Latest going ons

Where do I begin? I've had a lot of great ideas for blog entries these past few months but finding the time to enter them has been difficult to say the least. So I guess we'll start with the thing that has been eating up the majority of my time: work.

Two months ago things were going swimmingly well and then out of the blue came what is known in the industry as a strategic restructuring, a layoff. In this case it was about 25% of the workforce and despite my best hopes otherwise, several of my very good friends and colleagues were included in the cut. After all the sacrifices I'd made to get to this company and after all the 60-hour-plus work weeks, I'd begun to question whether it was still the right place for me.

Despite some tempting propositions from area recruiters who had heard the news of the mass layoffs, I decided to stay put and see if the situation would improve. Even with the loss of resources, I felt we still had the best collection of Ruby/Rails talent in the area. Within a month's time we were able to make a new post to our collective technology-oriented blog, one which happened to pertain to a project I was working on. So provided that things continue to go well and I am able to make viable contributions to our code-base, I see no reason not to stay put for the time being.

As to what takes up the next largest portion of my time, that would have to be WoW. A lot has happened since I last posted on the topic. In early June I took my then main character, a druid, over to Shu'Halo so I could game with a buddy of mine. But his interest in the game began to wane as did my interest in playing a Moonkin which is essentially a caster that can't really cast that well. This became only more obvious when I finally hit level 70 and I kept getting passed over to do instance runs in favor of mages.

As such, I decided to do a bit of research and came to the conclusion that if I really wanted to do pure DPS and have the benefit of crowd control and an aggro-dump, then I'd need to roll a mage myself. It also helped that a buddy of mine from work had a low-level warlock that he was interested in leveling. For me the change was not only in character class but also in play style. Whereas I had leveled my druid on a PvE server, this character would live on a high pop PvP server.

After dedicating several months of on-and-off play to her, my Dranei mage just recently hit level 63 and ought to be level 70 within a few weeks. By then my parents will be in town as they're visiting me for the holidays so my time online will be pretty much scotched until the new year. Hopefully in the future I will be able to juggle my time between work and WoW more effectively so that I can blog about events in my life closer to real-time.

Revolution Health launches!

Three months after the initial beta release, Revolution Health launched yesterday to much fanfare and celebration. Yours truly is privileged enough along with 280 or so other employees to be a part of this incredible startup. To celebrate, the company rented out the Beacon Hotel just down the street and provided an open bar and appetizers. For some, it seemed like it was the first of the outside world they'd seen in several weeks after having worked furiously to get the site ready for launch.

Though I wasn't locked away I was working some pretty heavy hours to make sure that our group's section of the site was working seamlessly. It feels a bit strange to finally be on the other side of it all, as if we've stepped through some sort of door. One thing's for sure, there is no going back. From here on out, the health industry is going to wake up and listen and not just to us, but to consumers as well.

Our competition seems to be taking the hint. From imitating our look and feel (it's the sincerest form of flattery, right?) to adding a 'community' section, they are doing their best to keep up. Coincidentally enough, on the day of our launch they fired their CTO. Some people have theorized as to whether this was a signal to us but there's no way to be sure.

What is certain though is that we only needed to do something disruptive in either health care or technology to be revolutionary but we have instead chosen to take on both fronts. A brand-new approach to health care combined with the amazing Ruby on Rails framework means that we will be that much harder to beat. Let the race begin.

Back from hiatus

Yes, so I know it's been a long time since I've posted here and all I can say is that I have some very good reasons for my hiatus. The big one would have to be work. In preparation for our launch this Thursday, our full site release mind you, I've been working 12 hour days. Trying to maintain even the shadow of a social life in light of these long hours has been difficult to say the least.

In addition, I have also been spending time building my character in World of Warcraft. I'll probably dedicate a full post to that sometime later this week. Needless to say, while some will point to this as evidence of WoW's addictive powers, I can assure you that a few hours spent gaming online every now and then does not make one an addict.

Thanks to work pressures I feel like my Ruby/Rails knowledge has increased exponentially in the past few months. From plugins to ActiveRecord, the need for efficient easily-maintainable code has forced me to dive into Rails' inner workings. It's been tough but I feel that I have a much better idea now of what's going on behind the scenes.

So in effect, work is the culprit. I can only hope that in the future I will be able to drag myself away from it to blog on at least a weekly basis.

January comes and goes

So the first month of the new year has been pretty crazy as you can guess by the lack of posts. It started off well enough with a party at my buddy Mike's place. He lives just upstairs from me and also works at the same company. It was a James Bond-themed party with all the guys done up like gentlemen and the women dressed to kill. Needless to say, we had an awesome time and I'm looking forward to the next event he hosts.

Work came at me without warning. I thought that with our product having launched in late December, this month might be a bit slower but that turned out to be a fantasy on my part. Unwittingly, I took on the responsibility of creating a browser-based rich text editor for use in many of our products. The one we had just didn't cut it due to cross-browser compatibility issues and customizing it for our needs. I can't say too much more about it now but if possible I would love to see us give back to the open source community by releasing this as a project on Ruby Forge.

But my life hasn't been all work. Play this week came in the form of a Washington Wizards game on Tuesday. My buddy Mario invited me and seeing as I had never been to a basketball game before, much less one in our nation's capital, I eagerly accepted. Mario's friend was the actual ticket holder and we had the benefit of sitting in the Lockheed Martin box right on the half court line. They were some spectacular seats and despite the loss to the Phoenix Suns that night, I nonetheless had a great time.

The end of January is nearly here and will mark the one-year anniversary when I came up to visit my (other) buddy Mike. My stay, brief as it was, left an indelible impression on me, one that would factor into my decision to move up here when a recruiter from Revolution Health came calling only three months later. In the time since, I have truly come to call this place home, more so than any other area I've lived in outside of Southern California. I'm looking forward to a spectacular 2007.

Mario's last day at work

When I first started at my current company, I was placed in the Ruby group working on community-oriented features. At that time we were a mishmash of Ruby, Java and Python but eventually the scope was reduced such that Java was nearly taken out of the picture all together. As a result, many of the Java programmers found themselves without much work to do and so they picked up a Ruby book and started reading.

Within a few weeks they were all up to speed and cranking out code. Slowly, we stopped seeing each other as Ruby vs. Java and begin to identify instead with the product we were working on. Old alliances gave way to new ones and people who I had once thought of as hostile seemed much more amicable.

One of these formerly hostile types was a guy named Mario. His height and booming voice combined to make him stand out in our colorless cube farm. He also had a strange occupation with a place called Java Green where he went everyday for lunch and returned boasting of their tofu chicken and rice bowl. I eventually accompanied him on one of these outings and offered him my advice on which Ruby book was best for a beginner with lots of Java experience.

That was nearly three months ago and in the time since we've become great friends. From late nights at work writing "f'ing migrations", as he so eloquently put it, to clubbing at 1223 across the street, we've certainly had an interesting past couple of months. And despite that his new job is way out in the 'burbs, I am confident that we will remain great friends.

Mario, you will be missed.

My first day at work and other news

As first days go it was actually somewhat productive. But let's start at the beginning. I got up around 8:10am and hopped on the metro around 8:40am. From there it was about 25 minutes from Crystal City to Farragut West on the blue line, no transfers necessary. After a 10 minute walk I was in front of my building whereupon I happened to meet up with Aaron, one of the guys that interviewed me. He took me directly where I needed to go.

My co-worker Lizz gave me a tour of the place and introduced me to everybody. They were of course super friendly and eager to add a new member to the team. I also got the low-down on what the company is building. Without revealing too much, all I can say is that it is going to be a kick ass Ruby on Rails application that will redefine how Americans choose their health care.

My computer was setup fairly quickly and from there I installed Suse Linux 10.1 (dual-booting with Windows XP) and followed up with Eclipse 3.1.2 on both OSes. I was surprised to see most of the people running MacBook Pros, even the programmers! I opted for a Dell desktop which amazingly came with an ATI x600 video card. Hmm, perhaps work could double as a LAN gaming center.

So while work is going great there is still a bunch of mundane stuff that I need to take care of. The movers won't be showing up for another few weeks still (never use Allied!!) and I need to take my car in to be smog tested. I should probably try to do some more stocking of my cabinets while also making time to explore the local area. All in all though, I am getting on well here. It will just take some time before I am settled in.