For a long time now I've thought about going independent. There is something intriguing about going out on your own and giving things your best shot. The problem has always been that I have a pretty good gig. I like the guys I work with, we have a nice office, nice benefits, pretty good pay, and most of the time decent projects. Despite all these things I often feel the urge to give it all up and take a shot on my own. I think the main thing that draws me is the idea of controlling my own destiny. Being able to choose what projects I work on, picking where my money goes, how I spend my time, and what has priority. I've been following the independent group on yahoo that James Avery started, and I've read a number of other posts and articles on going independent. Having independents like Jonathan Goodyear posting pictures of their nice new Porsche's doesn't help matters. Although he has moved from being a pure independent to running a small software shop he did start as an independent and has always preached how much better the money can be for independents. Although money is nice, it certainly isn't the reason I'd choose to make the jump.
Over the past several months I haven't been doing a whole lot of .NET programming. I worked on the redesign of e-Commerce site (Java), and am now in the design phases of a project that is using Coldfusion MX. Not exactly the projects I'd pick if I was independent. Working on these projects has provided me with good experiences but it hasn't done much to get me real enthused about my work. Projects that aren't technically challenging just don't do much for me. I like to be architecting (in code) solutions for clients, if I could have it my way the projects would be in .NET, or even better .NET 2.0 :-) I also wouldn't mind having a real hard core Java project that would force me to learn (for real) some of the things that I've been knocked for not knowing in the past. I want to be challenged, I want to be interested in the work I'm doing, is going independent the answer to this? At least then I'd only have myself to blame?
For some strange reason everyone who comes across my Field Length Validator for Textarea post seems to think that the comment box below it should have the validator I talk about in the post. Over the past couple months I've probably got 20+ emails notifying me of comments on the post. The comment is basically some combination of characters that is apparently being used to actually test the validator (which of course doesn't exist). Today it finally hit me that I should just turn off the comments of the post. I sure am going to miss those emails!
Welcome to my DNJ weblog. Let me start with a special thanks to Donny Mack and Doug Seven for putting together such a killer resource for the .NET community, and ScottW for his work on ASPNETWebLog.
Now onto the reason for this weblog. In the past I've contributed some howto's and tutorials to DNJ, but I have been severely slacking in my writing as of late. My excuse (albeit lame) is that I rarely have enough time to sit down and put together my thoughts in the form of an article. Hopefully this weblog will provide me with a way to share some of my thoughts and ideas in a more informal way. Stay tuned...