So for those of you that have not heard, I am working at a great new company called Hashrocket, based out at the beach. More on that later, but I wanted to also fill you in that my old company has been purchased by Black Duck as of last week.

I keep tabs on the news reports that are coming out about it, and this is the closest thing I have to a mention in them:

But Levin says Koders’ three employees, including Rush, will be retained on a consulting basis, and will continue to work from their current location in Santa Monica.

Check out the full article at Xconomy.

The move actually makes a lot of sense, as Black Duck offers larger companies insight into their open source usage, and Koders obviously knows a thing or two about that industry.

Bloggers have wordpress, mephesto, typo and other open source solutions. Yet there isn't an open source social network platform, until now. Built with Ruby on Rails this open source project has all the basic features you will need to setup a basic social network.

read more | digg story

Check me out at work:

I just bought my first mac (MacBook Pro 15" with souped up HDD) and am going to have a transition period where I learn how to use the mac versus a PC. So I have decided to start blogging tips I learned.

So here is tip #1:
- to delete to the right of the cursor (on the laptop), hold down the function key while hitting delete
- to delete to the left until the beginning of a word, hold down the ctrl key
- to delete to the left until the beginning of the line, hold down the command (apple) key.

BEHOLD the power of rails, and how a trained artisan can wield it's power. A pretty useful web application in 7 hours! No kidding! Check it out and then go get your education on.

read more | digg story

DevChix, "a group founded to help support women of all ages interested or active in development", is having an auction! This is a friend of my from the RubyJax group. She has a cool foundation promoting women in software development.

read more | digg story

As my wife mentioned on the family blog, I attended the inaugural RubyJax event last night.  I have to warn you that I am easily excited, but the group is chock ful o' some people I am excited about getting to know better.

One of the main reasons I made the decision to leave Symantec and the  Hampton Roads area of Virginia, was because I felt that the company was very stale from a technical perspective and I when I looked around at the opportunities if I were to switch jobs locally I would be forced into doing something that I didn't love for the sole purpose of putting food on the table. 

That type of work and I don't mesh.

As my wife and previous or current co-workers can attest to (besides the short stints as a contractor for NASA and as C++ UI developer at Symantec... where I was bored out of my mind) I am a work-a-holic.  When I am knee-deep in problem solving or developing something new, I loose all track of time and usually end up neglecting things I shouldn't.  So excuse me while I take this second to say thank you to my beautiful wife for understanding me, and putting up with it all.

That being said, I am extremely happy to be connected to Lark, Steven, Big Tiger, Obie, Chris, Desi and all the others (who I couldn't find blogs for), and to have some people that will cause me, just being being in the conversation, to better myself.

And a BIG THANKS to Team Gaia for providing the location (even if it was on the wrong side of Jacksonville).  And another big thanks to who ever it was that let me drink their beer, and paid for the Pizza, my turn next time.

Time to go make something useful in Rails.

Just wanted to show off my son to you guys. If you would like to read more check out the family blog.