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New Job with McKesson and Other News
Its been a very long time since my last post, but here I am again at last. I just started a new job with McKesson this week as an ASP.NET Architect, where I'll be working on internal tools to support sales and marketing. McKesson is currently 18th on the Fortune 50 list, being the largest health-care company, and I'll be working in their Alpharetta, GA, office. I'm very excited about this change, both for the short-run and long-term, and I'm calling this a birthday present to myself since I just turned 40. I still believe Mimsware to be the best Atlanta-based consulting company, and I highly recommend them, but I decided I wanted a more permanent role. And McKesson isn't just any company -- they are also big enough that I can make a career with them and still find opportunity for change if I desire. Its also a pleasant drive for me, taking back-roads from Woodstock, GA, although its a big change for myself and my family to not work from home.
So that explains this post, but what have I been doing since the last one? I suppose the easiest explanation is to simply say that I've been living! My focus has very much been my family, and much less on being a tech guru, which was only a coincidence due to having lots of time a few years ago. My wife Jenny is still cancer-free, and now reconstructive surgery is done, but earlier this year there was a tough time dealing with a reconstructive surgery that didn't heal which led to a much bigger surgery than expected. But she's fine now and back at her job as a nurse in a cardiac cath lab. Meanwhile, my kids are growing -- Tori is 10 and still enjoys dancing, while Zack is 9 and enjoys video games, and both stay busy with friends. We also got a Wii, which is finally a game system we all can play together -- and I count it as real exercise in air-conditioning with no allergens! I got Mario and Sonic Olympics for my birthday and even got a little sore.
So what about the latest MS technology and my own endeavors like my O/RM? I never set out to spend time on forums or to create a popular O/R Mapper -- I simply had a lot of free time several years back that I used wisely. I love learning new technology, and I like to build something real that is useful to myself as part of that process, which is how it all started out. I then discovered that others also found things I did very useful, which encouraged me to do even more, but then my O/RM took on a life of its own. I found that I was no longer just learning or making something for myself, instead I was adding features for others and doing a lot of support also. So Brian DeMarzo has taken my O/RM open source, and I'm just going to once again play with the latest MS stuff, like Linq to Sql and MVC for ASP.NET. I may yet build something I think is useful enough to share with others, or at least learn enough for a new post, but if I don't then that's OK too.