Biz Vision

I'm only 2 days away from getting my splint taken out. Only 2 days away from freedom! Well, mostly... I'm still not allowed to resume my regular diet until another week but my jaw is feeling strong enough to already handle it - I'm going to be a good boy and wait it out though.

I've been getting a little more adventurous with my eating habits recently. Biting more and more meat everyday (although nothing more than ground meat and chicken still) and I also had a veggie burger at our company picnic on Wednesday.

I still can't decide what I'm going to have first when I can finally resume regular eating. I'm thinking something unhealthy that tastes really good.

• Perhaps KFC fried chicken?
• Pizza? (which I've been craving ever since the Thursday lunch meeting at work - thanks Matt!)
• Or the peanut pasta and fried ice-cream at Thaifoon?

Not sure yet...

Upcoming milestones:
7 weeks post-op - splint comes off!!!
8 weeks post-op - resume regular diet
4 months post-op - braces come off (hopefully...)

Wow, what a great day. So, I went back to work today and almost everyone commented about my changed face. Mostly positive comments too! I had to stumble and mumble through a couple of conversations but eventually got the message across. I think all the extra talking and smiling did me really good. My mouth feels relaxed and I can move my lips around a lot more freely. Dare I say it, but I'm kind of getting used to the splint too.

I also broke an elastic yawning today. I had a spare elastic so I replaced it but I visit my surgeon tomorrow to get them taken off anyway. I probably could have just removed the other one but it's only one more day so I might as well go the distance. Mashed foods here I come!

I woke up this morning with a terrible tummy ache. I knew I couldn't afford to throw up with my jaws bound together with elastics. Yuck, what a mess that would make! Fortunately I didn't have to but I did spent the better part of the morning writhing around in pain. It took 2 large gulps of Pepto-Bismol to finally clear up the ache.

The rest of the day wasn't terribly exciting. I spent a good portion of the day playing this addictive game - Shuffle.

I also geared up for my first day back at work. It feels like I'm going camping with the all foods, meds and other gear I'm taking with me. I guess it's better to be safe than sorry. I'm somewhat anxious about returning. I wonder how my co-workers will react with my inability to speak! Ok, it's not that bad. I've got the same feeling you get before a big speech or presentation - anxious until it begins.

I've been pestering my manager to send me on a trip somewhere and he's caved (or I like to believe so). I pretty much grew up on a plane - my Dad worked for an array of airlines through his career and well, I got to travel a lot when I was younger! Yeah, I know I'm spoiled but I just love experiencing new sites and sounds. And it's awesome that I can do it for work reasons too now.

On my very first business trip, I get to go to Los Angeles! I leave on Tuesday and return Thursday evening so that won't leave much time for checking out the city but that's OK - I already did the touristy trip back in '99.

Despite the short stay (and the work) I'm sure I'll have a blast!

And since traveling is on the cards, here are some useful Travel Tools courtesy of The Man From Mars.

Wow... I can't believe I took a 3 month break from blogging!

I can't promise I'll keep posting regularly but it's worth a shot. So, what's happened in the last 3 months?

• I went on my vacation to India. I wrote a blog post while I was there but wasn't connected at the time so it's going to have to be added at a later point in time. I had an awesome time while I was gone but it was way too short.

• Work's been crazy and I find I usually have very little left in the tank when I get home. I don't regret my move to Project Management though. I'm having the time of my life (or something like that...)!

• I upped a level in Seikido (it's the type of Martial Arts I'm learning). I'm all the way up to a lowly green belt now. Woohoo!

• While I'm talking about Seikido, I competed in a tournament a few weeks ago and took away 2nd for my pattern and tied 3rd for sparring (it was only with 4 people so not that impressive!).

• I was on the organizing team for this year's PMI - South Western Ontario Chapter Annual Symposium and it went off great on May 3rd. We made a wad of cash to make up for the massive hole from last year! I couldn't be happier for our success.

That's all folks!

I don't usually have a lot to say about my personal life but today was the first day I started in my new job. Same company but I no longer work as a Software Developer - I'm a Project Manager now!

It's been over a week since I've known and it took a lot of self discipline to not let that one out. If someone had asked me 3 months ago about being a PM, I probably would have laughed it off but here I am in my new position.

There were a couple of key moments that made me realize that being a PM is what I want to do. Firstly, a certain PM at work planted the seed in my head and then my manager brought it up to me in the same week. They both thought I would make an excellent PM based on the work I was doing (feature-leading but focusing more on the project management activities).

Clearly I liked the project management aspect and the customer-facing role but I also enjoyed the uniqueness of everyday and not knowing what issues I would have to deal with next. I thrived on the chaos. I asked myself - "Would I really want to go back to being a code monkey if I'm no longer a feature lead?" I couldn't see myself doing it so that's how I knew that I needed to jump at the PM opportunity.

I never thought I would start writing about work in my posts but here's my very first one. We've switched to using Agile methodologies and 4 months in, I'm still concerned about the quality of code we're churning out.

My team initially got a free lunch since we were supporting an already matured product and management didn't want us to invest the time in an automated test framework. Having switched projects, we're now behind the rest of the teams in the quality learning curve.

It's also an area I struggle with as a software developer. There's more to it than just targeted testing. One of the members on my team summed up the right QA mentality quite nicely:

When you're testing you don't want to just test the functionality works, that's boring. You want to get creative and think about the different ways you can make it break, that's a lot more fun.

Anyway, my reason for starting this rant was to post this video by Ken Schwaber on Agile Quality. I haven't watched it yet, but I will soon.

Feed: Agile Planet
Title: Ken Schwaber talks about agile quality

Ken Schwaber talks about Agile Quality: A Canary in a Coal Mine.