Takware

Aloha Hawaii, Aloha Fresno

Apparently "aloha" means both "hello" and "goodbye" in Hawaiian, but, in this case, I'm saying goodbye to Hawaii and hello (again) to Fresno.  The lease on my apartment in Honolulu is finished in mid-April, since the owner is planning to reoccupy.  It seems like a sign that perhaps I'd been here a bit too long and it is now time to move along.

Why Fresno?  Well, my parents live there and I left a lot of stuff there when I went off to Peace Corps in Tonga.  I'd planned to visit this summer for a couple of months anyways, in order to go through it all, to clean up the past, before I continue on to the next port of call for the future.

As for the future... I've got the core modules of my prototype software development system completed, more or less, and I'm now in the process of debugging and tweaking them, as I develop the common framework for the applications.  Pretty slick, if I do say so myself - although I will admit to having made a major mistake by going with C++.  A bit of research now proves that sticking with C would have been a smarter path, esp. with regards to portability.  Something I'll need to fix while I'm in Fresno.  Not much else to do there anyways, so I'll have plenty of time and incentive to work! 

Programming, programming...

I took a hiatus from working on my new programming projects, in order to get in more time out and about cycling and walking.  Now, I have to take a hiatus from cycling, since a combination of improper seat height and a bit too much uphill riding resulted in leg muscle strain.  Oh, well.  Not a total loss, since I did get in a fair amount of exercise and enjoyed finding new places around and outside Honolulu.

So, now I'm back to the programming.  This would be a typical time & place to complain about the amazingly bad design and implementation of the MSDN stuff, but, I'd be at it for days, weeks, months... and would not get anything else done.  For now, let's just leave the latest criticism of Microsoft at:  "appalling... simply appalling."

Oh, yeah... I'm an uncle now.  My brother, David, and his wife, Angie, have a son, Logan Norio Takayama, born on Sunday, 24 May 2009.  Amazing thing to think of my younger brother as a father.

On my own again!

No, I did not get fired or laid off.  Believe it or not, I actually quit my cushy job at Avatar Reality, to go off and work on my own stuff again.

Why?

Seemed like the right thing to do.... ;)

Resume (finally) online again

So, after much delay and many distractions, I've finally gotten the old resume updated, sort of polished, and back online again.  To access it, click on the "My Career Resume" link under the "Site Navigator" in the left column. 

I suppose that I should apologize upfront to anyone who is actually tasked with the tedious chore of plowing through my resume.  There is a lot there, and I did try to pare it down, at first.  But, quite frankly, I'm proud of most of what I've done, and of my success at leveraging past work, skills, experience, projects and activities to tackle new challenges.

There is a PDF version available, as well.  You can find the link for it at the end of the Intro section.

DVD Collections

Well, slowly but slowly, I'm working on getting the new site populated with junk.  Right now, I'm working out the JavaScript templates for the non-blog pages, which will eventually hold more important stuff like my updated resume and perhaps some screenshots of past work.  I'd prefer to use server-side JSP, but I wasn't able to get my scripts to run under TypePad.  Whatever.

In the meantime, I have put together a few photo albums which contain thumbnails of my current Hawaii-based DVD collection.  Perhaps this is a bit silly, but since it seems like we're defined nowadays more by what we watch than what we read, I figured that a few folks might see something in me by analyzing my DVD tastes.  It is not a bad collection for having been in Honolulu for only 6 months, but still a far cry from my main DVD collection which is still stored at the folks' home in Fresno.  A special thanks goes out to Walmart for their $5 DVD bin and to Blockbuster for their "3 for $20" deal on pre-viewed DVDs.

A New Look

After much delay, I've finally managed to overhaul takware.com by combining elements of the old (my Peace Corps Tonga blog) with the older (my original takware.com and Neoglyphiks websites).  My Peace Corps Tonga blog is still up, and linked to this new takware.com site (see the left sidebar), although I'm obviously not adding content to it anymore. 

There is still quite a bit of old stuff that I need to update into the new site before I can really start adding new stuff, but, at least, this is a start....