The past few months, I’ve been straddling working for two organizations at the same time. Phasing myself out in one, “trying out” for the other. From The Devine Group, Inc., I was transitioning from a VP/Information Technology role of the 20-person company. To RecruitMilitary, LLC, as Chief Experience Officer of the 55-person company, a position I accepted last week.

At Devine, my role was somewhat limited to IT. At RecruitMilitary, I will ensure that the experiences the organization delivers its stakeholders are a strategic advantage, not a liability. I’ll work to map out both present-day and ideal experiences, seek to understand experience expectations, identify “pain points”, and determine how to deliver better experiences for improved ROI. This will involve analysis & implementation of solutions to minimize/remove “choke points” in our processes. I’ll also be responsible for establishing and continuously improving core metrics for our online business model & products.

I feel fortunate to have been given the opportunity to design my own job, for the most part, and that I managed to make the transition without any loss of income at all. All while trying to recover from reconstruction surgery on my Achilles (which has been very trying, both emotionally + physically) and a new baby! I look forward to the possibility of a run of non-eventful months ;)

Morals of the story:

1. Blog—it creates visibility (the CEO of RecruitMilitary found me through this pathetic blog)
2. Design your own job—Good employers want you to be happy in your day-to-day work, they know your productivity is tied to it.

1. SPAGHETTI FLOWS FREELY: The codebase is large enough to require some refactoring, but very little of it has ever been done.
2. OUTDATED PLATFORM: The site is using outdated technology that no good developer really wants to touch anymore (i.e. Microsoft ASP, data-processing-centric Java, VB.NET, etc.)
3. EXPERIENCE SUCKS: The site is ugly, hard-to-use, etc.

If your app passes on any of the three, it may be worth salvaging the app. 3 strikes, it’s out.

Side note… who is to blame for an application to get to the point that it needs tossed out the door? If resources were unreasonably constrained by non-IT management against the recommendations made by IT, then the non-IT management is to blame. However, if IT never asked for additional resources to avoid the 3 strikes, then it must take full responsibility for the impending death of a codebase.

It’s been 6 weeks since surgery, 8 weeks since the rupture.

I went to see my doctor today. Here’s what I learned:

• I am allowed to put as much weight on my left foot as possible without major pain.
• He told me to go down to one crutch when I feel ready for it.
• I got my “prescription” to begin physical therapy.
• I’ll get to ditch the boot in 4 weeks, and so will end “the summer of the boot.”

It’s still a long, long road back, but each stage is getting more bearable.

I’ll never take for granted the “miracle of walking” again :)

So ASP.NET MVC Preview 4 is about to hit the streets. I have been watching, waiting, hoping that the ASP.NET effort at copying Rails would be so compelling that I could stomach investing in .NET programming again.

The new preview 4 features:

• filter interceptors (before + after hooks for controllers)
• outputcache filters (action caching)
• handle error filters (custom error page)
• authorize filter (role-based authorization)
• accountcontroller class (wrapper to ASP.NET membership API)
• minor improvement to testing
• some ajax stuff

They are incorporating community-driven features, which is good. But I don’t think the project has anywhere near the velocity it needs. It’s taken them 2 months to get this new functionality out the door… I’m not very excited, because it’s hard not to compare what’s going on to present-day Rails, which is years ahead.

The big concerns I have about ASP.NET MVC are:

• still not opinionated enough. Rather than simplifying .NET web development, they are giving more choices
• the names they are giving features… ugh! Give me the silly Rails “plugin_fu” and “sexy_plugin” names any day vs. filter, filter, filter
• documentation not at your fingertips—maybe it’ll get there, but I bet there will never be a docs site for ASP.NET MVC as simple + easy to use as RailsBrain
• no plugin system that I’ve heard about
• not Restful… /:controller/:action/:id is so 2005. And I suppose for webservices, they still want developers to use SOAP?

I actually want the project to succeed, because it’s tough for organizations who have invested in .NET system to consider switch. And I want my .NET friends to be happier. They truly don’t know what they’re missing in the amazing Ruby community—Rails, Github, Merb, nginx/thin, Sinatra, Radiant, Shoulda, RSpec, and literally dozens of other interconnecting projects.

About a week ago, I was googling (I don’t remember what) and on multiple occasions bnet.com results popped up. Site looked nice, content was relevant to my search. Honestly, I don’t even know why I registered at the site… but I did. Maybe there was some protected content that required account. In any event, I signed up.

A successful conversion! Their web + SEO team should feel proud.

July 8

I got 3 email from the site—pretty cool, pushing out some information to me. I note that perhaps it’s “over communication” but a couple of the articles interested me.

July 9

Just one email. Fine.

July 10

4 email! I get enough email in general, and the stuff they’re pushing to me really isn’t relevant, so I decide to unsubscribe. Plus the emails are quite laced with ads. The unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email didn’t work, but finally I figured out how to unsubscribe from the 4 categories of messages. End of story, right? Wrong.

July 11

Today I still got 1 email, so I figure out how to unsubscribe from all CNET email, from a link on the original unsubcribe page, which bnet.com seems to be affiliated with. They say it’ll take 10 days to process my request!

Total brand experience == sucks

My point of all this is how shitty an experience it’s been as a new user of bnet. What it tells me is that the business has not managed the balancing act of “serving the advertisers” vs. “serving the audience.” Their website looks nice, and I had a good experience with it. Their email strategy was horrendous, and I judge them on the “total brand experience.”

Update

Since I started writing this post, 2 more of their email have hit my inbox. I just made my first Gmail filter to automatically delete emails with subject line starting with “BNET Alert”. Side note, the Gmail filter setup process was a great experience. All hail Gmail!

The current “logo” for anotherventure.com is actually just from a free css template. This knowledge was nagging at me, so I gave 99designs.com a spin, after Clark saw great results on his new company’s logo. So I started up a $200 contest, an a week later, after 77 submissions, I chose the winner.

Very cool process, and great way to get creative done, in my opinion.

I got invited to private beta of Dropbox and it’s very cool—beta account has 2GB storage, and you can share files across computers, mac + PC, etc.

I dropped all the family photos on my computer on it, shared with wife, she’ll delete the ones that are junk, organize into folders, touch up, and then I can just upload to flickr from my computer. The files are sync’d instantly, and it was a very quick install.

I have 10 beta invitations I can share, let me know if you’re interested. First come first serve!

Our 3rd child Camilla Josephine Walker was born on Thursday. She’s awesome, super cute, strong :) It was a little stressful for me to be full-time dad to Emerson and Isabella from Wednesday to Sunday, but we made it through it. I did my first driving since my Achilles rupture!

And on that note, I get my cast off on Thursday – I’m still pretty much pain free, crutches suck, I’m getting a little nervous about physical therapy. Right now my foot is wrapped in it’s protective cocoon. I’m going to feel like a snail out of it’s shell at first :)

Why is it that the Firefox 3 mac UI looks so much better than PC UI?

click to zoom in

Obviously the mac UI looks much closer to OSX Safari – and I guess they couldn’t also take the PC UI closer to OSX Safari without a lot of griping. But show 100 “non-religious” people the two UI options, I’d say the Mac version would be chosen 2 to 1 or more…

Quick update: I’m feeling pretty good. Went out to work @ client location past two days, good to get back out and get off the couch :) Good thing is that if I’m lying or sitting, my foot doesn’t hurt… Crutching around is killing my armpits, and my foot throbs a little when moving around, but at least I can move around. I’m off pain medication for the first time in a few months.

Now my focus turns to taking care of my clients and hope they forgive me for being less than 100% past few months. Oh and of course we have child #3 due to arrive in a week or two! One thing I can say with certainty is that I’m not suffering from boredom :)

Thank you to everyone who has offered help and support. People are great, my spirits are up. Randy Pausch has been an inspiration for how to handle the curveball’s that life throws at you; I really can’t complain that I have it so bad.

My surgery yesterday involved:

• First they gave me a nerve block behind the knee that blocked pain for 24-48 hrs after surgery. A lot of needles while I was semi-conscious—I don’t remember anything about that, but they said I was basically responding to all their questions with sarcastic jokes… I guess the “true me” was coming through :) Then I was given general anesthesia and was out.
• Removal of haglan’s deformity—irregular bone growth on my heel that is the result of my years of achilles tendonitis.
• Flexor hallucis longus (FHL) tendon transfer—they harvested a tendon behind my big toe to lace into the achilles tendon. Basically they drill a hole in my heel and pull that tendon through, which serves as the new anchor. The bone will grow around it to secure the connection.
• Achilles debridement—small cuts are made to the tendon, which stimulates an in-growth of blood vessels and results in a healing response.

I vomited about 6 times after waking up, went home about an hour later. Went right to sleep for about 5 hrs. Watched the Celtics-Lakers game, then the trouble began.

I tried to fall asleep at midnight, but could only sleep for about 30-45 minutes before the pain woke me back up. I took some of the percoset they prescribed @ 5am, but it didn’t help too much. I struggled through it until 6am when I had Shannon go get valium prescription filled, I was writhing in pain waiting for her to get back. Once I got that stuff in my system, I fell asleep until 9am, and my pain level was lowered.

I called the doc, he called me back around noon and he told me a lot of the post-op pain I’m feeling is attributed to the bone work he did. He said today + tomorrow are going to be rough from a pain standpoint, but from there it should slowly subside.

I go in to see him in 2 weeks to get staples out, and then he’ll recast me for another 2 weeks or so. Then I’ll be in a boot for a few weeks before starting physical therapy, around week 6. He thinks there’s a good chance I’ll get back to 100% percent strength, but that’ll be about a year(!) out…

When it rains it pours…

This morning I woke up at 4am with tooth pain (I had my 3rd root canal appt in 3 weeks on Thurs), couldn’t fall back asleep, so went to play basketball @ 6am. Around 6:20 I was running down the court, tried to cut to the basket for a pass, and it felt like someone kicked my calf. I turned back to see who it was, saw no one, tried to take a step, and went down.

I knew immediately that I’d ruptured my Achilles. I just about lost consciousness for a few minutes. They called paramedic and took me to hospital. X-rays confirm it’s a complete rupture, and will require surgical repair. I have a temporary cast, I’m on crutches, and I can’t drive.

I plan to try to get surgery scheduled ASAP (with Shannon due in 4 weeks, timing for this injury is quite inconvenient), and I’ll be in a cast for around 6-8 weeks afterwards (so I’ve read). I haven’t seen an orthopedic doctor yet, so nothing is official on this stuff yet.

Good news is that I’ve got very little pain, and I’m hoping I can work on computer fairly normally. Traveling to work office is probably out of the picture for next few weeks.

Not a good start to the holiday weekend :(

Our 5-year old daughter Isabella was watching TV today and told my wife “Do you know Lucky Charms has less sugar now? Now we can buy it…I think it has vitamins too.”

Well played, General Mills :)

Lance Garrett Steagall complains that only 4.4 percent of our federal budget goes towards education, and that we’re overspending on defense.

People like Lance have a warped view of the role of federal government. Federal taxes should go towards federal defense… and there is no reason education needs to be federalized. I’d support 0% of federal education expenditures. Remember we’re in a republic, people, and the states can handle education without federal assistance!