Well its been a busy month - and an emotional one.  I decided that it was time for me to find a new vocation and with great sadness I left Exist to look for opportunities in the US.   Having worked with Exist for over a year and a half it was a hard decision - and I know I’m going to miss a lot of the great people in the company - but with the constant travel and a desire to return home to my son more often,  as well as an interest in getting back to my technical roots, I felt it was time.

It was a bit of a shock to the system to suddenly have my nights freed up back in Charlotte and I have been using them to catch up with old friends and also spending some time with my family.  I am also taking the time to work out when I’m going to jump a plane back to the Philippines and actually take a proper vacation there!

In the past week I have been lucky enough to do a bit of traveling around NC (up to the mountains and around the local lakes) as well as back up to NY to get a few beers with people who are wondering if my weight loss is permanent (going to have to work on that one).   I am currently just pulling together my plans for next month - and more about that on another blog post.

One thing I’m really looking forward to it a return to technology, architecture, culture and collaboration - these have been the areas that I have enjoyed most in my career and my time with DevZuz and ultimately Exist allowed me to be part of a lot of diverse and exciting projects.   I look forward to bringing that energy home with me and seeing what we can do back in New York.

I just had a very interesting (and a little stressful) adventure in gadgetry ,  a couple of nights ago my MacBook Pro took a turn for the worse and the keyboard cut out.  I was left at 1am in the morning unable to login, and so first thing in the morning I dropped it off at the Apple Store to get it fixed - walking out I was suddenly left wondering how I was going to work the next day or two for the stream of calls and meetings.  Then I remembered,  I had just purchased an iPod Touch

Ok I certainly don’t think anyone would think the iPod Touch is a business machine - but I have to admit after two days (both fairly busy) I was able to use it to keep myself going - I had my calendar,  work and personal e-mail.  I was able to use Meebo to get on Yahoo and Google Talk and all of this while listening to music  I think the highlight was walking through the configuration of my Linksys Router over my iPod Touch to get a VOIP phone working.  While it was impressive,   I have to admit returning to a real keyboards makes a world of difference - as does having the ability to edit a document (though I was amazed at how many file formats the Mail app handled - and also the power of the browser).  

The real pain points though were the lack of a real messenger - Meebo would kick me out all the time and also the difficulties I had switching in and out of applications.   All in all - it was an adventure - but, call me old fashioned, nothing beats a full size keyboard