It has been a long time since I last wrote an entry. There are 2 major forces at work here:

1. I don't have enough time anymore to write entries
2. I twitter stuff that makes good blog entries, because it takes far less time

So I plan on making it up to all my readers, and give you a brain dump of where I am, what I am doing and what I am thinking.

Management

Management is posing to be an exciting, interesting and challenging—erm—challenge. I am slowly starting to get a handle of the job, the responsibilities, etc. The other seniors on the team have been a big help with this. I just keep plugging along and try to learn as much as I can from the people around me.

As part of being I have received a lappy by the evil masters, which is as good, if not better than both my desktop at work and at home. This is hella cool. This of course necessitates the re installation of the "software server stack of doom", code editor, utilities, productivity tools, etc. etc. etc. This is a perfect opportunity for me to make a jump that I have been fighting for a LONG time...

Emacs

I started working with emacs last year, mostly to edit and work with scheme code. What this meant was that I would goto work, edit code in jEdit and then come home, and edit code in emacs. I am a relatively proficient editor-of-code with jEdit, but emacs has always felt really uncomfortable. But since I have to re-install everything anyway, I thought that this would be the perfect time to take the plunge and start using emacs for everything, work and personal projects. I found a relatively decent window distribution, so it is time to make a go of it. I've since found some cool tools, including a Javascript REPL for emacs, as well as instructions to connect Oracle to emacs. The crux here is that I am going to take a bit of a performance hit at work while I get ramped up on working with emacs, but this will also mean I have a good 4-12 hours (depending on my day) to spend on emacs. Basically its time to approach emacs by jumping right into it. Kind of like the best way to learn a whole new language...

Japanese

Learning Japanese has been going well. I have a small selection of manga that I am slowly going through and reading. There is a lot that I miss, but there is a lot to pick up on as well, due to context. I am up into 500 kanji now, with only a 1-4% failure rate. It is really interesting to see a chunk of Japanese text and actually understand a little about what is trying to be communicated on. I still maintain that Japanese is going to be a long-term learning adventure of 10 years. Thank god for my PDA and flashcard software (twinkle), without it there would be no way I could even think about trying to learn this crazy wonderful language. Twinkle lets me define my own flashcards, and practice all of my Japanese wherever and whenever. Very handy for the commute to and from work.

I've been at CM for 1 Year Now.

Kick. Ass.

Yet another major milestone was hit recently. World Wide Guides, a Hyatt project that I have been working on for a long time has finally gone live. This project is essentially the full localization of all 200-and-something Hyatt Hotels into 10 different languages including Japanese and Russian; with simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese and Korean to follow soon. Not only did I do a large part of the web development work on this website, but I also ended up doing a some of the apps development work.

Really this project was the project that I "Grew up on.". This was really the project that turned me from a Junior Web Developer to a Senior. It feels good to have something this big, and this significant (at least, to me) out the door.

So, if you read French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian or Japanese (or are just interested) check the site out.

I just finished the first week as the Senior Web Developer for our team at Critical Mass. Wow. Hard Work. My running joke for the week has been "Whos bright idea was it to take on this job?" This has been an especially difficult week to begin this kind of role: a major project was going live (more on this later) and there was a new employee to take care of. It was very much an out-of-the-pot-and-fat-into-the-fire situation! Luckily for me, the "new" employee has worked there before, and is already quite skilled and knowledgeable, so I didn't really need to hold his hand. On top of that, the already established team leads are nothing but top-freaking-notch, so they were able to help this greenhorn along.

I've already identified the various skill sets I am lacking, and need to improve on. I don't want to fall into the world of management, turning into that balding guy with glasses on the C-Train, reading "Improve your personal power" on his blackberry, whilst listening to Tony Robbins on his MP3 player. Yeuch.

One of the things that has really opened my eyes with this promotion is how I view management culture in general, and all the implicit assumptions I have about workplace culture. It's all very turgid and confused, but the fundamental crux of this introspection is that I need to be enough of a leader to actually lead, but I also need to step back and let the team members shine through as well. It's a whole different level of chainsaw juggling. I plan on taking a very Taoist lead-from-behind style of leadership.

This is such an awesomely amazing opportunity for me to grow as a person—both personally and professionally. I am ready.

I found this group of icons at the bottom of my Firefox status bar, and it pretty much sums up my thoughts. I've been using GreaseMonkey to help out the team here at work. Small, simple little scripts, that seem to have a huge effect. It's fun to write these little scripts, and it's fun to take on a more "Research and Development" capacity. Maybe one day they will pay me to do that full time. That would be awesome.

Today is the first day of my new job.

Kick. Ass.