- searched, interviewed for, and landed a job
- graduated from college
- bought a house and moved my pregnant wife and I in (with her help!)
- presented my work's products at Infocomm 2012 in Las Vegas
- welcomed my family's first child into the world --- a very beautiful, healthy girl!
- recovered from oral surgery, spawned by the discovery of a benign tonsil growth (scary!)
When my wife and I met with our pediatrician for the first time, she told us two things. You can't develop bad habits in the first 3 months, and the name of the game is survival. Her advice was directed toward raising a child, and I completely agree; sleep has been a scarce commodity. But this blog space is (mostly) focused on technical reflections.
Having started working full-time at a software company, I realized recently that my pediatrician's advice is pretty applicable to starting a career, especially in the software industry. "Survival" is one's goal, and keeping up with one's work is paramount. You have few habits, so don't worry about being a well-oiled machine quite yet. Get your bearings and learn every day: names of coworkers, the culture of the company, all the way down to how your fellow code-smiths build software. Sponge it all up, and if you get bogged down take notes!
As I gain more experience with some of the technologies I'm using, I'll try to backup my tips & lessons learned here. My current plan is to write a small Pomodoro application using MVVM and Test-Driven Development. For some reason, all of the Pomodoro Windows applications I've found are pretty minimal, and I'd like to add some features to them, such as a tracking log to see how well the user is sticking to following the Pomodoro schedule. It might be interesting to turn it into a game of sorts, similar to TDGotchi, but I'll work on getting a functional basic application first.
Until then, I'll keep on surviving.
(survival is really only present in the title of this song;
I just like the band and the song is kind of fun, if a bit cheesy :P )
