Happy 35th New Year.
This morning I came down the stairs to be greeted by my wife blowing a party horn and waving streamers in front of a banner strung from the cabinets that read, "Happy New Year!" She then wished me a, "Happy birthday!" In case there is any doubt, I have a wonderful wife who truly listens, loves and supports me.
You see just before we left on holiday, I mentioned that I did not feel that 2012 had truly started. All of January was spent finishing up work from 2011. Namely, I finally got my new blog up, published the new wixtoolset.org, wrapped up a bunch of loose ends at work and filed my 2011 state taxes for RobMensching.com LLC. I figured by my birthday, it would feel like 2012.
And it finally does.
Life at home is good and getting better. Each week Bradley is a little more engaging and a little more independent. That means there is more I can provide him and less he is dependent on Jenny. Goodness for both parents. I look forward to taking paternity leave in the next few months to spend a full month with him.
Work (aka: Microsoft) is okay. A large scale change in my management makes me feel like I’ve been traded to a new team. I like the new management but I can’t help shaking the feeling like I’m starting over after two years in the organization. I also was not able to fix nearly as much of Visual Studio’s setup as I’d hoped. The depth of that problem overwhelmed me. But the tooling in Visual Studio for Windows 8 packages looks good. Hopefully, I can speak to more details as the new previews of Win8 and VS become available.
Business (aka: RobMensching.com LLC) is good. At the end of last year, I had to turn a number of projects away that looked like fun. I just didn’t have the hours available with a newborn at home. I’m starting to pick up projects again. At the same time, there are 4 or 5 software projects bouncing around in my head. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day. <smile/>
WiX Toolset (aka: my night job) is okay. WiX v3.6 and Burn is progressing well and we can see the finish line. However, I’m really feeling the pain of Burn being “5 years late”. I want us to move on to other problems more relevant to today but we must finish Burn first. There are a couple things coming in the next few months that are pretty cool and good for the project but we must finish WiX v3.6. I’m excited about all the things we could do in the WiX toolset and I’m often torn about how to spend my time given the three competing priorities above.
Ultimately, 2011 is done and 2012 looks interesting. Lots of options amidst lots of change. In the meantime, keep coding. You know I am.