New job, month off, RealWorldWPDev continues

As Phil put it recently: it’s not every day you write this sort of blog post.

A few people have been asking me why there haven’t been any updates on RealWorldWPDev in the last few weeks, and the simple answer is that I was pretty swamped over a particular life decision: changing jobs. They say changing jobs is one of the most stressful things we do in life, and I definitely believe it.

November 30th marked my last day at Triton-Tek after 4.5 years. It was by far the best job I’ve had to date. I got to work with some really great people, on some awesome projects, and made good friends along the way. It was a really tough decision to leave.

What’s Next?

But Chicago is a big city with some great companies and great talent. I would be remiss if I didn’t take this opportunity in my late 20s to explore what else is out there. I’m very excited that on January 5th, 2012 I’ll be joining Clarity Consulting. The first time I met some of Clarity’s WP7 team was back in October 2010, where we were both invited by Microsoft to speak at the Chicago Windows Phone launch party. They have worked on some really impressive software over the years, and I very much look forward to joining a group well known for their talent and passion for leading edge technology solutions.

A Month off

But before all that, I decided to take a month to myself. So I have December off. I’m going to be nerding out. A lot. Many of you have recommended I go on vacation, but with my girlfriend just starting a new job and unable to take time off, she would be pretty bitter if I disappeared somewhere exotic for two weeks. Ultimately, I love coding, and I am honestly very excited to work on code that I want to… for an entire month.

And it’s actually off to a pretty good start, some of which includes…

1. Get the code from my Onion Architecture talk on CodePlex
2. Update DoddleReport to v1.1 with some new features and lots of NuGet goodness
3. Update one of my most trafficked blog posts with a new API and full source code
4. Migrate all my personal projects off TFS and onto Mercurial (I really like Mercurial)
5. RealWorldWPDev parts 6-10
6. Publish the CTA Watch update for Mango and some cool new features
7. Publish the Transit Directions update for Mango
8. Tackle my massive blog backlog
9. Tackle it even more. Seriously, it’s a huge backlog. 20 posts? Ack. Prob won’t get to all of them

I know what you’re thinking: I need time away from the computer. I’ll do that too. I greatly look forward to unwinding back home in Michigan for a week around Christmas!

In closing…

Thanks again to everyone at Triton-Tek for an awesome near half-decade!

Thanks to all of you who read my ramblings on here every few weeks!

Thanks to the Chicago dev Community! Rest assured I will still be fully involved in the local community, probably even more-so.

And come on Nokia, help us get Windows Phone the market attention it deserves