2007 was a hell of a year for me both personally and professionally.  On a scale of 1-10, I’d rate 2007 a 5 or 6.

On the professional side, I started the year unemployed with no prospects in site.  In late January, after a couple of interviews, I landed what would turn out to the be the project from hell.  While the 6-months of that project were a brutal exercise in how NOT to develop software, I did make some great contacts and learned quite a bit.

About the same time I took that gig, I landed another contract that’s been keeping me busy throughout the year.  In fact, I think it’ll be keeping me busy well into 2008.   I also saw the value in LinkedIn when I scored a project late in the year (the IT Director did a search of “local” talent and cold-called me).  I’ll be blogging about that project soon.

During the year, I attended the Office 2007 launch in Chicago, CodeMash, the Dayton-Cinci Code Camp, Ann Arbor Day of .NET (spring and fall) and the VS 2008 installfest in Southfield.  These events are always a good time and I continued to make/cultivate some great contacts.

On the personal side, the end of last year and the start of this year were tough for me.  Being out of work for several months with no prospects (but a mortgage, car payments, wife and kids) really took its toll on me.  Way too much time was spent revisiting past decisions, trying to figure out where things went wrong.  By mid-year, I was miserable and angry and pretty unpleasant to be around.

I also had a tough time for the first few months of the year knowing my friend Wil (Gunny Wade) was in harms way in Iraq.  It was a huge relief when he made it home safely.  I was able to spend a couple weeks with him over the summer which was great.

For the first time in about 20 years, I got to see a very close friend in person.  We’ve always kept in touch via snail mail/email/IM, but to finally see her again in person was great!  Hopefully it won’t be another 20 years…

I started the year hell-bent on the pushup/situp challenge, but ended up stopping after a couple of months (mainly due to the project from hell)…I did end up keeping my weight between 180-190 which was really cool considering it’s been *years* since I’ve been this light.

I severely curbed my World of Warcraft playing time after realizing I had a problem.   In fact, I stopped playing for about 5-6 weeks near the end of the summer.  I’m back to playing, but definitely nowhere near as much as I had been.  I did get my main character to 70 and have another at 62.

Next post: 2008!