Switching Gears 

Well... I haven't tech blogged much lately. I spent 2 weeks in the Philippines. I managed to teach my nephew how to copy CDs. When I got back, I found out I got promoted from a Data Analyst to a Decision Support Systems Architect. I've been spending most of my brain power on the job lately.

I hoped to start teaching my nephew programming in PHP. Never got to it. I might try to write up some lessons in Powerpoint slides and email them over. My neice is going to high school next year and is also good in computers. I hope some my neices/nephews decide to follow in my footsteps. May now wasn't the right time. Hopefully, a seed was planted. 

I've switched gears from coding side projects to focusing on my job. I'm learning more about the position of data architect. I find myself learning and retelling stories about how systems work, designing new data models to support reports, and working on data extraction plans to grab data for transactional systems. I put this data in structures that are more conducive to reporting against. This work still excites me especially when you see people are using these analytics systems to make business decisions.

I'm trying to get back into the side projects now though. I still have a goal to create something great or reach a new technical milestone by my birthday. My wife and I are expecting another child in September. That means I need to be even more extremely focused when doing my tech studies. I uses data warehousing as my basis. I only learn extra stuff like PHP and JAVA to extend my ability to deliver smart applications. Perl is another language I know. It's a good data extraction tool if you don't have $30K or more for an ETL package like Informatica or a Sagent. I won't go off and learn 5 other languages that do the same thing. I know there is plenty of work out there for my skill set.

The job market is heating up again. Maybe that's part of why my company is treating me so nicely lately.