My Tulsa DNUG presentation description:

From the Agile Manifesto: Responding to change over following a plan. From the manifesto's 12 principles: Welcome changing requirements, even late in development and Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.

Code that works to enable those three statements is code that I refer to as agile code. We'll talk about writing that kind of code by working through a simple example pulled from the book Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C# by Robert Martin.

Like my last presentation, I burned through this lightning fast. And once again, people started opening up and turned the night into a great meeting. I'm not too surprised since it seems any topic that has anything at all to do with Agile brings out passion in people. It was a fun group and I'm glad they invited me over.

Oh, and what was my favorite quote of the night? "You can't cure stupid". Pure awesome!

See the code I used in the presentation here.

My Fort Smith DNUG presentation description:

Service Oriented Architecture has been a buzz word for a while now and gets talked about all the time. However, I see very few presentations targeting the developer and what he/she should be doing in code as an SOA advocate. In this presentation we surface an old and well known design pattern called the Gateway. When developing applications that talk to other applications (or pull data straight out of their databases!), this pattern can save your bacon at worst and at best will give you a clear and easy to see delineation between your app and external systems.

I actually burned through the presentation rather quickly and for a moment thought the whole thing was going to be a dud. And then people started opening up with comments and questions and I'd say the night turned into a huge success. Awesome group to present in front of. Thanks for the invite!

See the code I used in the presentation here.

This week I start my first gig as a software consultant thanks to Megan Coger with TEKsystems. I'll be working with TD Williamson for approximately a month. Couldn't have asked for a better start. They're located in Tulsa, but I'll be working 100% remote and they were fine with my working a slightly shorter day - a six hour day working 9-3. That rocks!!

The interesting thing about this is what it took last week to set this up. You might recall that I started a business called Iroh Services. Originally, I had just created the LLC and was just going to leave it at that which would have made it a disregarded entity in the IRS's eyes and I would have simply been a sole proprietor. In order to work with TEK though, I needed to be a W-2 employee - either of theirs or of my company. So the scramble began! I talked with a lawyer and my accountant and eventually got everything going and all the paperwork done. So now I, Rob Tennyson, am an employee of a company called Iroh Services, which I also happen to own. It turns out both the lawyer and the accountant like it better this way anyway because the delineation between me the person and my company is much more solid now.

As things were being printed, signed, scanned, and emailed back and forth, I remember saying at one point, "I never realized how fun this working-for-myself-thing would be!" :) Truth be told though, it was kind of fun. It feels completely different doing admin crap like that when you know exactly how important it is. This is compared to the admin crap I used to do where I just knew it was a worthless waste of my time.

All in all, I'm really looking forward to getting started. I love zen-like days of pumping out code and I think that's exactly what this contract is going to be.

I've officially been unemployed for two weeks now (today starts the third week). In that time I've created a DBA, created an LLC with the state of Arkansas, gotten an EIN for that LLC, and I've put out the initial website for the company. Nothing sexy and definitely not the final version, but I of course needed to grab the domain name and wanted something there other than just a godaddy parked page. And just for kicks, I put it in Azure even though I don't need the scale and I'm not even using the storage. I did this for two reasons. First I wanted the experience and nothing teaches better than using something for real. I plan on adding content management features and things that while unnecessary for a simple web presence website, will provide richer Azure experience. The second reason is because I read about changes they are about to implement to make it much more affordable for small time websites and businesses. A great move on their part if they want developers to start playing with it and becoming advocates.

What business name did we decide to go with? Iroh Services

Iroh is from our favorite Avatar character, Uncle Iroh. Everyone in the family is a huge fan of the cartoon and we all love the zen-like uncle and his hedonist ways.

Of course the business is really just for accounting and liability safety when I do consulting. My real goal of becoming a micro-ISV has been on my mind and has occupied the vast majority of my time with research and grand pondering. I've had several friends offer their thoughts and software ideas and am still thinking of getting into a large project with my uncle and cousin. Nothing as of yet has really set me on fire though and I'm apparently brain dead when it comes to coming up with my own software project ideas. Still hopeful.

The freedom has completely rocked. I love dropping my daughter off at 8:30 instead of 7:15 and picking her up at 4:30 instead of 5:30-6:00. I'm also home when my oldest gets off the bus around 4:00 which is way cool. Originally I was going to pick up the little one early enough to have both of us home by the time the bus arrives, but she kept getting on to me about missing afternoon activities - especially the case on dance and soccer days. That's cool though - we're still home before the 5:00 traffic hits and our evenings seem so much longer now.

Regardless of coolness though, money will have to start flowing soon. Guess I'll get back to my grand ponderings :)

Remember last December when I wrote the post titled New Job about this incredibly awesome opportunity I was really excited about? Here I am less than a year later saying goodbye already. My last day with Microsoft is September 9th.

I truly believe an ADM and the PSfD organization as a whole to be a valuable investment for companies with development staff, but it's just not for me personally. Though it is a highly technical position and I did some code-centric work, I would say it is dominantly managerial and it contains a great deal of support responsibility. I've always claimed that I could never be a manager and I don't think I'm cut out for providing support. Maybe it's my near zero empathy score - don't know. Maybe I've found my level of incompetence! Most importantly though, I really miss just being a developer.

At first I thought about moving around inside the company. I thought I'd look for a development position that would allow me to work remotely since I'm anchored to the area (willingly). After all, Microsoft is an excellent company to work for. Great pay, great benefits, and it's full of extremely smart people who are also fun to be around (for you social types). In the end though, the wife and I decided this would be the perfect time for me to chase dreams. Dreams of working for myself and becoming a Micro ISV.

I'm not entirely sure at this point how I'm going to accomplish this, but I'm going to give it a go. In the beginning I'll be an independent contractor and take jobs as I find them to help financially. Mostly I'm going to be doing a lot of research and investigating a few ideas. Oh, and when I don't have a contract, I'm going to pick up my youngest daughter earlier and hopefully be home when my oldest gets off the bus. Might even make supper for the wife if she can stomach it.