Today I gave my two weeks notice at the place I called home for what would have been 9 years in November. A small natural gas utility in Portland Oregon called NW Natural. Lots of good memories there and I learned at lot from a lot of very smart and talented people there. As a software developer I think I probably should have tried to exist stage right a few years ago but about that time I should have been doing that I met my wife and had three kids. This was the classical enterprise in every sense of the word and my transition to the new company is going to be quite the change for me. I’m going from ‘customer’ of the contracting firm to the ‘contracting’ firm itself.

With the help of twitter (wow, soak that in for a minute) I’ve made some networking connections with some folks back home. The single person instrumental in getting my family and I heading due east is Doug Odegaard @dodegaard from intraLogix and Who Can Help.

That all so familiar story of developers getting connected on Twitter that we all know, turned into some Skype calls from time to time and having leads on positions in Montana sent my way.  Just like you find your car keys in the last place you look – a recomendation from Doug turned into a first, second, third and fourth interview which left me with accepting a position as a Geospatial Developer at GCS Research in Missoula Montana.

I’m pretty exited about the new adventures ahead of me. Not working on the same systems year in and year out. Mostly greenfield apps and getting all-chips-in on the ESRI .NET stack with some smart, web and mobile clients.

Now onto the small challenge of selling the house, packing up the wife, kids, dog and cat, moving 600 miles, finding a new place to live and …