A new Magenic Blogger!
I’ve hesitated to blog (particularly on this site) for fear of being “Just another tech guy saying the same old stuff”… There are too many of those types of blogs out there and I've always felt that unless I have something to add that may be of use to others, I don’t want yet another exercise of someone "talking to hear themselves speak".
In early December I began a project where I get to do something completely from scratch, using a relatively new technology that offers a lot of promise. My current client (where I have been consulting since June of 2006) decided to adopt Team Foundation Server. I am “heading up” the project to implement it. (I put that in quotes since for the most part I'm working solo!)
They currently have a very tightly integrated Change Control/Build/Deploy system that is a combination of a purchased application (Visual Intercept from Elsinore Technologies), open source tools (Cruise Control, nAnt) and a LOT of custom code. TFS is a great product with a bright future, but it is still very new – so I think my experiences will be an interesting topic to blog about. This project gives me the opportunity to avoid that feeling that this blog would be a self-indulgent exercise.
That said I’d like to give a little background on myself. I’ve been in this business since 1984, after receiving a BA in Liberal Arts from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I Started as an IBM Mainframe/Cobol Developer until the early 1990’s when I made the transition to “Client Server” Technologies using Visual Basic 3.0 on Windows 3.0 client-side, and Sybase SQL Server on AIX Unix server-side. I’ve focused on Microsoft Technologies since then, happily making the jump to .NET in 2002.
In August 2004 I was hired by ESS just before Magenic acquired the firm to become the Magenic Chicago office. I am happy to report it’s the best job I’ve ever had.
In case you’re wondering about the Blog’s Title; I’m also a professional musician - I’ve been playing trombone since fifth grade. I took advantage of the dot-com boom years by doing part-time consulting from home while pursuing a music-career full time. That was also during the “Swing” Craze and the Jump Blues band I played with at the time (initially “The Big Swing” which renamed itself to “The Vanguard Aces” after a management dispute) was very successful.
In 1998, during a tour of Europe, that band’s drummer came up with the idea that I should hook up a guitar fuzz-pedal to my trombone (which I STILL haven’t tried!) and form a band called “Fuzzbone” – which stuck as my nickname. Some musicians in Chicago have forgotten my real name and just know me as “Fuzzbone” or “Fuzzy”. So I figured “Fuzzy’s Blogic” would make a good title for the blog.