Hi my name is Chris Matthews,
Thought I had better do one of these in the hope that someone in the future might find something in it useful.
I am a software engineer and graduated from Birmingham University, UK with a BEng(Hons) in Electronic and Computer Engineering.
For 2 years I worked as a systems engineer design Supervisor Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems for a company called Serck Controls.
While working at Serck I started to realise that I had really enjoyed my time at university most when I was writing software, so I decided enough was enough and got a job at Marconi as a software programmer doing mostly visual basic and sql programming, with a bit of asp on the side. After 2 years at Marconi I was given the oppurtunity to leave with half a years salary(tax free).
I left and started to work for a small company called Conserv Business Solution. They sell themselves as a bespoke software company and basically invented little neat software solutions that they sold to customers. During my time here I was able to do and learn whatever I wanted the problem being that I new how to code, but not how the code worked. For example how the Garbabge collector works in .Net. So I spent two years writing thousands of lines of code that I thought was great, but towards the end of my stay and Conserv I realised I need to get smart and start thinking for the future.
Me and my girlfriend wanted to move closier to are family so decided to up sticks and head to the beautiful North. I managed to get a job at PAC International as a software engineer and I am now on my way to becoming a MCAD. I passed by first exam in may (70-316) and I am currently reading Developing XML Web Services and Server Components with Visual C# .net and the .Net Framework.. That will do for today if your lucky I might write another entry tomorrow!