Happy New Year and all that

Welcome to 2007 :)

As the new year lays ahead we have just had a re-organization at work - it will be intresting to see what changes to how we operate.

Over December I spent alot of time playing World of Warcraft - I now have 3 level 60 characters. Next week the expansion comes out and the level cap is raised to level 70. I'm excited enough I may try to take a day or two off to play (try to get all three characters to 70).

I'm considering some new hardware purchases. I'm trying to determine if I can make a box beefy enough to run 2 copies of WoW simultaneously (dual-monitors). I'm thinking with the dual-core processors and higher end video cards this may well be doable (maybe gimp the graphics on one of the instances of WoW).

I'm waiting on the release of Vista - I'll post about what I've tried so far soon.

Service Orient architecture and the Enterprise Service Bus pattern is evolving. We are making some traction at work, and the industry is changing. As predicted the ESB as a product is forcing change in terminology as some of the things is the true ESB pattern are weak in the current products. I have reviewed the offerings from Microsoft, IBM, BEA, SAP, Tibco, WebMethods, Sonic, SoftwareAG, Amberpoint, and a few others in the past 4 months.

This year should be a maturation year at work. Last year between some small organizational changes, the implementation of a limit on contractor duration, meant the vast majority of my organization was new. This year should provide the opportunity to really hit stride and make some improvements in process and roles.

I'm definitely going to spend a bit more time this year integrating things like calendar (work calendar, my calendar, and Jess's calendar). As well as some email consolidation.

Other personal projects this year (aside from my normal technical continued improvement) will be further improvements on the house (pool table, stucco repair, fence, surround sound, landscaping, window coverings) - Jess will be very involved in these projects ;)

Additionally consideration for furthering formal education is underway.