Whenever I contemplated starting a Web Log (yes, that is where Blog comes from) I could never justify putting it on someone else’s site. So, finally, I’ve decided to post it here on a site I administer, with a domain name that means something.

This blog is going to be a mix of history, self-analysis, technological discussions, music, perhaps a touch of politics, and random musings. I’ve been through enough in my 36 years that I feel, just maybe, I have something to say.

A little about me (in no particular order):

I am a software engineer. I’ve worked on a very varied set of software projects in my time as a coder. I hope to use this forum as a method to analyze what I have done, learn from it, and generate new ideas for future development. While there are a million blogs out there that cover software engineering, most come from a very specific direction (Java, PHP, eCommerce) and I hope to get a level above that.

Currently I work for Penguin Computing. I don’t mind saying the name of the company since I am leaving them on good terms in a couple of weeks. I am not leaving because I am unhappy in my job; I actually like it a lot. My reasons for leaving come from my desire to move across country. Penguin is a Linux company that has focused on High Performance Clustering, a very different type of system than enterprise development. My previous work was has covered eCommerce, reporting systems, database drive sites for health-care, and network storage configuration.

I am about to start working for a company in the Cambridge area that most people in the tech world have heard of, but fewer people in other fields. I’ll limit my discussions about things at work to general technical issues. My goal here is to avoid a conflict of interest.

I am a married man. My wife is currently finishing her PhD in biostatistics. Biostat is the mathematical modeling used in public health studies. Since I am a coder, and her work involves programming, I’ve helped her out and learned a thing or two about programming in R, the statistical language she uses.

My wife and I have a one year old son. Aside from the joy every father should feel in his child’s development, I am also fascinated by the opportunity to learn about learning. So much of programming is about developing systems that can handle wider and wider ranges of situation, it is fascinating to see the ultimate software/hardware system in it’s early development stage. Of course, sleep deprivation my inhibit my ability to really process a lot of this.