On Friday, I rolled off of my current project. It was bitter sweet. On the one hand, I had a lot of fun working on it, and I learned quite a bit about architecting and building large systems. On the other hand, I've been there for almost a full year. Yes, I know that's not that long. The guys who are still there have all been there for a few years, and will be responsible for our solution for a few years more.


But this comes to a much bigger point: why I went into consulting rather than industry. I wanted to do different things. And I have. In my (short) career, I've had the chance to work on CRM for a couple of big banks, a POS system for a large pizza chain, CMS for a college and a sports site, and quite a few custom applications for a large range of industries. I don't mention this to brag, but to make my point. I didn't want to start working on one project or product, and be stuck with it forever. I wanted variety. And I got it.


My next project is still up in the air. I may be doing CMS at the same client - it will be odd to still be there, but working on something else.


I've actually started this project, but at the same time, I am going to training for a company's web services for potential integration projects in Dayton on Thursday and Friday - I have to get up at 4:00 AM to be down there by 11:00 AM.


I also have another project that just popped up today. A rearchitecture of a large application that doesn't have proper layer separation. I'll be part of a team to pull out the shared pieces and split them into a business layer, business entities, and a dedicated data layer. Right now, they are all rolled into one. As part of this, we'll also do a database review and redesign. These are the kinds of projects I like!


As an added bonus (kind of), they're located in California. It was 82 there today. As a comparison, there was snow flurries in Grand Rapids today. Plus, it sounds like I'll get to go see an A's game while I'm there. This will be my third baseball game that I've been to while traveling. I've been to Fenway in Boston and Wrigley in Chicago - two of the best parks in baseball! Now, I get to add the Oakland Coliseum to my list. Question though. Are the Oakland A's fans as rabid as the Oakland Raiders fans? I hope not!


P.S. If it seems I'm being vague about the types of projects or who the clients are, that's because I am. I can't reveal too much about them for obvious reasons.