Props to Palermo (and yet more ch-ch-ch-ch-changes...)
To coincide with the one-year anniversary of receiving my MCSD (which I owe 100% of the motivation for to J Michael Palermo and Interface Technical Training, who required I get it) and the departure I'm making in just a little while back into the consulting world, I have decided to change the tagline for this blog.
Here's the story:
I respect JMP. He's a cool guy, one whom I consider a spiritual leader in my life, and an all-around excellent friend. Last year, we embarked on the creation of a new design for the Interface web site (link above). At some point he tasked me with an element of development for the site that allowed me to use this nifty combination of System.Security.Principal.IPrincipal and a nice touch of the Decorator pattern. Of course, I went nuts on the project and overengineered the whole architecture to account "for just about anything we might ever need." I'm not sure if he's using this stuff, but it was pretty comical when, 30 minutes or so following the requiremental provision, I checked it into SourceSafe and sent him a note to let him know that it was done. A few moments later, JMP walked over, shook his head, and got his wits about himself (if you've not seen him do this in meetspace, it's a site to behold - he opens his mouth, closes his eyes, raises a finger in the way only an MCT can, and then stops for a moment to contemplate just how he wants to say what it is he has to say). Then, he comes out with something that forever inspired me and changed the focus of my developmental paradigm:
"You are the quintessential street developer. You get a task, and you just sit down and do it. And it works. Not only for the requirement you built it to solve, but basically, for every requirement that it might ever need to solve in that general department. I love that about you."
We then went on to discuss how his "way" is more polished, more managerial, more UML-saavy and businesslike. Which is good. We need people like that to rope us in from time to time. And how I, on the other hand, pull up my bootstraps, accept each requirement as a new challenge, and sit there, coding briskly and furvishly, until it's wrapped up and deployed. It was, to say the least, one of those defining moments in everyone's lives that forever changes your focus, alters your perception, and modifies your direction.
Kind of like today will be, when I - like Chris - will be tenuring my resignation from corporate America, to return to the world of consulting, developing, and coding.
Ah, where I need to be!