I'm back. =)

Well it's been a stressful several months, but I want to return to blogging.

In case anyone has been curious as to where I've been, here's the scoop. I am no longer living in Seattle WA, and have moved back home to Charleston SC. I lost the job in Seattle, and my family used that event to trigger the move. Apparently it's been coming for a while - everyone (myself included) was homesick. What followed was a week-long cross-country drive from Seattle to Charleston, during which we towed every earthly possession we could fit into our SUV and a UHaul trailer attacked to the back, along with our two kids, roommate, and a cat. If I have one life experience that I'd like to recommend to everyone, it's that - driving across the country.

After arriving back home, we ended up living at my father in law's house, in the upstairs guest apartment, and have been there since. Last month, he told us that we had to leave by the middle of November - hence my post earlier about needing a job in a month or we'd be homeless. I was fighting a bit of angst when I wrote that, so perhaps things weren't as dire as that (happy Ta?) - but it was getting bad.

But three weeks ago I started a new job - almost 4 months after we returned home. The economy sucks - but I'm glad I held out. I'm working for a large multi-national contracting company that builds *things* for our country's and our ally's militaries. I'm working primarily as a .NET developer, but so far I've been called upon to work with VBScript, VBA, JavaScript, and others, in addition to .NET. So far it's been a blast - I love the people, the diversity of work, and the general atmosphere. I will admit that they've got me a bit on the cheap - this is technically an entry-level position - but I don't mind at all. It pays the bills well, and affords me the opportunity to show that I'm worth a lot more than they're expecting, and so far, so good. :)

I have to be a bit careful with what I reveal on the blog - which is why I'm not naming my place of business, nor will I be talking about specific projects. I'll still talk about MacroCrafter stuff as the opportunity presents - I'm still doing updates, planning new software, etc.

A lot of what I'll be talking about soon will be process-oriented stuff. The team I'm on (which consists of 7 developers and 2 analysts) is largely made up of lone coders looking to build their team experience (which is exactly what I'm here for as well). I think we're going to be creating our own process based on Agile, which makes me happy as it's something I've been wanting the opportunity to get into for a while. One of the major perks of this situation is that I will be in on the ground floor helping to build these processes. I'll write more about this later as developments occur.