Another Contract Ends - Hanging Out the Shingle
My current contract at Intuit is ending in a few weeks. I'm heading into a possible slow period so it's a good time to catch the blog up a little. If nothing else but to remind myself what I've been doing through this year since leaving Notion Solutions.
I've been subcontracting through CraftLogic at Inutit's IMS division since last February. In that time, I've delivered a few minor API service offerings for internal and external distribution, a few really great features, and a whole lot of maintenance to their existing high volume credit card transaction systems and web sites. With a new framework to streamline development and support, I'm not needed as much and neither are most other contractors that would hope to join such a great team. So I'm off to new ventures and adventures.
Other than their "Team Building" activities that make the team a real blast to work with, here are a few high level take-a-ways that I've had the pleasure of.
-
A refresher of Socket Development that I used to be devoted to (no C++ this time)
- Leveraging MSMQ for Speed and Reliability
- The ability to really, really, really tweak those stored procedures. And I thought I was good before I had TSQL script reviews...
- What is Red Faction and is it ok to lose to someone named Rambo every time???
Any other details would start explaining the optimized and very secure processes at Innovative Merchant Solutions. Let's just say that they are deeply committed to their work and it's been a pleasure and education working with every one of them at IGS.
By the way, CraftLogic has also been a great company to work with while contracting at Intuit. They handle everything without distracting contractors like myself from the real work. I went corp-to-corp and really appreciate their partnership. Also as an independent contractor, I've worked on a few other commercial applications through a consulting company named Chordial Solutions. That kept my skills fresh with ASP.NET AJAX, Entity Framework, and SSIS.
In the last year I've also made great progress in the integration system software that I've imagined for about 10 years. In my own opinion, it's very unique, innovative, and valuable as a supplemental BPM and ETL system. It's been a great enabler to gain serious experience with WPF, Silverlight, RIA Services and so much more.
In these past few months, I've brought considerable value to everyone's offering, including my own FreshMetrics, LLC.
So if you find a need for a serious contract developer, please contact me through the FreshMetrics web site. I look forward to my next adventure with another great team.
-Vince
http://FreshMetrics.com