Successful Teams

I have been on successful teams in my career. I have tried to analyze why we were successful. My teams worked well together. I knew everyone's strengths and I had really good clients. But this article does a very good job explaining management's view of a team. Let me know what you think.

Update

Just finished my third class working toward my master degree. I think I did OK. I got A's in my first two classes. Hope to get the same in this last one.

My beliefs

I consider myself a conservative atheist. I looked it up once and found that I am in the smallest group. Smaller than liberal theists. I also try to be a good skeptic which is hard as I some come across as a cynic. The atheist part is obvious but the conservative part bears some explanation. I view conservatism as being responsible for your actions and not expecting anyone else to bail you out. I also follow reciprocity. This is not quite the Golden Rule but I treat others as they treat me. I like small government and free markets. I guess I lean a bit Libertarian, too.

Jobs Lost and Gained

Well, I was laid off twice from USWest/Qwest/Dex Media/R. H. Donnelley, Inc. and now I am working as a contract programmer for National Renewable Energy Laboratories.

I was out of work for six months the first time since I was in college. It was a new experience for me. I was pretty depressed for a long time. I finally got a gig through a former co-worker. That one lasted for 5 months. I still do little stuff on the side for them. It only took me 3 weeks to get my new gig.

Now two pay cuts later I am coding in Java 6 with Hibernate and Google Web Toolkit. I picked these up in my last job. Not a bad bit of refactoring, if I do say so myself.

I, like many others, decided to go back to school to get my masters degree. I thought I might get an MBA but I couldn't take all of the touchy-feely stuff. I am now in my second class for an Master of Information Services degree. Should finish in 2010.

I also started playing World of Warcraft (WOW) during my six months off. A very good waste of time. Have a few friends on WOW from my days at Dex.

We also get together semi-weekly for a game of Dungeons & Dragons. I run a 3.5 campaign while my friends alternates with a 4.0 campaign. I really enjoy getting together with the guys.

Well, I guess that was a good update.

Welcome to my refactoring

I have set up this blog to chronicle the refactoring of myself. As Martin Fowler says, "Refactoring is the process of changing a software system in such a way that it does not alter external behavior of the code yet improves its internal structure." I want to improve my internal structure though this may result in changes to my external behavior.

I guess I should tell you about myself. I am middle-aged approaching 50. I was a computer programmer until the spring of '07. At that time my job was out-sourced and now I am a Technical Analyst at the same company. This works as I have extensive connections and knowledge of our business and its people. I have been married for more than 20 years. I have a daughter that is about to graduate high school and start college. I live in the mountains outside of Denver, Colorado in a nice house that overlooks a wide valley.

My interests are numerous. I love to read sci-fi and fantasy as well as science and technology. I enjoy watching nature and the weather. Stormy weather gets my heart racing. As I said before I was a computer programmer by profession. So I am interested in computers and the internet. I also play role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons.

I guess I am one of the rare atheist conservatives in the world. I will talk more about this later.

I find myself not motivated to pursue projects, play games or even read, lately. I need to get myself together so I can move on.

I have started leaning the Ruby programming language. I hope this will stimulate my energies again. I have also started investing in small cap stocks. Stocks are full of ups and downs. It can't help but get me excited.

I hope you will read my blog and offer advice. Thanks.