I feel a bit like little Joe Miller in this classic video…

This Wednesday will be a big day for me. I’ll be changing jobs for the first time in over four years. I’ve only gone through a few job changes in my professional career, and I’m very excited about this new opportunity. These are big changes in my life, and it’s a bit like taking a drink from that fire hose.

It’s time to bid farewell to the corporate world and move to a small startup company. I’m very excited to move to a smaller company where the people are really passionate about building kick ass software. A place where people are excited about what they do, and there are minimal roadblocks in the way of “Getting Things Done”. It may take a little time to adjust to the cultural differences between a large corporate enterprise-y company based in the suburbs and a small startup company in the downtown metro area, but I think I’ll manage… =)

I’ve been doing Java development (client and serverside) for the past ten years, and this will be my first experience working with Ruby on Rails. This will be a HUGE change. I’ve talked about ruby and java a number of times, and I’m excited to dig more into the ruby language to see what it has to offer. Don’t worry though; I’ll still be active in the Java community, especially with Wicket. I’m still hoping to get the twin cities wicket users group off the ground. Who knows, maybe a port of wicket to ruby is in my future? =)

I’ll finally be able to dive into the world of apple and use a macbook pro as my primary development platform. It feels so good for a workplace to run a decent operating system on their workstations (instead of crappy windows). It will take some time to “unlearn what I have learned” from the wonderful world of windows and adapt the “mac way” of doing things (especially keyboard shortcuts). I’ve come across a few good articles for apple newbies, but please share any tips/tricks you may have!

Oh, and I think I know someone that looks an awful lot like Stanley Spadowski! =)