The Goodbye Caboose

The blog has been pretty barren the last while but last week I made a pretty big decision and submitted my resignation to my current employer, Canadian Pacific Railway. I had been with CP since 1996 (my 10 year anniversary would be April 1, 2006) and it was the longest I was with an organization (previously I was at H&R Block for 3-4 years). Many opportunities came up over the years, but I stayed loyal to the railway. Finally an opportunity and circumstances came up that I couldn't pass on. It was a tough and hard decision but the right one for me.

It's been a great time with CP and I've done a lot of amazing things over the years and moved the IT department in some pretty interesting directions. As CPR is primarily a railway, it's hard to actually get the business to buy into this whole technology thing (don't even ask me about introducing Agile to a Railroad) but I was pretty instrumental in getting the organization to adopt new versions of software the same year it was released (yes, sounds silly but it actually was a challenge). CPR was the home where I was exposed to and introduced SharePoint (I'm sure they'll hate me for that) and it was a fun place to write software that controlled 120-ton trains and the track they run on (yeah, you can feel worried at railroad crossings now that you know who's software is behind them).

Anyways, I'm off now into the wild after almost 10 years to bigger and better things and will be working in the private sector doing SharePoint and .NET Architecture and Consulting for a variety of clients. New daemons to battle, new technologies to conquer, new Microsquishy people to badger, and new expense budgets to blow. Hope the next 10 years are as fun as the last 10 were (at least I won't be crashing any trains anytime soon).