For the last 5 days I’ve been without my main computer. I swapped the contents of two rooms here, and somehow in that process my computer stopped booting up (nothing would happen when pressing power or manually completing the “power” switch on the motherboard). This is always the most annoying problem to deal with, as there are many things it can be. In the end I was able to take out my power supply and try one of my old ones which powered it up fine. OK, no problem, get a new power supply right? Well I install it, hook it up to 4 hd’s and turn it on (with the motherboard outside of the case) only to get… nothing? Apparently with only 3 HD’s hooked up it boots up, shuts down, boots up, shuts down. With 2 HD’s hooked up it boots fine though. This was a new power supply still in shrink wrap, making me reluctant to claim it as the culprit, but I should be able to hammer out the reason tomorrow. Hopefully I can get back to coding a little more in my spare time after that and not concerning myself with hardware issues.

But on the bright side I’ve been able to get much more reading done than I would have otherwise. I’m almost done with book 3/50, which is proving very informative. One of the problems I’ve always had when finishing technical books is the urge to skip around from one book to another, never completely finishing anything. It’s no surprise that Context switching is a bad idea, but I’d always related that back to programming. Same can be said for reading, which is no surprise. To combat this harmful practice, shelve your books! Only allow one book to be off your bookshelf at a time and don’t allow it to go back until it’s done. I’ve found not having 10 “interesting” books that I’d love to read lying around I’m much more inclined to finish the one I really want to read. It’s a small change, but by cutting out the question “Which book should I read” you spend more time concentrating on the one you’ve already started.

One thing I hadn’t known about until about August of last year was what a great community Coldfusion, and Adobe in general had. When It came to reading blogs I’d typically only read the ones that came up in the search results, and even then only the posts relevant to the topics at hand. In doing that you miss out on so much though! Settling down with an RSS reader like Google Reader (my personal favorite) or Bloglines and adding feeds is one of the best ways to get started. Eric Sink mentioned something in his post Baptists and Boundaries that hit close to home — that so many developers don’t read software blogs. Up until last year I’d have to put myself in that category as well. We all read occasionally, less than we’d like, and sort out our current problems at work as they come down the line, but the expansion into new areas sometimes lags behind. The hot topics remain unknown until you hear about them after you’ve spent serious time solving the same problem, or maybe you become so inspired to work on something new. You’re sure to learn some things you don’t know, but more than that you’ll find yourself more inspired to learn more.

So where do you start? RSS feeds! Feeds alone don’t help of course, but coupled with Google Reader, Bloglines or any other such service you can read all blogs you want from a single page — as they are updated. The time savings in reading from a reader versus checking the sites occasionally waiting for new news is beyond compare. You should be using a reader at this point, and your blog should have an RSS feed. It’s as simple as that.

But where do you find blogs to add? In the Coldfusion world that’s an easy question. Here’s a few places to start:

• Macromedia XML News Aggregator – The official Macromedia news aggregator tracks tons of Coldfusion, Flex and other Adobe/Macromedia blogs. The feedlist shows just how many blogs there are listed. They also just went through a round of adding new blogs to which I’ve seen a few new ones added (myself included!).
• Fullasagoog – Similar to the official aggregator, but tends to add new blogs much more rapidly. I emailed them earlier today asking about getting added and checked tonight to see it on there! There is definitely a focus here for Coldfusion, Flex and Flash although other categories are available.
• Feed-Squirrel – Another aggregator similar to Fullasagood with similar main focus.
• 9 Rules – Although not as much quantity as the others, 9 Rules does have periodic checks to make sure blogs are still active and relevant, as well as round based submissions rather than open. End result is a lot less blogs that are more hand picked. Much more variety of topics such as iface thoughts on software development, or Particletree.
• Blogs of blogs – One of the great ways to branch out is to check out what your favorite bloggers are reading. This is great, but can end up wasting way too much of you time, so be careful.

Start reading!

Everyone dreams of the time when they can quit their job. If you’re lucky this rarely happens, but I can’t imagine the idea never crossing someones mind (or if so, please get me an interview there.). The concerns have been there for me since half the development team left around the beginning of last year, but resurfaced towards the end of the year. Today was my last day of work there, although I’m sure I’ll be seeing most the people again. It’s amazing to work at a place where even with over 100 people in the office I’d feel comfortable grabbing a drink and hanging out with any of them. I ended up giving 7 weeks notice to my supervisor, with plenty of time to pass on anything on to others in the office. We leave on great terms though, and I wish everyone the best.

As for what I’ll do next? That’s quite a mystery at this point actually. I have a lot of goals, and for once, a lot of time. I’d love to read through a handful of books on my shelf, get Coldfusion Certified (more for the experience and learning those CF parts I might not otherwise learn than for a certificate) and build at least one production site from start to finish. Luckily I’m not in a rush to find a job at this point, although I did apply for one that looked interesting. At this point I’m perfectly happy laying back, working on the above items and watching for jobs as they become available. Coldfusion jobs in Orlando aren’t in abundance, but there are great opportunities out there for those who wait.

It might sound sacrilegious, but I’m not ruling out the idea of taking an entry level position in a language other than Coldfusion. As much as I love CF, and honestly believe it to be the best web programming language for a huge amount of tasks; it’s still only the best web programming language of those I’ve been exposed to. At 24 there’s a lot I don’t know; and “traveling the programming world” is a trip I’d love to take. I’ll continue to look for CF jobs, but I’m still open to other web programming opportunities at this point.