Preparing for the Wedding meant I did not have the time to attend and my ticket was sadly turned in. Rob Zelt who I know from Raleigh posted a short review: http://www.robzelt.com/blog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=bbd1572c-853c-404e-b68e-bdc389a8c9fd

Posted by Paul Lockwood as Other at 6:06 AM MST

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This is the new feed: http://dotnetworkaholic.com/feed/

Why the move? This arrived in my mailbox about a month ago:

Application Type: I140 , IMMIGRANT PETITION FOR ALIEN WORKER
Current Status: This case has been approved. On February 22, 2005, an approval notice was mailed.

In plain English that means after three years of doing short term dev jobs through a Consulting firm I am now free to work for anyone. So after almost twelve years of consulting I have decided to give a permanent position a try. It appears that in the USA contractors are mostly hired to clean up existing code - that is enjoyable to a point but I would like my own team and a green field again. It is tempting to return to Accenture or Deloitte but travel is not the thing to do after my Wedding next month.
I intend to still take short term contracts until the right permanent role comes along. Hence the blog url has changed before I start sending out resumes. The old dotnetworkaholics link still works, (this is pretty simple to do with .Text).

Finally a few personal notes on the Wedding:

• My Green Card is via the H1-B route
• Do I automatically become a citizen because I marry a US citizen next month? No! Frankly I wish to keep my UK passport - no offence to Americans but I would rather keep the option of returning to Europe open - health care and any other form of welfare in the USA is terrible if you hit hard times. I have heard too many stories of middle class families ending up on skidrow over here. To a European the lack of a welfare state is terrifying, especially with healthcare insurance caps and the rate everyone sues each other over here

Posted by Paul Lockwood as Other at 5:38 AM MST

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This is great to see. Not wishing to stir the waters with my Java/ Linux buddies I
will say no more; you can read all about it at the Beeb or Google it:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3428673.stm

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=bill+gates+knighthood&btnG=Search+News

Posted by Paul Lockwood as Other at 9:19 PM MST

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