I've been a software developer for almost 7 years now. To say I've had a good run at it would be an understatement (both financially and via life satisfaction)...I have no college degree, and learned most of my trade both on the job and in my spare time. Computers are one of the few fields where you can rise quickly through pure hard work and dedication without the requirement of a degree. With the proliferation of online communities and blogging, getting networked in to make even more of a name for yourself and over the years I've met some amazing people via blogging and communities. So why the title of this post?

I've decided to move on.

*pause for effect*

So what would possess someone with so much time and energy invested in his career to walk away from close to 6 figures a year, reasonable working hours, and a good working environment? The answer really isn't that simple actually and is the culmination of several different factors. And to be honest, I'm not exactly walking away from anything. Over the years, I've gained experience that can never be taken away, and computers will always be one of my main passions...there's no way I could have gotten to where I am today if they weren't. Everything I've learned will be easily transferable to my future endeavors. The short answer is that people change over time. What they want out of life changes, their goals and desires that they strive for. I've been in this business in some way shape or form since I was in my early twenties, and what I wanted out of life then is completely different than what I want now at age 30. Having a stable desk based job was great, but about 2 years ago I noticed myself getting restless, going in to work day after day, watching the months roll by...and unfortunately I started to grow discontent with both my career and the industry as a whole. Again, things change over time...what makes a person happy today may not necessarily make them happy 5 years from now.

So needless to say that after 2 years of more or less just going through the motions of the daily grind, I came to the incredibly hard decision that it's time for a change. Cube life just doesn't suit me anymore. Staring into a computer monitor for 9 hours a day has taken its toll, and after a lot of soul searching and talking to dozens (if not hundreds) of folks both in this business and otherwise the choice became pretty obvious: It was time to exit stage right more towards the top of my career rather than let my growing disinterest and restlessness start to jeopardize my future endeavors. So that's what I've done.

My relationship with my former employer has been severed and as of now I am out of the world of Corporate IT. I'm back in school fulltime working towards my B.A. Chemistry (which was my original major way back when I wanted to be a physician or a chemist, pre dotcom boom). I'll also be pursuing more of my creative interests as well, such as music and music production by taking classes related to those disciplines. I'm still young, and now is the time when there aren't other pressing obligations that would prohibit such a radical lifestyle change. The end goal as of now is either medical school, or post graduate work in Chemical Engineering. Outside of computers, chemistry and music were my biggest passions. The dotcom era steered me away from them...and while it was an amazing experience it is time to get back to my roots. That's not to say that I won't be doing any moonlighting...a complete severance might be too severe, but for now the main focus is school. If I bust my ass, I can have my B.A. in 2 years. I'll do a year here at the local university, and will then transfer to UNC to complete my B.A.

So how will this transition affect my blog, and any loyal readers I have left? That I don't know, but there will definitely be some changes in the direction of my writings. The lack of content over the past 2 years compared with previous time periods should be a pretty good indication of my growing discontent with the software industry. I'm sure I will still make technical posts from time to time as I still have several hobby projects I'm working on, but any content related to the business of software and Corporate IT will surely be few and far between, if at all. Seeing as school will be my number one priority, I'm sure content related to my Chemistry endeavors will begin once I start my major coursework. This will not become a student blog, but the focus from .Net and software development will surely change to more science and music. I realize I'll lose some readers in the process, but I also hope to start getting in touch with a new audience as well. Hell, maybe just stick around to keep tabs on my progress if you'd like. It promises to be an amazing journey, and knowing me, a very interesting one as well.

I will still be lurking around in areas such as Community Server, as well as reading most of your blogs in the little spare time I'll have going forward. I don't think I would have been half the developer that I was without having read your posts and gotten to know you over the past few years...I attribute much of my success to the circle of friends I've made through this blog and other communities. You guys know who you are, and you pushed me to be a better developer, and to give back whatever I could in the process. I'll be keeping up with you guys throughout this journey.

So that's it. Or is it? The only thing that is changing is my focus and where my efforts are directed. If I was able to accomplish what I did in the software industry, I have confidence in myself that my future endeavors should be equally as rewarding. I have had some amazing times in the software biz, and have learned more than I ever thought my tiny brain could handle. While cubicle life ultimately took its toll on me, I wouldn't trade any of it for anything else. Now at age 30 because of my years in the industry, I feel I'm better equipped for this new path than I ever could have been had I not pursued computers...I'll always be incredibly grateful for that.

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As of this coming Monday (7/7/2008) I am a college student once again. I am taking 6 hours worth of classes here at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 2nd summer session.

I also have other huge news to write about, but everything isn't quite nailed down yet so I don't want to jump to any foregone conclusions only to perhaps have to retract them later on. More than likely, things are going to be taking a very new direction around here though. Stay tuned.

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After several years of minimal upgrades, the highly acclaimed Western Digital Raptor has gotten a serious upgrade: Enter the WD VelociRaptor, which wasn't supposed to be released to the masses until mid June but is available now over at Newegg. I've been a subscriber to Jeff Atwood's line of thinking for a long time now...that hard drive speed is the single most important factor in the overall speed of a machine and therefore should not be skimped on. Buy the fastest drive you can afford as your main boot drive, and then just buy a larger/slower/cheaper drive to stuff all of your data in.

Regardless of what line of reasoning you subscribe to, there is simply no reason not to buy one of the new VelociRaptor drives if you can afford it. I got mine in the mail earlier this week and decided to run a simple benchmark using HD Tune on it versus my older SATA I 150 gigabyte Raptor. Most of the hardware sites are claiming about 35% better performance, however that's not what I'm seeing:

Old School Raptor (SATA I 150 gigs):

New School VelociRaptor (SATA II 300 gigs):

As should be pretty apparent, these numbers show a much better gain than 35%. I ran the tests several times to make sure I was hallucinating Of course real world usage is a completely different story, but the cold hard numbers don't lie...the new VelociRaptors are beating my older Raptor by more than 50% in each category. And yes, my machine definitely feels a lot faster now as well. Boot time is down by 15-20 seconds (well under a minute to desktop now), applications fly to life when double clicked, games load in about half the time. The most amazing thing about this drive is that they got all of this extra performance using 2.5" platters. The drive may look pretty beefy, but 70% of that surface area is actually just a heatsink with the drive itself situated in the middle. Of course it being so small means it's completely silent as well. I use sound dampening in my case (rubber grommets), but the older Raptor could reach aircraft carrier levels during I/O intensive operations.

Expensive? Yes. Bleeding edge? Certainly. The best upgrade for your machine for the money? Absolutely. If you've got 300 bucks laying around and want to see noticeable performance improvements in your machine, this is a no-brainer.

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Three years ago, a friend of my family's teenage son was diagnosed with cancer, and was given fairly bleak chances of making it through the ordeal. It was a crushing blow to the family. For the full story, read the ESPN piece on Mason (he's the last story). Mason would go on to conquer the cancer inside his body, and has been cancer free for a couple of years now. Against all odds. And it was during this time that he reached out to one of my idols, Lance Armstrong...the 2 had a bit of dialogue during the ordeal, and would eventually meet in real life.

It was during one of his meetings with Lance that Mason came up with the idea for drumSTRONG, whose mission is simple: To beat the shit out of cancer, and raise awareness through drumming. Each year they've upped the ante just a little bit: The first year was 24 continuous hours of drumming, up to this year which was 26 straight hours. A secondary goal was to get into the Guinness World Record book for having the longest continuous group drumming event. I'm sure we succeeded on both fronts.

I personally committed to 10 hours of drumming over the 26 hour spread, and actually ended up doing more along the lines of 12 hours total. My hands are paying dearly this week, but that pain is outweighed by the pain that was lifted from me mentally during the event. I have posted several photos of the event in my photo gallery, and more photos/videos will be posted to the drumSTRONG site over the coming days.

I've been playing drums of some sort since I was barely walking, and have been doing formal hand percussion gatherings for almost 15 years. Unfortunately it is something I haven't made as much time for lately, but after this weekend I'm making it a personal goal to start rounding up some of the talent here in Charlotte for some formal jams. Given my background, this event was a no-brainer. In the end over 2,000 people showed up...there aren't any words that can describe what the event did for everyone who participated. It was without a doubt one of the most moving experiences of my life, and I cannot wait to do it for 27 hours next year. Thank you Mason for this amazing concept, and thank you Scott for having the tenacity to actually make it happen. You're both amazing people, and quite simply put the world needs more of you.

The image in this post is of me and my best friend 20 minutes before we hit the 26 hour mark. The skin was literally peeling off my hands at this point, but I felt no pain surprisingly. Actually in hindsight, it isn't surprising at all.

Keep. Drumming. Beat. Cancer.

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I used to mountain bike. A lot. For some inexplicable reason I stopped a few years ago when other priorities manifested themselves, but recently I decided to start up again. While I'm not horribly out of shape, I'm definitely not the rider I used to be...but I aim to change this soon as the legs start getting used to pedaling again. I never have been much of a weight lifting guy, but the muscle group I've gravitated towards working when I do lift has been legs, and that's also apparent by the sports I choose to do (cycling, skiing).

For any mountain bikers who read this blog, I ride a GT XCR 2000, although mine is similar to the one mentioned in that link in frame only; most of the parts have been upgraded to Shimano XT models, I have a minimalist style seat, and carbon stem/bars/seatpost...the bike tips the scales at about 27lbs and more upgrades for weight savings are planned. While it's an older bike, the system that GT invented, i-Drive (which stands for independent drive) is still hailed as an engineering marvel for full suspension bikes as it was one of the first designs to eliminate pedal bob and brake jacking without having to resort to unwieldy looking linkage systems which were heavy and complicated: The more moving parts a bike has, the higher the chance of failure on one of those parts. Overall it's a very fun bike to ride. See you guys on the trails!

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After a long round of thinking about the future, my short and long term goals, and my overall level of happiness, I've decided to finally head back to school to finish up my degree. For those of you who don't know, I dropped out of college my sophomore year to pursue my present career track in software development which at the time (the .com boom) was one of the better decisions I've ever made. I've always considered myself a student of life itself and love learning, so the logical progression of things was always to head back to school at some point and obtain my 4 year degree. That time is most definitely now more than ever as A) I'm not getting any younger and B) better now than later when it'll be even tougher given other life constraints.

I've been accepted to the local university here in Charlotte and will be starting up classes in mid-May. Initially I'll be doing a light course load (8 hours) since I will be of course working fulltime in parallel. I'm going back in declared as my original major: Biochemistry. At this point in my career, I don't feel that a computer science degree would do me much good, and my true passion has always been one for the science disciplines. I may also minor in something a little off the beaten path like music theory since that's my other true passion, but at this point I'm taking it one step at a time so as to avoid any type of burnout. If all goes to plan I'll obtain my degree in about 2.5 years (or as little as 2 if I bust my ass). My goal is to move on to UNC-Chapel Hill once I get the basics knocked out here in Charlotte.

I do have plans for myself after that, and there is a decent chance that it will not involve computers, at least not in the sense of writing software for them, however that's a discussion outside the realm of this post. One of my dreams has always been to attend medical school, so I'll leave it at that. It seems like a long ways off though, and no doubt intentions will change between now and then as they always do. I would never fully leave the software realm, and at the very least a degree will open up new doors within the software/IT realm that are unavailable to me sans degree. For me it's all about grabbing life by the horns and achieving all the goals that I know I'm capable of, and giving new doors an opportunity to present themselves.

The silence has been deafening around here lately, but for the most part things have been alright. We still don't know what's up with my Mother's health, and my dog has gone through yet another round of scariness (he's been diagnosed with kidney disease now, but it's manageable via special diet). My new condo is slated to be done sometime in early summer, which is the next major milestone in my life: The thoughts of finally owning my own place are amazing! Until next time.

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A very good friend of mine, Matt Brandau recently got married to a wonderful woman, and I had the pleasure of attending. Here are some photos from the festivities. It was without a doubt the most fun reception I've ever attended...Matt is a professional bassist (shameless plug, he now plays with The Old Ceremony; an amazing band out of Chapel Hill...definitely check out some of their music @ the link above) with a degree in music from UNC. All of his previous bands were in attendance and got up on stage at one point or another to perform. Hilarity ensued, and it'll be a tough act to follow whenever I get married one day.

Congratulations Matt...you guys are a beautiful couple and I'm sure you'll have a lifetime of happiness together. All of the 'core' crew is married up; my buddy Jason Dulin and I are the only bachelors left.

Sidenote: Where the heck has Jayson been lately? Taking a break from blogging. Actually, ever since I've discovered Twitter (I'm here) I've been posting there quite a bit. Definitely not a substitute for blogging, but it's been a great way to stay connected with a lot of folks I've met in the blogosphere. I've run this site for 4 years, and have close to a thousand posts, so a break was probably needed, if not earned. I'm not making any new year's resolutions such as "I plan to make X number of posts this year" because quite simply I don't know when I'll get around to regular posting again. It'll be sooner than later so definitely stay subscribed. From a technical perspective, Sharepoint 2007 has been taking up a lot of my time, so expect some posts soon about my adventures in MOSS-land.

Sidenote++: My main new year's resolution is to quit smoking. I'm getting on the cessation pill in the next week or 2, it's worked miracles for some of my family members (some of them with 30+ years of smoking history). I wish all of you the very best of 2008...something tells me it's gonna be the best year yet.

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The title of this post is a blatant rip off of nVidia's current tagline; I felt it rings more true than ever with nVidia's newest offering: Their 8800GT is out of this world when it comes to price/performance in video cards. The story behind how I got mine is more interesting than it should be though. I was fortunate enough to purchase one from MWave the day after they were released (most eTailers sold out within hours), and had it overnighted to me for the very reasonable price of about $280.00 for a card that performs better than most cards costing twice as much.

To make a long story short, the first card I received was DOA. No video signal, and Device Manager would not recognize the card. The real fun came after I pulled the card out of my machine though: I got about half a dozen blue screens in rapid succession, and was finally able to coax Vista into safe mode to start digging around and yanking out drivers. That was fruitless though; attempting to remove any type of drivers triggered blue screens as well, so I ended up having to reinstall Vista. I hate to blame this on the card itself, but all fingers seemed to be pointing that way. I've read of no other horror stories like mine on the web, so no doubt I am more the exception than the norm.

Regardless, eVGA RMA'd the card for me, and about a week later I received the replacement part. I plopped it in my machine, fired it up, and all was well. To say the card is amazing would be an understatement. I'm getting 12,500 marks in 3DMark 06, and that will increase to about 16,000 once I go SLI. DirectX 10 on Vista has to be seen to be believed: Bioshock is like a whole new game now to the point that I started over from the beginning just to see what the newly textured worlds would look like. All of the games in the Steam portfolio now offer 16xQ CSAA as an option on the advanced video setup screen. Again, the difference that setting makes is unreal, and even with all settings maxed out in every game I own, the card has experienced nary a stutter. The only game I've had issues with is the Crysis demo, which refuses to start for some reason, but I suspect that's related to running Vista x64 more than anything else. I have confidence the final release will be fine.

As stated before, most eTailers are sold out of this card until the end of this week. If you've got the spare cash and need an upgrade, I would highly recommend ordering one of these cards: It's like having an entirely new machine for a fraction of the price. Don't get suckered into buying one of the factory overclocked versions. I've maxed out the clock settings on mine via nTune and haven't had any issues.

This card should be causing ATI execs fits right now as they won't have an answering product for almost 2 months. I personally will not be going back to ATI any time soon. Fantastic job nVidia, you've gotten one of your original customers back with the release of this card.

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First off, add me as friend over on Steam Community!

If the little things in life like spending quality time with family, friends, pets, etc are important to you then I would highly recommend not purchasing the latest offering from Valve Software: The Orange Box. The majority of my weekend has been spent playing a smattering of Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2. Of the 3, I've spent most of the time playing Portal which from a purely gameplay point of view is one of the more amazing games I've ever played. I see it as more of a proof of concept and am sure Valve will be incorporating some of the coolness factor exhibited within in future titles.

Half-Life 2 E2 is of course pretty amazing as well. It's easy to see that some portions of the gaming engine have been rewritten and registers pretty high on the coolness factor. It is simply amazing looking, and is fairly lean as well as it runs very nicely on my aging ATI 1950 Pro video card with all settings maxed out.

And then there is Team Fortress 2. I purposely waited until late last night after the dogs/girlfriend went to sleep before firing it up for the first time. I have not played the original Team Fortress, so the whole concept was pretty new to me; it took a few rounds to get the hang of the overall gameplay. Needless to say, from a playability standpoint it is one of the more enthralling games I've played recently. The Spy Class is without a doubt the most fun role to play. For a good overview of the different classes, check out IGN's "Class Warfare" primer.

If you'd like to add me as a buddy on Steam, check out my profile over on Steam Community and add me as a friend (note: I still suck at TF2, so bear with me).

I haven't even finished Bioshock yet, and am now pretty sure it'll be quite some time before I do. Thank you Valve...when my loved ones send out a search party for lack of communication with me over the coming weeks, I'll blame you guys!

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A few weeks ago at Skanska, a film crew showed up at Skanska's office here in Charlotte to shoot some footage for a then-upcoming case study Microsoft was doing featuring Skanska and the work we've done with MS PerformancePoint Server. The crew spent the entire day onsite doing interviews with various department heads and directors, as well as getting general shots around the office. I didn't think much of it until my boss informed us recently that the film they shot was going to be used at the PerformancePoint global launch in New York a few days ago. The film along with MS's case study on Skanska and PerformancePoint has now been published to the MS website, as well as the video they shot onsite (~3 minutes long). Yours truly is featured in a couple of spots in the video, thankfully in a non-speaking role. Allen Emerick is the main focus; he's our boss and he also was part of the keynote at the launch event in NYC.

Even though I don't know much about PerformancePoint from a technical perspective, it's a pretty exciting product and Skanska is already doing quite a bit with it. I don't come from a strong BI background; one of the developers who sits next to me in the office is driving Skanska's uptake of PerformancePoint (he previously worked for a enormous ISV that specialized in retail BI custom applications, so he's definitely qualified for this role), so no doubt I'll be peeking over his shoulder on a regular basis trying to get some knowledge via osmosis. One of the things I really like about Skanska is their willingness to be early adopters of MS software in large production scenarios. We get to play with a lot of big toys early on in MS's dev cycle. Just one of many perks actually.

Sidenote: I'd like to extend a huge congratulations to Robert Mills (a former colleague and good friend of mine from Microsoft) for having made it through the Skanska interview process. He'll be joining our group in a developer capacity at the end of this month. I know he's got a ton to contribute to our team and am looking forward to working with him again after all these years.

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