It’s been awfully quiet here the last couple of weeks due to several RL (real life) issues going on. The fall has turned busy as I anticipated and only time will tell how well I’ve planned for the season.
First and foremost, the entire Nokia Austin team (developers of Carbide.c++) where I work changed employers on October 1st and I am still working at getting my head wrapped around and understanding the new company. I’m now working for Accenture, the consulting company formally known as Anderson Consulting as part of the massive 3000 people divestiture of Nokia developers working on Symbian software and devices. A lot to learn as we complete work on several projects for Nokia in anticipation of new projects in Accenture.
The Austin office in a unique situation in that our building’s lease expires at the end of this year. With that loss we also lose the big internet pipe into Nokia which means we have no effective and efficient way to access the tools and 80GB SDKs we use daily to develop our software. While we could do it, the turn around time would be horrendous, which is not good for meeting critical time constrained project goals. As such we’ve become the first group who are transitioning off Symbian development in the next 3 months. So we have a lot to of code and docs clean up to do, a lot of information to collect and pass onto the teams in the UK and Finland who are assuming responsibility for delivering future versions of our projects.
Then, only three days into the new job I was whisked away to Pennsylvania to attend a nephew’s wedding. Congratulations to Michael and April Turovich, the newest expansion of the Turovich clan. It was the first time I’d visited my brother Ken at his home there and between us four brothers (Kevin, Ken, Ross, and myself) and one sister (Lynne) we had a heckuva good time. Compared to the crushing heat in Texas the weather was absolutely gorgeous the entire time. High 70s during the day and mid-40’s during the night. Spent a couple of nights just sitting around a campfire and talking with my siblings and their better halves, a far cry from my normal nights in Austin.
While I’m not totally behind in writing book 2, I’m close to even on where I expected to be in word count at this time. I hope to get back into the groove this week as the next two chapters are over halfway done. Also, by my schedule its time to start the rewrite of book 1 as well so I should be digging into it again as well.
Of course, made it back just in time to learn I’d missed the only real rain that Austin has received this year, almost 3 inches. OTOH, the air smelled wonderful and there were a few spots of green to admire, something long missed in this extremely dry season.
Also, I need to comment on the death of Steve Jobs and the new iPhone 4S announcements sometime later this week.
