Friday, September 17, 2010

Career Move

Last month, a company in Colorado Springs took interest in my experience. After a few phone calls and email exchanges, I flew out to meet with them. We met up in Denver and they drove me out to Colorado Springs for a very casual meeting, then lunch, as they asked me questions regarding my skills. On the drive back to Denver, I was told to talk to my wife and prepare for a decision to relocate. For those of you who know us well know the event that happened 5 years ago this November that brought us back to El Paso. Even though, my wife and I put some thought into this decision, and have opted to leave El Paso for greener pastures.
I accepted the position the end of August, to begin October 1st. Today marks my last week at my current employer and the following week I will be moving to Colorado Springs, aka, “The Springs”. I will be programming for a software company, going back to more Windows development and less web development. Although the primary platform is in VB.Net and C#, the company is over 20 years old and there are still lines of COBOL in their flagship product that needs conversion. I will also be involved with their SaaS (Software as a Service) module and dashboard products they offer their clients, which means I will still be doing some ASP.Net.
The Springs looks beautiful, this was my second time there. My boys are excited about picking up snowboarding and Myriam loves cold weather. I can’t wait to take my baby girl out to the snow and not worry about it melting away by 10 A.M. I will find it challenging to explain to my kids what Medical Marijuana is though. Seems a lot of the technology firms are out there, Oracle, HP, Verizon just to name a few, so it’s a solid decision that we are moving to the right place.
I will leave some unfinished projects in El Paso. I was organizing a GiveCamp, a weekend long event where programmers and IT pros donate their time to develop a web/software solution for non-profit organizations. I was also starting up a .Net and SQL Server User group for El Paso developers and initiating it with a Code Camp, and day long even with workshops and talks on various techniques with .Net. If anyone is interested taking over these project, feel free to email me. I have put many hours into preparation and made many contacts for these projects that are only a hairline away from getting started. I would hate for these projects to be dropped.
So the countdown continues, one week in counting at work, then finish packing and move to the Rockies.

Tuesday, September 07, 2010

Installing Python on Linux

Installing Python on Linux


This is an article I contributed in a series of Hacking and Programming, particularly programming Python in Linux.