on. IE tab is a great way to verify cross browser compatibility when developing a site.  I have found if I just build my UI in Firefox it is usually only a few steps away in IE, however the reverse is almost never true. IE tab also allows me to run my Windows Home Server (WHS) in several tabs. This results in running multiple Remote Desktop Sessions (RDP) some physical some virtual.

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