It's been over two years since I've added an article to my site - so why now? Well, when Joel Spolsky posted an article about what he'd like to see in a resume I responded innocuously to his reddit that a contractor resume was totally different. And my server got hammered.

My traffic thus far had been very light since I didn't publicize the content, but suddenly I'm cross-posted and showing up near the top in Google searches and being crawled with a greater frequency than before. My other articles started showing up in searches. And then my code solutions. And then someone signed up for my mailing list.

That mailing list link has been on my site for years and no one had signed up since 2004. I sort of figured that since I hadn't written anything in so long I didn't have to worry about new sign-ups, but that single sign-up became two, then three, then many. It got to the point where I had to reexamine whether I should finish those articles I'd started so long ago and I thought - what the heck! You might all regret it now...

So I plan to post something new roughly once a month or more often as time is available. I'm typically swamped and really don't expect to post more often than that, but we'll see how things go. I'm really looking forward to this!

My first article back comes at a time when I am reviewing my career options and wondering if I'll be able to support my growing family and still retire on more than social security - as if there will be anything left for us. I realized that as a developer there were really three tiers of software revenue from which to choose, and it may be time for me to make a change.

Feel free to pass out the URL for my mailing list (http://www.c6software.com/EmailList.aspx) or alternatively you can grab my new RSS feed (http://www.c6software.com/rss.xml). I do read all my mail and feedback is appreciated.

Thanks,
John

I obviously favor being a contractor over a permanent position at a company. That's not to say that if the right offer came along I wouldn't entertain it, but generally speaking I really enjoy the contractor lifestyle. For any of you who may be interested in jumping in but are a little nervous about the temperature of the water I have written a few guidelines that might help to make the transition a little easier.

This is a difficult market to be looking for a job, but that comes with the territory of a technology marketplace. I feel sorry for all those big company employees who have lost their jobs, because many of them have lost the skills of finding new employment. It makes me glad however that I'm a contractor, because I believe we are better suited to weather a difficult job market.

Since I started programming in C# in 2002 it has quickly become the language I use for almost every project. It's really quite amazing to note the speed at which this technology has taken hold of the industry.

I only have one sample from the many projects I have done so far simply due to scheduling constraints, but more are coming in the future.

If you've used Response.Redirect(url) in your ASP.NET applications you've no doubt come across the sparsely explained ThreadAbortException. Here you'll find an explanation and two simple solutions.

I've rarely been to a job interview for which I was qualified and not been offered the position. This certainly doesn't mean that I was necessarily more qualified than the other applicants, but it does mean that the hiring manager thought I was a better fit for the position. There are a few things you can do in an interview to tip the scales in your favor.

Since I began contracting the longest I've been out of work, unwillingly, is a week. That's a pretty good record considering I was steadily employed through the .COM bust. I attribute a good portion of this to having a good résumé, without which I would have never been granted the interview.

Many of my business colleagues who were looking for work asked me to review their résumés and provide feedback, and I found that I had quite a bit to say on the topic and was repeating myself to a different person every couple of weeks. So instead of fielding more requests on this topic I've compiled the thoughts in one location: Designing a Contractor Résumé.

At almost every contract I've held I've been offered a permanent position by my manager or the manager of another group, but I have yet to take any of them up on their kind offers. Each of those companies had a lot to offer a prospective employee, and a few of them expressed surprise that I wouldn't jump at the chance to sign on, but there are some very compelling reasons to remain a contractor.

When I set out to start my own company I didn't have much of a plan. I expected it to fall into the category of "Just hang your shingle out and fend off the wave of business requests." It didn't exactly go that way...

What I realize in retrospect is that I didn't have a plan for my company. I didn't really know where I wanted to take it and my uncertainty kept me floundering. It took me a while to realize that in the absence of luck you need to have a goal for your company if you want to be successful.

There are a lot of these multiple-reader single writer locks available. There is an excellent one written by Jeffrey Richter that you can find in his book Programming Applications for Microsoft Windows, but it lacked something I needed for a specific job I was working on. I needed a class that allowed for multiple reentry into the lock from the same thread or arbitrary object. Thus my MRSWSync class was born.

This script allows you to launch any Windows Scripting Host file on another computer. You may need to have the latest Windows Scripting Host installed.

This script file will allow you to set the Microsoft Exchange 2000 mailbox manager schedule with a simple script. Use it with the RunRemote script below and set all your mailbox servers at once from a central location.

This is a simple class for cryptographically manipulating strings.