Tip of the Iceberg

Category musings
I created this entry 3 days ago and finally got around to writing it.

2007 has been my bloggiest year so far... this is the 123rd post during 2007, a 62% increase over last year. This is primarily because I now work for a company that (like IBM) views blogging not as a risk to be mitigated but a tool to be leveraged. Working for Lotus 911 has definitely been the highlight of my year, and of my career. When I stowed my security blanket in January of '06 and left the job I'd been at the longest for a contract thousands of miles away, I never dreamed that just over a year later I'd be working with some of the best (as Nathan mentioned, both personally and professionally) in the industry, and it's been an incredible experience.

It all started at the end of April when Nathan came to Raleigh to present at the "Lotusphere Comes to You" event. Chris Whisonant also came up from Rock Hill (about 200 miles away) to attend the event. That was actually the first time I'd met any fellow bloggers... and less than a month later I was hanging out with both of them - now as coworkers - in Kennesaw, GA at Lotus 911 headquarters. Funny story: at LCTY, I mentioned to Nathan that I'd be submitting my resume, which I did later that evening. The next morning, a Friday, my recruiter for the contract I was in at the time called me to warn me that I was going to be laid off the following Monday. The whole department was being moved to China, and they were starting the layoffs with the contractors. Having never been laid off or fired, that came as a bit of a blow to the ego, but since it had nothing to do with me personally, and I was already intent on leaving anyway, by Monday I was able to show up at peace with being let go... only to find out that my team lead was pissed that they'd notified me in advance, because he was still trying to find a way to keep me on for at least a couple more months. So although I'd arrived prepared to just empty my desk and go home, by the end of the day I still had a job - for an undetermined amount of time, of course. 9 days later I received and accepted the offer from Lotus 911.

After two days on the job (though we'd already been working on it on the side for a couple weeks), I co-released with Nathan an OpenNTF application called Decepticon. It allows you to configure your Domino server to export (and optionally transform) the DXL of any design element or document via "pseudo URL commands" (i.e. /blog.nsf/d6plinks/TTRY-77C88B/readdocument). In September I posted a stylesheet that, when used with Decepticon, allows you to generate JSON for any document in any database on your server, without a single design change to any of those databases.

Over the course of the year, I've tinkered with stuff like charts, mind maps, the iTunes COM API, Mersenne primes, Flex, Google AJAXSLT, and running Domino on SUSE. But the real highlight has been something I can't even give any specifics about yet... but if you wander by our booth at 'Sphere you might get a peek at what I've been playing with lately. I can't wait to meet all of you down there... and see and hear what IBM's been cooking up...

As the year draws to a close (in 4 minutes, for those of us on the East Coast), I'm reminded how thankful I am for everything God's given me: my wife; my family; my friends, coworkers and colleagues; an amazing job; my health... I could go on and on. But mostly I just want to wish all of you the best in the year to come. "May the best of your yesterdays be the worst of your tomorrows."