Long time no blog....

Wow, I'm rubbish!

Prepare for a giant post with updates of love, life, family and skiing!

Love

So, as some of you may or may not know, I'm happily in love, yay! (About time too I hear some of you say, thought it would never happen I hear many of you also say) Tim used to work for ThoughtWorks Calgary but left to go and work for a new company based in Chicago, so he now lives in the US. We've been together for 3 months or so now, and split every other weekend between Calgary and Chicago. Building up the airmiles! We've been building some awesome memories, and I'm really really happy that I have him to share my world with now. (excuse the momentary soppiness.. can't help it!) I have just come back to Calgary from Chicago where I spent the Easter weekend.... and the next super exciting trip will be to New York for my birthday in mid May. So excited!


Life

Life is busy busy these days. February saw me leaving the "beach" at work and joining my first client assignment for a major communications company in Calgary. I'm working as a developer on the SOA team, giving me some awesome exposure to a huge technology stack and giving me the opportunity to work with some great people. The environment is certainly a challenging one and I'm learning new things every day. My consulting skills are constantly challenged, as well as my development and confidence. Certainly a learning curve!

The ThoughtWorks team on the account are a really fun bunch of people, so that's great. We even had a visit from some Easter bunnies this last week!



Family

In early March my Dad, Step mum and bother came out to Canada to visit. They were here for two weeks, in an unfortunately cold snap!

We spent a week together up in Banff, which was brilliant. We had some good early spring skiing. I got my step mum skiing for the first time in maybe 10 years! Good time had by all I hope. It was really nice to show them my new life here.



Skiing

Spring is sort of here (i.e. its hot and sunny one day and snowing the next!) and with it spring skiing. Anita, JJ, Martin and I all headed to Fernie about a month ago for a mini ThoughtBoarder. First time I had been down to that part of the world so it was great to see some more of Canada.




That's about all for this quick update. I'm going to make an effort to try and blog more....

BBC Radio 1's Golden Hour on the Chris Moyles Show last Friday...

Always some classic tuneage so thought I would document the playlist...

Buck Rogers - Feeder
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TataYXStVr8

Have A nice Day - Stereophonics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rPe0BtYvTA

Survivor - Destiny's Child
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtgDRFOaX-A

Little L - Jamiroquai
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJj2v37T9xA

Good Soul - Starsailor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8yrsJvIngQ

Pure and Simple - Hearsay (bit of a let down...)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVAmuWvKhIs

Live Forever - Oasis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v46hBp93HjY

Baby got back - Sir Mix a lot
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3cHD6W0PUY

Little Fluffy clouds - The orb
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWMIXgCaJPQ

Cloud 99 - RIP Groove
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho1JFqAc93A

In da club - 50 Cent

I have reached a new frontier in my Developer Career it seems...

So today whilst in the car with some co-workers on the way home from the client site, I revealed that on Friday night I couldn't sleep because I was programming in my head and my brain was telling me that I had no unit tests for going to sleep therefore I would need to at least do that before I could, I was also missing Sleep classes....

The first thing they said was "HAHAHA our work here is done".As i proceeded to look quite horrified about this ever happening again I was reliably informed that i am now officially a geek this was a perfectly normal occurrence ... (!) and that i simply needed to actual programme my going to sleep in my head and I would of been fine....

Perhaps this is why I can never get up in the morning....

Fish face hits Chicago...

The many Fish Faces of Anne...

It has come to my attention that I can be a bit odd....

.. to illustrate I have realised that I have grown quite a collection of pictures of me making fish faces... Therefore I shall now endeavor to take Fish Faces everywhere my adventures take me.... Stay tuned for more!

C# .Net Web Development

In an attempt to refresh my programming brain. I have attempted to seek out some nice friendly web development tutorials...

After a bit of hunting I have decided that MSDN as usual is the source of all knowledge...

I started with http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/k4cbh4dh.aspx

This walkthrough has illustrated the basic features of the Visual Web Developer page designer. Now that you understand how to create and edit a Web page in Visual Web Developer, you might want to explore other features. For example, you might want to:

• Learn more about how to edit HTML in Visual Web Developer. For details, see Walkthrough: Basic HTML Editing in Visual Web Developer.

• Add data access to Web pages. For details, see Walkthrough: Basic Data Access in Web Pages.

• Learn about the debugger for Web pages. For details, see Walkthrough: Debugging Web Pages in Visual Web Developer.

• Create Web pages that are specifically designed for mobile phones and other devices. For details, see Developing Web Sites for Mobile Devices.

• Create a consistent site layout using master pages. For details, see Walkthrough: Creating and Using ASP.NET Master Pages in Visual Web Developer.

• Add navigation to your site so users can easily move between pages. For details, see Walkthrough: Adding Site Navigation to a Web Site.

Happy Web Deving...

And so we come to the end of 2008

Well haven't I been pretty rubbish at keeping this up over the last month...

The end of the year has given me a chance to reflect on the year gone by and thought it was about time I blogged again. It's certainly been an eventful year... Fallings out, makings up, surviving final year of Uni (it seemed doubtful at times), getting a job, graduating, leaving Belfast and going to London, going to India with work, moving to Canada, meeting hundreds of new people, holidays.... A lot for a little person to pack into a year that's for sure. The end of an era some would say leaving education (finally) and joining the world of work (even it has been a rather rocky start!).
Looking back I was either incredibily brave or particularly stupid to just up and move to Canada without knowing anyone or where I was really going. But two months in and I've started making myself a life there. Quite proud of myself really. Great little apartment, wonderful friends who have just accepted this little crazy english person, skiing at the weekends and living in such a beautiful part of the world, and hopefully some seriously interesting and challenging work things will come my way in the new year too.

December was a super busy month in Calgary, much partying was had and of course some working too! The Christmas party was fun in the Calgary Tower, chance for us all to get dressed up. We scrub up alright I think!

Calgary got super cold and super snowy, which was a bit of a shock to the system. Still getting my head round the fact that I have to trudge through the snow every day to get to work but yet can't ski on it... seems fundamentally wrong to me! As for the layers of clothing needed to cope with -35 degrees celsius and then getting them all off in time so as not to boil when you get inside, not quite got the hang of that yet!

As Christmas drew closer and my trip back to the UK loomed, consulting life as I didn't previously know it reared its perhaps ugly head. A lot of the people that have made my move to Canada much easier are moving on to other things. Either in other companies in other countries, or with ThoughtWorks still but in other countries. I was told not to get attached to people in this environment where we're all moving around all the time, but its hard not to when you work/socialise and hang out with the same people. Also makes me think that actually the world can be a pretty small place, and I now know more people in more crazy places! So the new year will be interesting, and with it I guess probably a whole new bunch of people to join us!

And so to holidaying the UK, strange concept in itself. After a seriously hectic time trying to get back to London. Tom who was returning back to the UK office and I landed in a damp and warmer England. Have had a lovely time catching up on all the things that I've missed from the uk, friends, family, fish and chips, surfing...

Spent the first couple of days showing my Belfast friend Danielle on a wirlwind stop tour of Devon. And then heaps of family do's. Christmas with my Mum and Boxing day with Dad, and a particularly cold but sunny surf with my brother. New Years Eve was spent down in the local village pub, complete with all my old friends from Primary School. It was awesome.

So to 2009. Am really looking forward to a couple of days in London ahead of returning to Canada, which I can't wait to do. Looking forward to spending more time with people and hopefully some interesting work opportunities.

I hope that whether your 2008 was good or bad you have taken something positive from it. And may 2009 be the year where everything falls into place.