2008 – My Year In Review

In some weird ways, I have a love/hate relationship with ‘Top 10 lists’, which we see a lot off at the end of the year. Most of the time they seem to be nothing more but a way to get more traffic to your site, but I still fall for it and what to see (and compare) my lists! One thing I do like doing at the end of the year is looking back at what happened. While your not any different on 12/31/08 11:59 than you will be on 1/1/09 12:01, the new year obviously gives a fresh new look on life.

While 2008 for me wasn’t as busy as 2006 (got married) and 2007 (new job, new house, promotion), it was still a great year:

• In January, we had finally launched the new Richmond.com, but then I got REALLY sick.
• In February, I had to rebuild a bunch of servers, didn’t post much because I was so busy at work, and fell back into my depression.
• While staying busy at work, in March we redid our den, the first of our home improvement projects.
• April was our 2 year wedding anniversary, and to celebrate, Debs and I went to Chicago. We also had an addition to our family, a little Beagle puppy named Toby!
• In May I was still pretty busy, but wrote up a bunch of posts about our trip to Chicago.
• June was pretty laid back as well, with a wedding and moving around.
• I went back to Chicago in July, this time for the 2008 GeoDomain conference. I got to present in front of the members that attended as well as a more public event on Friday. Had a very crappy flight back home, but an overall good time back in Chicago. We also got iPhone 3G’s, and I got to meet George Washington.
• August wasn’t much, other than starting to look for jobs and taking Toby to training.
• In September I was interviewed for the Associated Cities site. I also started into my own investing, already making money on this down market. I also (no one knew this at the time) was interviewing for jobs.
• On October 10th, I quit my job (though, I was forced to not make it public and had to lie to coworkers until the 14th). This had to be the best decision this year. It’s not that I didn’t like Richmond.com (I loved it), it just didn’t fit (for SO many reasons) anymore. That, and I needed to make a career move to stay somewhat sane. I wanted to focus more on programing than programing/management/sysadmin/everything else. I loved the management and programing side, but there was a reason in 2007 that I quit my sysadmin job.
• In November, poo really hit the fan with the whole MediaGeneral bought Richmond.com thing. It was interesting ‘live-tweeting’ as the papers were signed and I became a MG employee for a week. But since I no longer was working 80+ hour weeks, I was able to do quite a few things, like see Nine Inch Nails live again, move to my own hosting again (twice), and set back up all of my sites. I also finished up the paperwork on a new venture that was to be announced in December…
• December started off with a bang, as it was announced of my new GeoDomain venture and working with Alexandria.com. I also started really getting into the groove at the new job, started freelancing, had to give up our precious little puppy (but to my mother in law), and finally started having free time to invest into my home and hobbies.

There were some accomplishments this year that I’m pretty happy about (though didn’t plan):

• I dramatically grew my professional and personal connections, which has so many different possibilities for the future. Many people I met professionally are also great friends, and great resources as well. In the last year, I managed to meet and know many great people.
• I learned a ton of new topics and web technologies. I think the single largest topic that really sparked my interest was SEO. Id love to do something like that professionally (or consult with those that need help).
• I gained confidence in my ability to do stuff around the house without burning it down or destroying it (too much).
• I gained confidence in sharing my knowledge with others and knowing that they may rely on this for business decisions. And then I became very happy seeing that my sharing of knowledge not only made them more profitable, but built up my confidence for being able to answer questions others may have and knowing I’m right.
• My site almost doubled in traffic last year! This is mostly thanks to my READERS! This sparked my interest in moving my site to my own hosting platform in the possibility to monetize my efforts. This also lit the fire under my other passion, Photography, and wanting to expand my other blog.

All in all, a lot of the year was a blur to me with everything going on at work especially. But after seeing the results of last year’s haphazard blur (without any planning), I want to set certain goals/plans:

• Actually finish another (or couple more) projects around the house
• Learn Cocoa/Obj-C, and write my first Mac app in a LONG time.
• Produce at least one meaningful app for distribution, either for Windows, Mac OS, or the iPhone. I would also like to create at least one plug-in for an already existing platform, like WordPress.
• Get a better handle on our finances and investments.
• Start getting healthy. Loose weight, eat better, feel better.
• Continue to grow my professional and personal contacts.
• Further develop and start to promote my side work, including freelance web and app development, hosting, and photography.
• Learn everything I can.
• Be an even better husband/son/friend/brother/person.

On Richmond.com and my last week…

Well, as im sure many of you have heard by now, Richmond.com has been sold, and this week is my last (though, they were two separate events, and oddly enough, not related. I announced my departure a little over 3 weeks ago, and just knew about this a little under 2 weeks. (For those that don’t know that are visiting the site – I have been working in Technology over there for a bit over 1.5 years).

It was a shocker. I could go on and on about what I feel about the situation, what I did/didn’t know before the announcement, etc. I just don’t think this is the place. If you are curious, and do want to discuss, then email me. Though, please realize, this is becoming more and more ‘distant’ to me as I prepare to move on, and not really sure if I even want to THINK about it anymore.

It sucked. Friends lost their jobs. Things had been rough for all of us for a while, and towards the end, just outright confusing. Obviously there were things I couldn’t talk about, and then keep on going as if things were ‘normal’. I made it though, and so did they. Its a crappy economy, a crappy time, and if you don’t adjust to what needs to be done, you won’t be able to go much further. Of course after everything happens, we still have to keep our heads up and march on. Half the people did keep their jobs, but who knows doing what once moving down to Franklin street.

I don’t think it was ever competition. Yes, all these sites are awesome. I personally love rvablogs and rvanews. If you haven’t been using them, you should. Same with inrich.com. Yes, for a while, they were ‘the enemy’, but they had some amazing resources we didn’t. First, its just coverage – they are a newspaper, and of course have the editorial resources readily available. Then you have technology. You have amazing people like Tripp and Tess (although Tess not for much longer). We obviously had amazing people too, and for a small team, I think we did really well against the ‘big guys’. Of course with Ross and all over at Rvanews/Rvablogs, I have always thought these guys were brilliant and ‘knew whats up’. There’s just tooo many smart minds in this small city of ours, but obviously this is a very good thing.

Other than those in our company that had to move on (and those after the next week I will no longer be working with), Im also really going to miss those I have met through the Associated Cities. They are a great group, and I just wish there was some way to stay with them, although i’m no longer affiliated with a geodomain. These guys are doing some amazing stuff for those with geodomains, and everyone should keep an eye on them for the good stuff that is still yet to come.

I had been super stressed out trying to keep all this in. So sorry if I pissed anyone off or have seemed ‘odd’ for the last few weeks, life has just been a mess. But we are just counting down the hours now…

So who knows whats next. Obviously people have their rumors, and I can neither confirm nor deny what you here. And hell, after this Friday, I won’t know any further, and will just step back and watch (though, Im pretty excited to start doing ‘my own thing’ as well). All I know is that for the next week, i’ll be working for this new company, pretty much assimilating all knowledge I have built up over the last 1.5 years, to pass on to the next person. And now that ‘its all out there’, I think this last week will be a lot more comfortable, for all (other than those that they didnt keep), than the last few.

Finally, I want to leave a few links of coverage, from all over the country, covering this news…

• InRich.com / Richmond.com press release
• Elliots Blog – A great domain-name blog that was also involved in the geo-domain arena as well.
• Domain Name News
• The804.com
• rvanews

Listening To: ‘Under Your Spell’ by The Smashing Pumpkins

Moving on to different things…

Im writing this post with pretty mixed emotions, but overall its for the greater good.

I quit my job today. My last day is a little less than 4 weeks from now. While things are really hectic, I was offered a great job with the local county government being a developer on a pretty cool team. While I can’t go into detail with what I will be doing, Ill be writing software, and specializing in .net, and beginning professional work with .net 3.5,  and really exploring the powers behind WCF, WPF, LINQ, and more!

I’m ready to settle down a bit, do something new, and also give even more back to the region I have grown up in. Unfortunatly in the move, I end up leaving a company I loved to work for, a possition that I loved, and great people I have grown great friendships with.

I wont be moving any time soon, so thats another big benifit. Plus I also will be working less than 2 miles from home, and could pretty much walk to work if I watned. Im also going to have a LOT less stress, since I won’t be managing a team anymore, nor have to work on hardware, etc. Ill be able to just focus on my code :). This focus is something I have wanted for a while as I grow my carrer as a developer.

Im sure things are going to change over time. Since I will have more time, I plan on getting a lot more work done on our house. I also may even be still contributing code to my old job when needed. Finally, I am hoping to move back to a ‘real’ hosting environment, and start building out some of the ideas I have been having!

Listening To: ‘Time To Burn’ by The Rasmus.