Refreshing
It's been a week and a half since I've joined a ThoughtWorks project in London. It's been such a refreshing change. The whole team lives and breathes Agile. The code base is not the cleanest I've worked on but actually easier to work with because the team made sensible compromises and did not being stubborn about ideas or patterns. (Actually we still have some way to go on the Mingle front, but that's another story.) We are doing TDD, continuous integration, pair programming with regular rotation, 9-5:30 hours, everyone are treated as equal, basically the whole nine yards! I can foresee the next three months will just disappear quickly. You know what they say, time flies by when you are having fun…
As for London itself, I was pleasantly surprised by all the good/new stuff they have. But at the same time, the Tube still pisses me off, with the never ending tunnels and the asinine system of having to swipe your ticket/card on exit. At least the travel cost is paid for by my company!
I'm going up to Shropshire this weekend to visit my parents. Instead of taking a 2+ hours train ride, I'll be driving a rental car up. I know, it's not environmentally friendly but consider the total amount of driving I haven't done in the last 7 years, I think I can take this carbon emission hit.
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Dream job?
All the talks about moving to Chicago have really been just that so far, talks. Eiron and I discussed a fair amount about it but we decided (rather I am) to be sensible and won't make any decision until we pay the city a visit during my birthday weekend in December. If we like the city and can tolerate the cold, bitter winter than we will start planning our move next year. If not, we stay put and find another city to move to.
But it is increasingly difficult not to think about moving there now because of job like this one. An Agile/TDD/.Net software shop looking for senior software engineer to work with actual web site/products and machines? Products that I can point people (such as my parents) to and say, "This is what I do." I haven't been able to do that since my first job out of college. I think some of my code still lives on in China and Thailand. Just be careful when you take the light rail/train in Canton or Bangkok…