Lately

I've been a bit spotty the last few months on the blog and in my usual newsgroup and forum participation as well.  What's up with that? In a word, work. I just rolled off of a project that was, in some respects, like no other. It had a very aggressive schedule (not so rare), had a large and diverse team from different corporate cultures (made things...interesting), and posed some rather difficult and interesting technical challenges.

 It has been nine or so months of a lot of hard work, and there is a bunch more work to do, but the foundation is laid (we did good, CoreArch).   If you make it to MEDC 2007, check out a session entitled Building Windows Mobile Applications for Large Scale Deployment and see what I spent my time on (sorry, won't be me presenting, but I'm sure Jay will do a good job).  For the curious, I was the technical architect (and dev lead) on the core architecture team. I would like to give a shout out to the folks who I worked with on this project, in particular some folks I worked really closely with - Ryan, Ryan, Rabi, Megan, Shawn, and Evan - thanks [for so many things],  and I hope our paths cross again. 

So, as I was saying, the months of late nights, long weeks, and even shorter weekends put anything that wasn't work or family on the back burner (ok, family hit the back burner a few times - sorry, dear).  You might say I have some catching up to do.  I've already started hitting the newsgroups again, and the blog will be picking up shortly as well (there ought to be a few posts before Monday..). I certainly have plenty around the house to do to...and that isn't the half of it (we'll get to that). 

This week, I've been on vacation, or, rather, taking_a_week_off_of_work_to_catch_up_on_all_the_stuff_I_neglected_for_the_last_nine-ish_months. It's been a very busy week. I think I need a vacation [from my vacation]. Meh.  I'm doing training next week (primarily for my MCPD EA cert - mandated completion by July 31 for work), and then [had to cancel on the Summit]  I'll be in Seattle for the MVP Summit. I'm really looking forward to the MVP Summit - I'll get to see many of my fellow Device Application Development/Embedded/Mobile Devices MVPs, meet other MVPs, chat with the product teams, and hopefully take in a little of Seattle, a city I enjoy. And not a bad way to earn a few thousand miles (and w00t, I made Delta Gold Medallion on my project).

After I get back from the summit, I'll soon start my new project - which will be local (finally!), and I'll get to work with some really great guys I haven't worked with in a long time.  Unfortunately, due to timing  issues, I will not be able to attend MEDC this year. Most unfortunate, but worth the sacrifice. You can bet I'll be at MEDC 2008. While this next project is not of the mobility sort, I'll be getting my hands on some ASP.NET and .NET 3.0 goodness, and it has a sane schedule. That will allow me plenty of time for writing and blogging and a number of mobility-ish things I have in the queue.  And, I'll be local - which is important.

Important because v2.0 [Ahem!] is currently compiling and should finish in July (25). Frankly, it has been a challenging road for us to get to this point; we've had some builds that broke and some builds that wouldn't even start, but now it looks like we leveraged the right technology and we've got a good one - just taking it day by day.  As a result of the upcoming release of v2.0, I've got even more things to do around the house to prepare for its arrival (you can bet this is fodder for future blog entries). One of these things is that my office is getting moved to..um, tbd (basement, formal living room?). Regardless, I have a finite deadline to move it somwhere else in the house and prepare that room for 2.0. That said, 2.0 (hmm, Two-oh, how about that for a name?) has [finally] made me change some of my priorities, which is a GoodThing. ..and I'm not getting any younger, either.

Stay tuned and enjoy the ride.