I've been working on a coding project that has begun to excite me quite a bit. I've certainly found, of course, that I have been excited about projects in the past, and then, nothing happened. But that's not entirely unexpected for me. I've learned over the years to allow myself a balance between setting solid goals for myself, and having a chance to explore and play.

For instance, about four or five years ago, I resurrected a long-shelved 3D project of designing a virtual village. I even devoted this web site to that project for some time. I found Blender, the 3D designer I had played with in the past, had really evolved into a great tool, and with its Python scripting capabilities, and a DB tool I'd recently discovered called SQLite, I thought I could easily add to Blender's power in aid of my little virtual village.

That project has not died. But it definitely has fallen to the background. And while a part of me squirms to say that, fearing it makes me look like I can't commit to a project, I have found that, instead, it is part of a creative process I have come to rely on. After all, it was only a few years before that I even first thought of doing a 3D project, and I spent those years exploring, experimenting, learning different aspects of 3D technology. In those days, I wasn't even a programmer. In my days jobs, I was a quality assurance engineer, a tech support representative, even a manager. But never a coder.

Over the last five years, I have programmed in PHP at home (that's history, now), and VB.Net at work (now working on C#). Now, though, and thanks to the Blender scripting project I began a few years ago, I have found myself impressed with Python, enough so that I ended up with completely new project ideas, ideas that have nothing to do with 3D ANYTHING.

Now, I am developing a networking application that will enable multiple machines to securely backup files over the network. I'm learning Python's impressive capabilities at encryption, networking and database storage.

This project is aimed at being a bread-and-butter, pay-the-rent kind of project, so I won't share the details without an NDA. But if you have experience with security and encryption, I would love to start a conversation!

And to you business folks who are looking for a solid Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery solution for businesses, please contact me as well. As the solution evolves over the next year or so, I plan to have a very robust service which will address the business and security needs.

Well, I've moved to Illinois this past summer (2005). My wife graduated Vet School at the University of Tennessee and started an Internship at the University of Illinois. We tried at first to do a year apart, but ultimately, when my job offered me a chance to telecommute from Illinois, we decided to go through the effort of selling the house, packing up and moving.

I've been here for a couple of months, got laid off -- yes, laid off from the company that let me telecommute -- and yes, laid off for the fourth time in my life, so far -- and managed to land a job in Bloomington, an hour's commute (with Hurricane Katrina's impact, that makes for lots of gas money).

I'm working on C#, now, adding to my years of VB.Net experience, and am trying to incorporate my skills and experience with BizTalk, SQL, architecture and project management.

At home, I'm kind of reassessing my development projects. I'm still using Python, exploring ways to develop GUI/Network applications.

Our contact info is pretty much unchanged. If you had our cell phones and email addresses in Knoxville, they're still good.

V