Heading OS for awhile

My role at Agilent Technologies is soon going to change. On the 23rd of November I'll be heading off to San Jose, California to support our products at one of our largest customer sites. It's a six month assignment and I'm damn excited about it! :)

It's a pretty big change. For the past few years I've been a full-time software engineer, beavering away developing features for our product line. This new role is totally about support. It's unlikely that I'll write any code except perhaps for some automation scripts. That'll take some getting used to as I really enjoy writing code.

However, helping customers understand and solve problems with our products is a new challenge that I welcome. I've always believed that to be a really good software engineer you need to thoroughly understand your customers needs so this experience will be invaluable from that point of view.

And I'm really looking forward to spending time soaking in the California culture (alas not much of the sun - I'll be there through winter!) and seeing some of the sights.

The only really tough bit is that my amazing girlfriend Melissa won't be able to come with me. She'll be (hopefully) joining me for a month in the middle of the trip - which will be fantastic! - but we've hardly spent more than a couple of days apart, let alone months. Ugh, that's going to suck.

Baby, if you're reading this, I'm going to miss you like crazy.

Thank goodness for webcams, broadband connections and video chat. ;)

Anyway, I just wanted to give y'all a heads up to let you know that I won't be in the country for much longer. I'll also be starting up another blog to document my adventures over there - I'll post a link to it when I get around to creating it.