After a financial challenge at the church this summer, I am now back to work. No details, sorry. There are some parts of pastoring that are not unlike the making of sausage or the passing of laws, in that you really don't want to watch what happens during the process.

The good folks at TeamSoft, Inc., here in the Madison area, found me a programming contract and I am now gainfully employed and have been for coming up on three months now. This is my third contract through TeamSoft and I continue to be very happy with them as a contracting agency. It doesn't hurt that they found me a programming opportunity even after I'd not written a line of Java code for exactly two years! That was impressive. The client, who shall remain nameless to protect the innocent, is actually one that I have worked at before. The Java programming community in this area is very small. There is a non-trivial chance that you'll either go back to a place or that you will work with former co-workers.

Converting back to being bi-vocational has been challenging. Especially doing so in the fourth quarter of the year when everything gets crazy busy in life, school and church. Sleep and family time have been the worst casualties. I typically leave a little after 6:00am and return by about 5:30pm, later if there are errands assigned to me by The Queen Of All She Surveys. Getting up early has never been my strong suite, so I'm really not on speaking terms with my alarm clock right now.

The contract seems to be going well and certainly I have remembered all of the Java that I thought I had forgotten. Thankfully I was still regularly tinkering with scripting and trying out new esoteric programming languages, so my programming instinct was still strong. The client is still using Java 6, which is the version I was using two years ago. This time the tendency of large corporations to lag behind on their Java versions has worked in my favor. I will learn the new features in Java 7 and 8, but, for this client at least, there is no screaming hurry.

The most interesting thing about this current contract is the number of people who remember me either from previous employers or from my one year here at the client eight years ago. My hiring manager remembered me and so that helped smooth the flow of the interview. I have bumped into former co-workers from four different places. Walking around at work is almost a trip down memory lane every day.

Being out of corporate life for two years gives me an interesting perspective now that I'm back. I see quite a few things with fresh eyes. I'll write about these as I think of them.