Holiday time

Working part time creating a wiki for technical documentation and going to school has kept me busy this Fall, but the holidays will provide some enforced time off to spend looking into some subjects I just haven't had time to explore. My current plan is to spend time experimenting with Spring and Hibernate. I have been interested in Spring for some time, but haven't had the opportunity at work or the time outside of work to do anything about it. Working with Spring will be my gift to myself for the holiday season!

I have a friend in California who may have a job for me that I can do remotely, and I have to return a call to a recruiter who may have an opportunity for me to pursue. All-in-all, not a bad way to end the year, so my spirits are higher than they've been for a while. That's always a good thing when you're looking for work!

Starting the New Year Right

This past April found me out of work for the first time in years. I had been a Java developer at GE Healthcare (formerly IDX Systems). I loved working with my team there - not only because of how wonderful they are as people, but because the process we used was based upon collaborative design and implementation.

We'd design solutions for complex problems, create test cases and code based upon that design, and meet for quick scrum/stand-up meetings so that we'd stay on top of issues and problems that might interfere with meeting our deadlines. Peer reviews and unit testing helped us raise the quality of the software we produced.

I know that things don't stay the same forever, and have heard that with outsourcing and changes in management, and after all the layoffs that occurred this past year, the collaborative work methodology is somewhat less than what it used to be there.

I just hope I can find a place to share what I know, and learn what I don't in an environment that is conducive to learning, growing and solving real problems with quality software solutions.

I suppose that I will soon find out if that's too much to ask.