I was truly surprised and remain truly humbled and grateful that all the people that mattered most were either there in attendance, or were on the invite list and for whatever reason were unable to attend.

My rationale in writing this letter is because, as many of you know, I’m much better in written form than in verbal (I was going to do a video chat and post it here on the site). But, I tend to get emotional and drift when talking from the heart so I thought I’d spare each of us that, and simply write my thoughts down.

I love each of you dearly. I truly appreciate your friendship and support as I continue on this life journey.

Pray for me and my family as I will do the same for you.

Be good !

James

I did 10 miles tonight making the huge loop from the house, down to Baseline then all the way down Fiddyment.

Felt good. I will definitely need to get a softer seat and a light soon.

Here’s the route in a graph

Turns out that it was found by the company that cleans all the linens and tablecloths for many of the Vegas restaurants and hotels.

They are sending it back to me through FedEx later this week (minus the wad of money).

All in all this is good news.

It’s actually been 21 years since I graduated high school (I graduated in ’87)!! Wow.

The alumni association put together a reunion for years 86-90 which was nice since I knew of a lot of people in those classes – not saying that I recognized them at the reunion though.

Check out the photos we snapped throughout the day and night.

The actual site is http://thetechscoop.net – when you get some time, go check it out. It will continue to evolve and get more and more interesting.

Here is a real-time graphical feed from the site as well.

I’ve met most of the key folks that I’ll be dealing with so that’s a good thing. Everything is still as it was presented to me during the interview phase so that’s an even better thing.

Since I sit about 10 feet outside of the doors of all the execs I don’t think I’ll be doing alot of napping.

More later – I’m going down to the breakroom for some more of the Friday free donuts.

It’s been about 10 years total that I’ve been associated with this company so this transition is somewhat bittersweet.

I’ve done everything from unix system admin, project/program management, QA engineering and IT consulting here. It’s been a pretty good ride for the most part (except when I got laid off a few years ago, but I won’t go into that right now…)

Starting Monday I embark on a new journey as a Solutions Engineer at Raging Wire Enterprise Solutions. This will put me back in the middle of everything for sure. No more lunch time trips back home to play Wii and watch Judge Joe Brown. But, that’s good. I like the hustle of being in front of customers, driving towards a solution that works and working more with a team, instead of just by myself in a cubicle.

So, wish me luck, keep me and my family in your prayers. This could either be the worst or one of the best career decisions I’ve made, but I’m comfortable with the decision and look forward to the new challenge.

So it’s looking like I may be headed down yet another career path.Man – I’m giving up a commute that is less than 5 minutes for one that is 30 minutes (at best). Am I crazy ?? Click on the graphic above to go to the company homepage.