Grandpa Ham – Grandpa Can do IT!

I am now officially independent. Retirement from my long tem employer is effective 30 September 2007 with mostly terminal leave in between. I am ready and able to serve. I will soon be updating the resume page and adding mentoring references as they occur. A new life chapter has officially begun. At this point, it feels good.

May was busy. The project I was counting on last month is finally coming in, but took a bit longer to get done that I expected. In the meantime I have been writing proposals for my long term employer, helping conduct a CMMI Readiness review, and preparing for transition at the same time. I have also been working on new, more detailed, capability descriptions. Thew first of these concerns DM-OPEN. DM-OPEN allows emergency systems to share information through a de-coupled web service interface. I can help get a working prototype in place in TWO DAYS! Check it out.

In the last month a lot has happened. The project I had been working on was being moved from research to production. Unfortunately, it also meant transition from my company to someone else. A lot of folks feared for their jobs. But, my company won a proposal that I wrote, and I am supposed to work on the project. Unfortunately for my company, “grandpa” has also earned a very good independent position and is now ready to leave the comfort of “regular employment,” and truly live according to grandpa’s creed.

I have a project that I am working for the next couple of months or so. It is interesting. It promotes interoperability between diverse systems, and it keeps my mind focused. I can still make myself available on a limited basis, but any extensive work offers cannot take place until mid-summer. Still, call or e-mail those interesting ideas.

You cannot have a “grandpa” or “grandma” site without pictures of the grandchildren, can you? I am blessed with a wife of 30+ years, three fine sons and three grandsons. Life is good.

I have always been an amateur poet. It is not great poetry, but it says a lot about how I look at the world. There are four poems on the site. The first is kind of geeky, representing CORBA design principles that certainly still apply in the world of Service Oriented Architecture, even if we have moved to Web Services and the like. The second goes all the way back to middle school. It looks like an anti-war poem at first glance. It was not meant to be so. It is meant more as a warning against falling prey to fanaticism of any kind (which would include being fanatically anti-war, as well). Fanaticism clouds our thinking to the point that we lose our own sense of mission. It is almost always self-defeating. The third is simply a commitment to the love of my life. The final poem was written during an introspective period before I met my love and represents the desire for a real, enduring love. Luckily for me, it was actually possible.

My current project has been funded through September, meaning that I will continue to improve this site, but not try and advertise it with appropriate keywords or any sort of internet advertising campaign. Although I am technically savvy, this is actually the first site that I have built myself from scratch. I am learning a lot. Content is still pretty much static, but I am a data base person, so I would guess that will only last for a while. May also depend on how much time is chewed up in other ways. The hours on my calendar are available, or call me if you have a particular interest …. “

I was working on a technically successful project that I loved. And still love for that matter. But there were political issues that I simply will not reveal in a public post. At any rate, after five years of success, things are likely to change…. ”

I am not likely to be let go in the change. I have solid skills and a fairly well recognized position with my current employer. But I am also looking to the future. The end of my tenure on this project may give me the opportunity to try something a bit different. And that does not mean looking for long-term regular employment at another “major company.” I am 55. I cannot even pretend that I wish to have a “growing new career in a new exciting company.”

But I have valuable skills, and a desire to keep them sharp, and to make them available to others. So, I built this website as an experiment. We will see where it leads… Contact me if you have questions.