Returning Home (kind of)

Philip — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 00:33:21 +0000

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.

2 Days in Touch

Philip — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 22:48:38 +0000

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 :P 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 :)

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Returning Home (kind of)

2 Days in Touch