Right around the first of June, I started a new project. This is one that’s been in the pipeline since last September or October. After submitting a proposal near the end of November 2007, final approval was given near the middle of May and the official kick-off was June 1st (although our kick-off meeting didn’t actually occur until June 3rd). The project itself is pretty cool; it’s a re-write of a VB6 application that I worked on in 2000. When I led that team back in 2000, I never imagined I’d be re-writing the application 8 years later. Cool stuff. 
The application itself has been pretty stable and the users have no major complaints, BUT new features are being requested, the possibility of this software being used at other offices combined with the fact that VB6 is “end of life” means a re-write is required. This rewrite is giving me the opportunity to bring this application into the 21st century, both with the technology I’ll be using as well as the look and feel of the application.
The decision has been made to forge ahead with C#/WPF and some ASP.NET thrown in for good measure. The cool thing is that I will be using the latest and greatest tools and technologies. This means all the goodness that is .NET 3.5 combined with some really great open source tools. My client has bought into the idea of improving the user interface /user experience and have given me a lot of leeway in that regard. Early prototypes have met with good feedback and I’m moving along.
On top of that, I picked up a part-time gig that consists of maintaining an existing application that does RFID scanning. In the last 2 months, that maintenance has included adding a pretty big feature to the application. It’s been a learning experience, especially since some of my team mates are in Europe. The original developer on the project is long-gone and I’ve been given permission to refactor as needed. One of the first things I did was introduce Castle ActiveRecord for use with all of the new tables I added (for the new feature). This has meant a huge boost to my productivity.
Anyway, this blog has been a bit quiet and I wanted to let everyone know why.
