virtualroot.com Ramblings of a mad scientist

And the world still spinsPosted by simon on February 16th, 2010

It’s been awhile since my last update and I’ve been rather busy. Gone through quite a few changes in personal and professional life. I suppose I should start of with professional since it is easier to talk about.

The Team:
I now lead a team of 3 developers and one QA person. They are all amazing. I couldn’t really ask for more dedicated or hard working people. To say that they get along with my style of management and work ethic is an understatement. They each add a little something to all my projects to take a good plan and make it awesome. If it weren’t for these guys and gals I would not be succeeding nearly as well as I have been. Super Bowl this year was a decent amount of work and so far has paid off rather well. Here’s hoping the coming months are just as good.

The Platform:
With that said we have rewritten our whole mobile site into a new framework we built from the ground up. We no longer use any ASP .Net controls and have gone “formless”. All Get and Post requests have their own handlers so as to remove confusion, add speed and simplify code. With this new framework we can also offer up a custom view based on whichever phone you are visiting our site with. Needless to say, our traffic has increased and so have sales as people can actually view the site on their phone without it looking like trash.

We also released a few revisions to our iPhone app. We are on 2.1 and have over 100k downloads.
Blackberry and Android versions are bother nearing completion and I am expecting an iPad version soon.
Sales have never been better and all of our projects are rocking right along. I can’t wait to be out in all three platforms and continue to grow the product’s we offer within each of them.

In personal news, I’m very happily engaged. Life has kind of been crazy since I stopped writing as it has been a roller coaster of growth, love and all of that. Thankfully though things are calming down and life and life is getting back to a more balanced pace where I can get back to more climbing, running and general stuff.

As far as wedding plans go, much is still up in the air, but we are figuring it out. I was surprised on Valentines Day to find that we have our first addition to our family arriving on March 15th.  She is a Australian Cattle Dog puppy who will be about 9-10 weeks old when we get her.  We decided to name her Sedona and we can barely await her arrival.  We are also working on getting back into guitar, dance and camping. I’m expecting this summer to be a great one filled with a possible Europe trip and maybe even Taste of Chicago.

More to come.

Always in the right place at the right time.Posted by simon on April 18th, 2009

Life gives us these fleeting moments when we suddenly feel like we are in the right place at the right time or conversely the wrong place at the wrong time. The reality is we are always in the exact place we need to be. I feel I have lived a blessed life, not that my life hasn’t had it’s share of misfortune but the good has outweighed the bad. A portion of that is taking your misfortune and creating your own good times from it. A bad situation is only a bad situation until you make it a better one. I’m not saying that this applies to all bad situations, some just suck, but most are only bad because we let them be.

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
~Elwyn Brooks White

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Paint Your LifePosted by simon on February 10th, 2009

I don’t know what happened. I can’t sit down and pinpoint a single atomic moment. It was a process, imagine a set of watercolors being mixed by seismic activity. It would create a wonderfully bizarre melting of colors that you can’t begin to appreciate until you consider how it occurred. I’m finding that lately words lack the ability to describe the mixing of the watercolors in my life. There are so many aspects that are affected by this process it’s hard to isolate the affects on one another. Much less, how the watercolors were made from some plant dye and imported to my palette. How the paper was constructed and bleached. Then how all these elements were in the right place at the right time for the shifts in the earth’s crust to allow them to mix on a canvas making something randomly beautiful and perfect.

“I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream”
-Vincent van Gogh

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The Best Kind of RamblingPosted by simon on February 4th, 2009

I enjoy running, not just because I’m out in the world and exercising but because it’s one of my favorite forms of meditation. I get to Breathe that breath of life and listen to music that speeds my thoughts. The problem becomes catching all the thoughts as I run for they come quickly and deeply.

Recently you could say there have been a number of new experiences in my life. Each of them unique and adding a new depth to this wondrous existence I have been granted. It’s odd but I feel without many of my own experiences and readings of recent years, they not would be as significant. I know this is cryptic but some experiences speak to a person on such deep levels that it’s really impossible to convey all that is being experienced as it would require too much knowledge of that person. I’m still uncovering who I am, what chance do you have? Though there are certain aspects of life that I find universal and I’ve boiled down to more general statements that hopefully will mean something to you.

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Fear and the natural statePosted by simon on January 31st, 2009

It’s not everyday when you get that wonderful rush of Fear. When the adrenaline pulses through the veins and your heart instantly hits overdrive giving your body all it can to hopefully meet whatever situation has evoked such a response. Though physical fear is a blessing, the fear I am more concerned about is a fear of decisions. A state where the mind is locked in a battle that does not elicit the same physical response to Fear. Fear of Decisions locks people into horrible jobs, worse relationships and lives filled with suffering.

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Butterflies everywhere….Posted by simon on January 31st, 2009

What is it about life that allows the most random confluences of events to result in some of the most significant changes in people’s lives. Some people call it the “Butterfly Effect” or “Chaos Theory” which states that “a butterfly flapping it’s wings will cause a tornado on the other side of the world”. It’s the idea that the smallest simplest events can lead to huge events.

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2008 in ReviewPosted by simon on December 6th, 2008

As 2008 draws to a close I am forced to review what I have experienced in the last year. The year began with a Renaissance for me. I noted a dramatic scaling back in work hours and began to accept a new lifestyle which has allowed me to branch out and grow in multiple aspects of my life. I tried a variety of new hobbies and rediscovered a few long lost ones. All and all I’d have to say it has been the best year of my life so far.

In December of 2007 I visited a doctor for physical checkup. This was the first doctor visit in a long time mostly spurred by a constant case of sore throat. The checkup served as a very big reminder of my family’s heart problems and urged me to get back into shape. That same month I started Rock Climbing at AZR and Yoga shortly thereafter.

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You know when your doing great when…Posted by simon on November 25th, 2008

I can’t tell you how fun today has been.  Today I finally went outdoors and did my first sport climb in Queen Creek. My sphincter has never puckered so tight as when I was setting the quickdraws for our first route of the day.  When you are 45 feet up, with a stiff breeze and 6 feet of slack between you and your last clip, you begin to appreciate how great just being on the ground or doing a simple bouldering route can be.  Though when you get to the top there are few things in life as fulfilling.  Graduating High School, College, getting my development job all pale in comparison.  I mean I’m sure the fear had something to do with it being very fulfilling or maybe the one year build up of climbing to get to this point, though it’s not like any of the other goals in my life have been minor.

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Thanks GivingPosted by simon on November 19th, 2008

We are now entering one of my least favorite times of the year.  It gets rung in with the day after Thanksgiving.  I actually enjoy Thanksgiving and find it a very worthwhile holiday, it just sucks that it is completely vaporized by Black Friday the biggest day for retail sales of the year. Nothing like kicking off what is supposed to be a very selfless time of the year with a massive consumer push. One day you reflect on how thankful you are to have all the things you do, you celebrate it with a big fat meal with family and friends then you run out the next day to spend money on those people you were just thankful for so you can give them gifts on Christmas.

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The pains of Research for Day TradingPosted by simon on November 11th, 2008

Research tools are just about the most important thing you can have in your arsenal when it comes to investing, yet research can be very cumbersome especially when you are just starting out. One article I found offered basic definitions as well as basic methods for investing. Investing Strategies: Picking your first stock

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