Step Away From the Keyboard

My career has been undergoing a sea change lately. I am doing much less programming and more SharePoint. Not just SharePoint as a technology but applications/solutions built on SharePoint. Sure I may need a little code to pull something together, but not as much as I once was writing. Not to mention that I am being asked to take on more management responsibilities. On one hand this feels like a bit of a “promotion” on the other hand I feel myself slipping further away from the truly technical side of things. Which is kinda scary.

Up until the last year or so; I have been pretty technical. But now I find those MSDN magazines piling up on the nightstand. I just read some of my favorite programmer blogs and just scan the code. Sure I understand what and why these guys are doing, but I am not doing it myself. I used to be coming up with patterns like this myself and now I just read about them.

Being technical is a great security blanket; don’t like what your doing or where you are doing it? Just leave and go someplace better.

It does not feel like that now; things are starting to pass me by. Ouch. It’s chilly without my binky.

Since I have a lot to learn in this new role, whatever you want to call it; I will probably have to be with my current position for some time while I figure out the patterns for doing this job. Doh! What do you mean I can’t leave? I have to stay and learn this stuff no matter what? Doh! Doh!

MSDN Magazine Part 2

As I was scrolling down through my previous posts; I noticed the one I did about MSDN magazine. The three most recent issues (which all arrived at once) did not have the outside folding cover. I don't pretend that I had anything to do with it, but it does make me wonder if others complained. We may never know.

TechEd: Something new, Something old

I am in Orlando, FL at TechEd. I have not attended that many TechEd conferences in my career; I was mostly a PDC bigot. I think this is my third or forth TechEd conference. There is another guy from my division here who is all of about 25 years old and I can’t help but notice the difference in how we approach the conference. The first thing of note is where each of us is at this moment – about 10pm on Monday night.

I am in my hotel room typing this entry and getting ready for bed. He is out partaking of the different events being sponsored by Microsoft and/or the different vendors here at the conference. I think I heard that there are things going until 1am tonight. There was a time when I would be out until the wee hours, stumble back into my hotel room for a couple hours of sleep and a shower and make the first session of the morning. On more than one occasion I was still a little (OK allot) intoxicated in that first session I have this image that my colleague is doing just that – but I don’t want to incriminate him .

Ahhh, youth.

I tend to go to sessions that fall into one of two categories; either ones on topics that I know very little about or where I want network with the presenter and/or other attendees. My expectation is that any detail I see here I will have forgotten by the time I leave. So I am just trying to get the gist of something. My colleague, on the other hand, seems to be focusing on WPF in hopes that he learns enough to start using it when he returns to the office. Part of the rationale I think is that I have to bring big concepts together and understand paradigm changes; whereas he needs to just bang out code.

Lastly, the food. I just can’t eat that conference food anymore. I am convinced that it’s the reason I ended up sleeping through a couple post lunch presentations. I realize that may be hard to believe after reading that I was still blitzed at breakfast. I have experimented enough with the permutations of this enough to know that the food was certainly the nail in the coffin. I think at 25 I could eat just about anything. Now 15 years later, it’s another story altogether. I think there should be a special dietary line for guys like me – I don’t know what to call it but I know what it would look like. Hey I know what you’re thinking – not it’s not a can of Ensure. It is much lighter; less pasta and meat more vegi’s and sustaining foods; you get the picture.

Anyway, times have certainly changed – at least for me. Maybe I can find the retirement room.