Rampidbyter Rampid byter: A byte of my .Net developing life.

This past Friday I did something that nobody I have ever known has done intentionally. Against all recommendations of friends and family I put in my two-week notice to my current employer. I did so without a net. I finally had the kick I needed to start giving full attention to making my dream a reality in getting my own company up and running. It’s incredibly risky, and as everyone I know is quick to point out the “economy” is horrible.

I have some neat ideas, two baked products, and one micro service I’m launching this month. I am really hoping to take on a few short-term contracts to make ends meet, and will be living off my savings for a few months. Worse case I will have spent a month or two without employment, improved my development skills, and will have experimented with several neat up-and-coming technologies.

This is possibly the scariest but most exciting stage in my life. I have never been without a full-time job in my working life. I have tried several times to get my business going but always was hindered by long working weeks, clients calling during my work hours, and brain burn-out afterhours having spent a better part of eleven hours programming at work. I can’t wait to see what it’s like having sixty hours a week (drive included) extra to do work compared to the ten hours previously burning the midnight oil.

I was working on some odd and ends projects this morning when a co-worker of mine messaged me about the newly updated CKurl.com site. I took a look, jolted backwards like watching one of those flash vids where you have to look real close to see what is different then a screaming ghoul pops out. Well, that’s when i saw his picture staring back at me, but i will say the whole site did indeed look ‘new’, and had a more professional vibe to it.

I’ve been needing to refresh a few pages I've been contracted to work on, and of course i picked the quickest one that could be updated. Spent about an hour cutting and pasting new CSS div id’s around, and *wa-la* there is a new JWHExcavating.com excavation company website!

BEFORE AFTER

I feel better after having ‘done something’ new too. Anyway, just wanted to give a post out about the new client site, and the new CKurl. If you haven’t checked out CKurl.com then you’re missing out on some neat right-wing blog action (conspiracy theories.)

As I mentioned before I started a company. It’s been going pretty slowly, had some ups, had some downs, slowdowns that is, and it seems things are back on track. I am still working to complete an in-house software product but the development cycle was halted so that I could upgrade my knowledge base to LINQ and ADO.Net Entity Framework. During this knowledge gathering period I’ve had a lot of personal life events taking place, getting near a marriage, looking for a house, and getting myself into a regular schedule. Development at work has been going well, slower than I thought, but going well none the less.

Today I sold my companies services to a midsized printing company. The initial project has been slated as a six month task with many more projects waiting in the wings. I’m looking forward to starting on this project, but of course have to do some initial project requirements gathering. From there I’ll talk about the business processes that are currently un-documented, and get an idea of the pain points in the data entry roles. So far the client has been nothing but cheerful and pleasant to work with, and I’m looking forward to a very successful delivery of an updated website ready to deliver the results they’re looking for.

In other news I recently took part in a Frisbee golf game that netted me the first hole in one of my life. I think the hole was more than 280 feet and I was able to toss the Frisbee in such a way that it swopped down, hit a tree, and fell directly into the hole. It was fantastic, truly a one in a million accomplishment that I’m sure I’ll never repeat. I can’t wait till I witness another one of my comrades performing the same maneuver.

Whelp, interesting day again today.

Few things to note, got the paperwork today, and officially completed the formation of the new company at the lawyer’s office this morning.

ASTRA Innovations, LTD. is officially formed.

In the meantime I’m still meeting my obligations at the current place of employment. I’m even building a Kanban inventory calculation system to help facilitate a lean manufacturing process for a client. Kanban is a neat idea, but implementation can be interpreted three ways from Sunday on how exactly to drive the process.

That’s big news in itself since the entire companies planning purchases and vendor/supplier ratings will be based off this inventory system. I like challenges so it’ll be fun.

Also today is the day before July 4 so I need to head out later to pick up food to cook tomorrow. Chips, cheese, sour cream, and salsa will also be required. I’m looking forward to tomorrow I have about $600 worth of fireworks sitting in the empty bedroom waiting to be let off. No, I didn’t buy all those myself, but I chipped in a quarter of that.

So today seems to be a good day. Company formed officially, clients are thrilled with deliverables, and tomorrow I’ll be munching on steak my cousin promised to cook for us. Did I mention the three day weekend? I am so excited that this year, after letting off fireworks that we won’t be up till 2am sweeping the street like we’ve done for the past four years having to go to work the next day!

If I don’t hear from you have a Happy 4^th of July everyone.

I completed phase 1 this past Sunday morning. I spent the great deal of Sunday evening filling in the data model with test data that I used to verify the design, and began testing each and every stored procedure. It was extremely time consuming, and I was rewarded with a few failures that required tweaking. Always those little changes you make to the data types that come back to find you when testing stored procedures. Such as including an concatenated name in one procedure, and in the other only returning the last name. It’s always those silly little things that take two seconds to fix, and are the sole reason to test in the first place.

My model was verified, I tested against data, inserting, updating, and removing from the data model. Indexed the columns that I thought should be indexed, and am happy with the result. I’m starting phase 2 this week and it will hopefully be complete by the end of July. Now comes the tiered design, coupled with Enterprise Library composite controls, and of course all the interactions inbetween. I want the interface to be dynamic, or at least easily modifiable. So I’m building out a lot of composite controls, and I’m looking to start Phase 3 in August.

Phase 1 – Data model (database, stored procedures, and indexing)       

                Estimate 1 week (complete)

Phase 2 – Tier design (data access layer, business entities, business logic/processes, data providers, web services, and reusable objects)

                Estimate 4 weeks (in progress)

Phase 3 – Primary interfaces (web service consuming web portal, and smart client application)

                Estimate 2 weeks (pending)

Phase 4 – Distribution, and marketing

For a good reference I liked the articles from the Microsoft Patterns and Practice website. One good article I came across a year ago is below:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms978496.aspx

I’m really excited today. I started work on my first personal commercial product. This may not be the first ‘commercial’ product I’ve built or helped build, but this is the first one that will be my very own for the new company. I’m very excited, it’s coming along great, and I’m anxiously looking forward to release date. I’ve worked out the paperwork, documentation, and have started the database modeling.

As far as the entire process goes I’d say im about 95% done with the database model. I’m going to start loading it with data, finalize the stored procedures I need for standard release 1, and then build up my three layered approach. I’m deciding on the technology to use know. I’m thinking Enterprise Library foundation, with Framework 2.0 desktop application for supporting grunt entry work, and an ASP.net 2.0 web interface to the system via web services.

I’m so excited. It’s coming together nicely and my schedule is very aggressive. I’ll be sure to link when it’s completed, but it’s still looking to be about a month of development before it’s candidate release 1 ready.

In other news I saw the Hulk movie today. Not bad, I’ll touch on that more later.

Finished a new company website recently and I think it looks decent. I started to flex some more artistic muscle but luckily I still have my artist that I’ve been working with. I had to shelve one of the designs and go with mine because the customer started to like it more and more while I was just demoing content. So to my surprise they shelved the artists theme and went with mine.

I am kind of thrilled by that since I’m not much of an artist, at least not anymore, but I think I can get the hang of it. I’m proud of the site, even with its small size, and I think it will turn out very well for the company. I’ve started doing SEO marketing, keyword concentrations in content, and in general this is just version 1.0 of the site. We’re seeing a lot more things being added, new pages, new content, and I think we’ll over take some of the competition quickly.

I’ve found a good niche group that I’ve been working with. I have a load more clients starting to knock, meetings being set up, and things are looking bright. This site went through a bumpy patch, miscommunications, and a missed deadline of a week.

Communication, communication, and communication is the key to success it seems. If there is a delay, tell them, and if there is a disagreement resolve it. Don’t let the left hand start doing work when the right hand hasn’t even found the arm yet.

Simple but costly mistakes I tell yah. Anyway, the client didn’t seem to mind, even said they’d been in business 15 years without a website already so another week wouldn’t hurt anything. The sad thing was the site didn’t take all that long to make. I think more time was spent on the CSS layout than content simply because of lack of expertise on the subject and limited client facing.

Taking away from the project is that communication is an absolute must. It really must be true that in most things IT it’s at least 80% communication and probably 20% technology. I’m looking forward to more opportunities and will be taking away some valuable life lessons from the experience at the beginning. It’s been a semi-smooth ride with a few bumps. So here’s to http://www.jwhexcavating.com going live!

There were two things of interest this past day, the first being dining at Carlo & Johnnys last night, and the second being the business that was started yesterday. Carlo & Johnnys at first had the air of pretentiousness as we walked into the door the clientele were a little stuffy, but they seemed friendly enough. There was a mix from businessmen to a wedding party that was there to have a nice dinner. I had the most fantastic Kentucky Bison, medium rare, which was the tastiest steak I’ve had in some time. The creamed corn was terrible though, but that was ok Chuck found it delectable. I was more or less concentrating on the au-gratin potatoes that were superb. I can’t leave out the Caesar salad that unbelievably topped that of Trios. I left overly stuffed and satisfied. The Bison steak being the surprise winner of my ‘yum’ awards, and who would have thought Kentucky had Buffalo?

The second big news was the starting of a new company. After a speedy visit to the lawyer from the client site a new company was embarked upon, after a two week period for the papers to be filled and hopefully will present itself as a full time task for me. It was from there to another quick stop to visit a friend at a local banking office to setup the business accounts. All told everything was handled in about an hour, paper work is being created, NDA forms drafted, freelance/employee confidentiality agreements, and the reviewing of my non-compete agreement to ensure legality without the chance for possible lawsuits. All told it was an extremely eventful day and I’m beyond anxious to get started. I will post more details on the company once the papers are filed and any legal issues are addressed next week.