Goodbye contracting..

Ten years ago, a crack IT-commando unit was sent to prison by a static code analyser for a bug they didn’t create. These men promptly escaped from a Triple-DES security stockade to the Adelaide underground. Today, still wanted by the government/higher education and private sectors, they survive as developers of fortune. If you have a software problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire… The AoM-Team.

If I recall correctly, I wrote those words not that long after I started as a contract developer at ABB Grain around 18 months ago. This Friday the 29th is my last day contracting at what is now known as Viterra. Our team is finishing up as “the job is done”.

It has been an exciting and fulfilling adventure being part of the team that has created a software solution that has been so widely praised by the end-users. More often than not, IT project fail, but against the odds we managed to succeed in a big way. I’m proud to know that our work made a real difference to the staff who have just worked through one of the biggest grain harvests in recent history.

Without doubt THE highlight has been working with a group of awesome colleagues – my fellow “AoM Team” members:

• Ben Laan
• Nigel Spencer
• Brian Kelsey
• Ping Liang
• Raaj Kumaar
• Jo Wegner
• Angelo Tsirbas
• Tony Miller - Yes I can now proudly say (along with apparently all the residents of Eyre Peninsula and the west coast of South Australia) that I know Tony Miller!

(And previous team members Timothy Walters, Richard Hollon and Solan Dogan).

I will really miss working with you guys - sharing stories, parenting tips, learning new coding tricks, Jo’s lollies, plying everyone with “Dad” jokes, visiting lots of country bakeries and creating great software.

“So what’s next?”, I hear you ask? Well while it isn’t a secret, I’m going to make you wait until my next blog post to tell you!

SATA hard disk value

As part of my research into suitable components for a Hyper-V server, I thought it would be interesting to see the cents per gigabyte of the various drives offered by MSY.

Prices from MSY PARTS.PDF dated 25/01/2010

So as far as value for money, those 1.5TB drives from Seagate and WD appear the winner.

Sticky taped (part 2)

Ahh.. I will miss Brian’s little pranks :-)

On the bright side – yes those are Cherry Ripe bars attached to the sticky-tape.

That’s something we’ve particularly enjoyed over the last few months – Jo (one of the testers in our team) has most generously taken it upon herself to be the “filler of the lolly bowl”.

Mmmmmm :-)