Nearly a month has transpired since my last post, but I finally have a chance to write something. This post will be more personal than technical., so don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Since my last post, the spring quarter at Rose has (finally) ended. I love school, but toward the end of the quarter my lack of sleep was really starting to wear me down. Now that I’ve had time to recuperate, I’m already excited for next year.

Work

I started work at ANGEL Learning June 1^st and have been loving it so far. In the 2 and a half weeks I’ve been at ANGEL, I feel like I’ve learned as much about the various aspects of software development as I would in an entire class. ANGEL was acquired about 5 weeks ago by Blackboard, a company that offers a competing product. Being able to see the way this transition occurs from a “safe”, low stakes position has been, and I’m sure will continue to be an invaluable experience.

Conferences

A little over a month ago, I had the opportunity to attend an ANGEL Users Conference on the coat tails of the RosEvaluation tool. This was about a week after ANGEL’s acquisition by Blackboard. It was interesting getting to see the different customer’s reactions to the acquisition.

During the conference, I got to give a talk about some of the things our team had learned while extending ANGEL with the RosEvaluation tool. At the end of the conference, Will Mathies, Timothy Chow, Kevin Davidson, and I received an ANGEL Impact Award for our work with RosEval. If you’d like, you can read the news article Rose put together about it.

I also got to attend WordCamp Columbus, where I met Jeff Chandler of WP Tavern as well as a handful of other well known people (the event had quite a few attenders, I’m just not very outgoing, so I didn’t meet most of them). I had a great time, and came away with a few neat tips and tricks (see previous post). Even though it’s a bit of a drive getting to Columbus, I feel it was well worth the effort and I hope to attend the next one if my schedule permits.

Family

Both frightening and exciting events have taken place in my family in the last month or so. While I was at the ANGEL Users Conference, my younger sister was rushed to Riley Children’s Hospital after slipping into a diabetic coma. She recovered fairly quickly and was able to go home, but the last month has been a trying time for everyone (especially her). Taking care of her diabetes has required some big schedule adjustments (and lots of needles).

On a more up beat note, I’m now the uncle of a second nephew. My older sister and her husband are the proud parents of their first born, Stephen Mathew Agapie.

The End

And that just about wraps it up. I’m working full time this summer, as well as working on a few side projects, but I’d really like to start posting more (both personal posts, and more technical fare). So if I go very long without posting anything (I’d say a week is probably a reasonable limit) by all means bug me about it.