I made some major changes over the last year.

###I changed jobs. People do this all the time. I don’t. I spent 8 great years with the last company I worked for. I think the world of them. We simply had different visions for my future. They wanted me to go into a software dev managment sort of role. That did not appeal to me. I like building things and solving problems. We parted ways as friends, which I’m pretty proud of. Not only because of the amicability of the parting, but because I recognized its necessity, and was willing to get out of my comfort zone to stay happy.

###I completely changed my tech. I mean completely. I am an .net enterprise architect. I have delivered large- scale custom applications to fortune 500 companies. I used ASP.Net, MVC, EF and really enjoyed it. Heck, I even managed to wrangle SharePoint 2010 into a passable externally-facing customer portal.

Even so, I felt that I wasn’t learning very much, and that there was a lot more out there. I had played around with Ruby and Ruby on Rails producing the StuffSimple site. But I knew I was barely scratching the surface. With the changes at work looming, I decided to make the change and jump on the open source wagon.

I talked to a friend who had already made the leap, and as he was working with some people I already knew, I asked to come aboard. They agreed, and here I am today.

Now my toolset is very different:

  {
    :studio         =>      :vim,
    :dotnet         =>      :ruby,
    :xml            =>      :json,
    :typed          =>      :dynamic,
    :iis            =>      :unicorn_and_nginx,
    :gui            =>      :linux_command_line
  }

The list goes on, but needless to say, I have had a steep learning curve, and I love it.

###My plans for the coming year ####Learn More It’s my key personal key to happiness. It’s what keeps me going. I plan to tackle a functional language of some sort. Probably Clojure.

####Write More Music It’s something I enjoy very much. I need to do more of it.

####Stay Active I did a fairly good job last year, but I need to keep it up. This is that reminder.

####Cultivate Voiceovers Last year was pretty good, but I can do better. I would love to get on a cartoon, or an audible book gig. Let’s see if I can do that this year.

####Spend more time with family and friends Game night. Let’s do this.

####Finish StuffSimple I have a working implementation, but it’s using dated tech. I want to revamp it with all the stuff I’ve learned over the last year.

It’s going to be exciting! I wish you many joys and triumphs in the coming year! Happy 2013 all!