I like the idea of increasing desktop performance with an SSD to cache the HD; you are basically buying performance, but not risking your data (SSD still has to prove itself to me) Here is a good performance comparison article: http://www.techspot.com/review/515-crucial-adrenaline-ssd/
There has been some good advice here; hopefully some of it applies to your situation.
I am a little further down the road - 25 years development and the company went broke. Fortunately my skills were not just development - people skills (HR calls it "soft skills") can help you in your next step. You have them, but being a "techie" you do not recognize them; you may need someone to help you see them. For exampe as a lead lead on a project you have to coordinate, manage, others; do you coach / teach / mentor them? Is there room to move in your current organization - talk to HR about pursuing courses in new tech or project management..
One question I have in reading your post - when was you last vacation? Take one and unwind with your family - read and reflect on some of the advice posted and discuss it with your spouse - she will have good insight.
I have to agree. In my 20+ years of engineering for a small company I wrote a lot of code, but none of it is mine to share. Also to those suggesting open source - beware - I recently applied for a job and the application asked if you had done anything to disqualify you from working for them - eg: open source or personal software development! (I believe their concern has something to do with their intellectual property policy.)
Also watch for your cap being changed without notice; all of a sudden you get a usage bill that doubles your bill. I was on a Bell DSL plan with a 60 GB cap - Bell changed it to 25 GB without notice and I got charged $30 (the maximum at the time - the maximum is now going to $60) for using 40 GB on a 25 GB plan.
To their credit I complained (took two hours of my time) and this will be corrected. I am now paying an extra $5 monthly to have 40 GB added to the cap (totaling 65 GB). And, as others have stated, there are not really any other options.
I find that a headset helps with this.The speakers in many phones are very lacking and the sidetone in most cell phones is minimal to non-existant, but if you have a headset coupled into your ear you can hear well. You have to realize though, that there is noise cancellation technology at work in the headset (if you buy a good one!), so even if you are in a noisy environment you can speak normally. Hopefully the days are gone where someone feels they have to move the cell phone from their ear to their mouth when they talk - I watched a couple do this at dinner one night - ironically while I was at a conference on telephony audio quality!
I installed w2k8/64 and exchange 2k7 on a vmware esx (kept waiting for hyperV, but even when it came out M$ would not say it supported exchange). There have been many issues along the way - I did not think that doing the upgrades six months after the release would be so 'bleeding edge', but it seems to have been. Even late in 2008 some third party apps were not supported on server 2008. I want to move forward with other server upgrades, but others recommend keeping stable apps running on 2003.
BTW - exchange 2003 to 2007 did NOT go smoothly - I am still suffering from issues of decommisioning the 2003 (public folders, GAL, OAB).
We don't/won't use Vista so there is no advantage seen there. I have yet to setup the TS (which I understand is probably the biggest improvement).
Slashdot Mirror
I like the idea of increasing desktop performance with an SSD to cache the HD; you are basically buying performance, but not risking your data (SSD still has to prove itself to me)
Here is a good performance comparison article: http://www.techspot.com/review/515-crucial-adrenaline-ssd/
There has been some good advice here; hopefully some of it applies to your situation.
I am a little further down the road - 25 years development and the company went broke. Fortunately my skills were not just development - people skills (HR calls it "soft skills") can help you in your next step. You have them, but being a "techie" you do not recognize them; you may need someone to help you see them. For exampe as a lead lead on a project you have to coordinate, manage, others; do you coach / teach / mentor them?
Is there room to move in your current organization - talk to HR about pursuing courses in new tech or project management..
One question I have in reading your post - when was you last vacation? Take one and unwind with your family - read and reflect on some of the advice posted and discuss it with your spouse - she will have good insight.
I have to agree. In my 20+ years of engineering for a small company I wrote a lot of code, but none of it is mine to share.
Also to those suggesting open source - beware - I recently applied for a job and the application asked if you had done anything to disqualify you from working for them - eg: open source or personal software development! (I believe their concern has something to do with their intellectual property policy.)
Also watch for your cap being changed without notice; all of a sudden you get a usage bill that doubles your bill. I was on a Bell DSL plan with a 60 GB cap - Bell changed it to 25 GB without notice and I got charged $30 (the maximum at the time - the maximum is now going to $60) for using 40 GB on a 25 GB plan.
To their credit I complained (took two hours of my time) and this will be corrected. I am now paying an extra $5 monthly to have 40 GB added to the cap (totaling 65 GB). And, as others have stated, there are not really any other options.
I find that a headset helps with this.The speakers in many phones are very lacking and the sidetone in most cell phones is minimal to non-existant, but if you have a headset coupled into your ear you can hear well. You have to realize though, that there is noise cancellation technology at work in the headset (if you buy a good one!), so even if you are in a noisy environment you can speak normally.
Hopefully the days are gone where someone feels they have to move the cell phone from their ear to their mouth when they talk - I watched a couple do this at dinner one night - ironically while I was at a conference on telephony audio quality!
I installed w2k8/64 and exchange 2k7 on a vmware esx (kept waiting for hyperV, but even when it came out M$ would not say it supported exchange). There have been many issues along the way - I did not think that doing the upgrades six months after the release would be so 'bleeding edge', but it seems to have been. Even late in 2008 some third party apps were not supported on server 2008. I want to move forward with other server upgrades, but others recommend keeping stable apps running on 2003. BTW - exchange 2003 to 2007 did NOT go smoothly - I am still suffering from issues of decommisioning the 2003 (public folders, GAL, OAB). We don't/won't use Vista so there is no advantage seen there. I have yet to setup the TS (which I understand is probably the biggest improvement).