DavidM

It's 2:45AM and I have been on the road for nearly 11 hours.  The car is packed to and on the roof and the dogs are sleeping with one eye open.  The little sign finally appears and I brake as the turn-off approaches.  10 miles of dirt road leads us up the mountain and welcomes us a jolt.  The other eye opens and the scramble for poll position on the front passenger seat takes place.  In their eyes, they both have the best spot.

I quickly accelerate to reach that certain speed where the suspension and the ruts in the road form a sought of "eye of the storm" affect.  Too fast or slow and it shakes like a Las Vegas motel bed on a wedding night.

A wallaby enters the edge of the high beam then quickly vanishes.  I ease off a bit.  The dark line ahead slowly turns into a log? Goanna!  Breaks hard.  Both dogs hit there heads on the dash and as the speed drops I start to turn slightly away from the reptile.  It doesn't move.  They rarely do.  This one is about 6 feet long from head to tail and looks pretty proud of himself as I pass him.  Awesome animals and worth the lump on the dogs head, some lost rubber and a ride on the 'Vegas express.  The rest of the way is fairly uneventful, another wallaby and kangaroo stare mesmerised but stay still on the edge of the road. Finally we reach the plateau where the road is a bit better and the first crops appear.  Stone fruit on the left and right are covered with netting to protect against the flying threats.  Macadamia, mangoes and grazing land the rest of the way home.

I've worked in every state in Australia in the last 12 years except Tasmania (I haven't been there) and South Australia.  But my excuse for SA is that it has the best surf beach in the country and <CENSORED>.....  The last gig was 18 months in the nation's capital and while it was a fantastic job, I was still 1000km from home.

The dogs leapt out, I won't see them for a while, and I try and wake up muscles that went to sleep half a day ago.

The dream has always been to work from home.  Later on when the macadamia trees are bigger, that might be possible.  But agriculture is probably the riskiest game in town, but IT and "work from home" just go together. :-)

The people I had worked with and the friends I have made over the years, provided an opportunity that gives me at least 6 months work from home.   Its the biggest solo project I have tackled to date and will be a challenge of all my skills. 

A SmartClient application built from the ground up including the data model and its implementation.   Its like a cacophony of techno babble.....NET 1.1 framework (C#), SQL Server and MSDE as the DBMS, Windows Forms and ASP.NET implementations, Web Services blah blah blah...  Notice a theme here?  Microsoft. 

If you know me, I am not a MS fan boy, but most of my development life has been in MS products.  So I finally coughed up and registered as a partner then joined the EMPOWER program to get the MSDN Universal cheaply.  If all goes well, we might have a chance at shrink wrapping it...

I have been well and truly "Borged", but at the moment I am not resisting for I AM HOME.