I’ve been working with some exciting technologies and I promise to update this site with any open source code and examples in the near future.

I love open-source software.

So I will be offering the code freely as well.

What’s my goal for the weekend/next week? Complete the backend connection/caching objects.

I’ve been dragging my feet and second-guessing myself long enough so it’s time to finally buckle down. This is me officially buckling down.

Update 4/14/09: Off another week. A preview of what I’ll be posting next week: PMA=OPM.

But if it’s all about the data—most of which is stored on a computer—what’s with all the human interaction? Would Netflix have gotten where they are today by having humans track their users’ viewed moves and manually entering all the recommendations themselves?

Maybe it’s the consulting side of me speaking—or maybe it’s the side that is constantly thinking of improving the status quo. But I’m on a mission to improve the way things are done, wherever they may be.

I’ll keep this one short and sweet. Have a great week.

This can come in the form of working for a great employer under good management. Or it might involve starting a new company.  But what if we’re in between the two stages?

As some of you may know I hope to start a company in the near future. But in the meantime I’m working for a great company making a good salary. Being married, I don’t feel I should make any drastic changes until I have at least one of the following:

1. A finished product
2. A good idea and a business plan

As well as some savings and/or side-jobs on which I could rely. I feel this is the best course of action for me.

—

This weekend I happened to meet two entrepreneurs who truly inspired me.

The first, whom I met Friday night, is a writer of a widely-read Blackberry-related blog. He is a very nice and smart guy. And he described his site in an extremely humble way (I only realized this after viewing the blog). But what amazed me most about him is that he has runs this fully-featured blog all while holding a separate day job.

The second entrepreneur runs a green-certification company. He is also smart and pleasant individual. And he spoke so enthusiastically about what he does that I couldn’t stop asking him questions regarding his work.

Both business owners have chosen to commit different amounts of time to their own companies. But they are both doing what they love.

—

After this weekend I am now completely reassured that—like the first entrepreneur—I should start working on a pet project while working for my current employer. And when I feel I’m ready and the idea is profitable—I’ll transition into entrepreneur number 2.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

Seth is a marketing wiz and shares a bit of his knowledge every day. I hope you’ll find his posts as inspiring and enjoyable as I do!

I finished all the tasks I set out to do at work last week. Yet every night I came home I was extremely stressed.

Not because of work. I’ve learned how to complete my work on time.

Not even because of the economy. I know we’ll get out of this recession no matter how many shortsighted horror stories are thrown at us by the media and the government.

Here’s why:

When I graduated from the University of Maryland – College Park in 2006 I had a job lined up at a small consulting firm. My coworkers were terrific people to work with and I encountered hardly any office politics. Innovation and creativity were encouraged because we were paid by large corporations to bring them up to speed.

Now I’m at a large company but I’m not consulting. I’m working with technology and an infrastructure that—for the most part—is not relevant outside of the company.
The company is great and—for the most part—so are my coworkers. Yet I am being paid to work on enhancing a product that’s been in use for quite a few years. So I have been doing my job well, maintaining the status quo…

…but I’m a few months in and I feel there is no future working with the technology with which I’m working. And that is the sole reason I am feeling so anxious. I know I want to create and/or work for a startup sometime in the future. But I’m not there  yet and I have no clear idea of how I’m going to get there. I’m feeling lost.

—

This feeling of disorientation can affect all aspects of our lives.

As a programmer, jumping into a new project with no initial game plan may sometimes work. But what happens when you’re halfway through and you start doubting your original idea? You knew how you would start it (step 1: what language, what infrastructure and some design ideas) and the end seemed so easy to achieve. But then you make some design decisions that make you doubt step 1—and create doubts of whether the end is even achievable.

That’s where a plan comes in. A well thought-out plan is your compass should you ever get lost. Both in life and in programming it is a surefire way to attain your confidence. There is a good reason many self-help books have been written and software engineering classes taught on this exact subject.

So my goals for this week are:

1. Stop all side projects. Create technical specifications for every one of them: not anything too in-depth but at least an outline and a short list of goals.
2. Reevaluate how I will achieve my ultimate goal of working for myself. Think through what I can do now for my current employer that will help me grow and become somebody who can run a business.
3. Finally: write it all down.

Have a great week.

• I switched jobs, where I previously worked as a consultant programming with:
  • Java, specifically J2EE (web applications)
  • With some projects involving Struts and Spring frameworks
  • Started being the AJAX ‘expert’ (I love AJAX programming–it’s lots of fun to see what kind of actions you can AJAXify to impress the clients)
• Now I’m at a medium-sized company programming in:
  • Visual FoxPro. Yes. That’s right. In case there is some disbelief, I’ll write it again: Visual FoxPro.
  • Pushing for a C# transition to avoid becoming obsolete
  • Teaching my coworkers the basics of ORM in C#. This is a tough sell being that it might require quite a few changes to our database structure

Oh, and the jobs are in completely different industries. But enough about my jobs…

I hope to give this site a new start. It seems I had too much on my plate (job search/transition, engagement/marriage, apartment hunting, etc) in the first few months of when i started this blog. I’m not going to make promises I can’t keep but I will start with an easy goal for writing new articles: once a week. I think I can do that.

What will I write about? Well, my continuing effort to start a startup (as the blog name suggests). But most importantly everything on my mind: computer/programming/business/economy/work-related. I will refrain from writing about politics, as so many other blogs like to sneak in, so I ask for anyone who reads this blog to please be courteous and stay on topic.

A side note (and disclaimer):
While I do love Mac OS X I am NOT a “fanboy”. Honestly, I believe both Apple and Microsoft are excellent companies who each have their faults. But without their fierce competition their products would have never improved at such a fast rate as they did. So we—the consumers—are the ultimate benefactors of their success. Please refrain from clearly biased comments. If you can’t provide a convincing argument maybe you shouldn’t comment at all.
And not to forget Linux: I have dabbled with many Linux distributions over the last 10 years and I have to say that Ubuntu Server is terrific! While I am not willing to give up the proprietary niceties of Apple and MS products that are my desktop experience, I do want to express my gratitude to the entire Linux and open-source community for constantly improving the free products that are: the Linux Kernel and individual distributions, KDE, Gnome, Emacs, Gimp, Openoffice and all the others I have failed to mention.

That’s it! Please consider this post to be an official reopening of the Starting a Startup blog!