Starting to feel at home

It’s been just over two months at the new gig and I’m starting to feel right at home. It’s that feeling you get when you know everyone’s name (Yup, everyone in the company all 41 of them). When you walk into the office in the morning and spend the first few minutes catching up with the guys.

I work for a company that I’ve been told is one of the best in town. Glad to say, it’s true

The Hybrid Tech Worker

Melle, just had her latest article published. You can find it here.

And yours truly, got quoted in the article

So you want to be a consultant, eh?

A friend of my brother’s emailed me yesterday asking if I could give him any advice / insight into pitching a client for some consulting work, his main interest was in how to price his services. This was to be his first paying client. I started off by writing a short paragraph just to put down some thoughts. That paragraph turned into a rather long and wordy email. I thought it might make for a good blog post. So here it is, a little more refined then original email I’ve sent. I would love to get some feedback on this (good or bad). I’m sure there’s plenty more I can write.

Country Music Television

We’re live! For anyone that’s been wondering what it is that I’ve been doing for the past 3 months or so…. I’ve been working on the next version of the Country Music Television site. I’ve had the opportunity to work a brilliant team of people and have learned a lot, not to mention the fun we’ve been having on this project. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but for now, the site is live! It’s a social networking site for Country Music fans. I invite you all to go and have a quick look.

http://www.cmt.ca

Consulting…

Well, I’ve done it. I have jumped into the exciting and somewhat uncertain world of consulting. As of Monday, I will be fully self employed and working as a .Net consultant. I’m both excited and nervous at the same time. My first contract is for 3 months and then… we’ll have to see.

I’m finding there’s so much to do. Get payroll set up, true up my accounting, I guess I should talk to my accountant first, get my website up and running, get the word out that I’m available starting in Feb 2008, etc, etc,

I have to go and take my daughter to Gymnastics now…

asp.net on Rails?

Came across this today: Subsonic It’ll build your entire DAL (Data Access Layer). So you end up with a typed object representation of your database. Really cool and could save lots of time. It also has Ruby on Rails like scaffolding built right in. I’m about to start using it and will post once I’ve had a chance to put it through its paces.  In the mean time, my praises go out to the Subsonic team for putting together what I think has been a long needed addition to .net.

If anyone has used this already, please let me know what your experience with it has been like.

Welcome Google! and more…

Our favourite search engine folks are moving in next door. So… Welcome to the Research and Technology park Google. Good to have you here

Other things are going up as well. Here’s an article courtesy of Melle.

Google is the latest tenant at UW’s expanding tech park – The Record

Startup Weekend Toronto – Begins

Today at 6pm, Startup Weekend Toronto will kick off. I’m a member of the management team for SW TO and we’ve been working hard for the past few weeks getting organized and trying to put a bit more structure around the weekend then existed at the original event. Are we going too far… who knows… that’s why this is an experiment. If you’re interested in seeing how we do and how the weekend develops, please check the official blog for the weekend. If you’d like to see the product that came out of Boulder weekend have a look at Vosnap.

I will also try and post pictures and other comments on this blog assuming I have the time to do it.

For now, here’s what our facility looks like: Photos

4 days to go

This is my last week here. It’s a bit boring, but hey, I’ll be on to better and more exciting thing soon. I keep hoping I’ll get walked, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.