As a first entry for my new, personal blog (I maintain 3: this one, family blog, and work internal blog) I want to reflect and sort of summarize the past few years as well as guess what the next few years will bring.
2000-2004 - The Years of Academia
These four years are my college years spent studying, researching, interning, and making lots of friends.
I'm often nostalgic of my academic years except when I remember how broke I was and how much
chicken-noodle soup I consumed.
2005 - The year of Exploration
I started working for Google a couple days after graduation in May 2004, however, in 2005 I began to explore many things at work and in my personal life. However during this time, my work was sorta my personal life as well. I started to seek particular career paths and also did a lot of traveling to many cities including Toronto, Canada....mostly for work. Good times.
2006 - The year of Change
Many things happened this year. I frequented Brazil. I learned to speak fluent Português. I got married to a Brazilian. I also got promoted at my job.
2007 - The year of Family
I moved to Brazil via transfer to Google Brazil in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. (wife is from Salvador, Bahia, Brazil). We have 3 girls, the youngest one is 5 months as of the writing of this blog (born May 19, 2007 @ 8AM GMT-3). I also traveled a lot to see family in Virginia and Washington.
2008- The year of Business
I have been perfecting many particular skills in technology since the previous year (mostly Java EE 5 and other web technologies), as well as always trying to come up with the killer app or killer business. Living in Brazil is a land full of opportunity waiting to be pounced upon, if you're a skilled American, especially in the field of technology. Brazil is behind on many things and sometimes just flat-out lack the resources and accessibility. This is where *my* start-up business comes in. I am looking to launch Q1 of 2008. Stay tuned...
2009 - Back to the Future of Academia
I have decided to change industries from the web world to the game world. This means I need to gain more education points and begin to build a portfolio of "this is why you should hire me" documents/demos. I have chosen to attend UGA's Artificial Intelligence Center in the Fall of 2009 (applying Fall 2008). They have a Masters of Science degree in AI. And my goal is to get one! My focus will be on AI in the interactive entertainment business so it's really not limited to games per sé, but I imagine I will be doing things like helping build the new AI systems in Tom Clancy games (aka Rainbow 6, Ghost Recon, End War), or the next AI in the Halo Series. In the gaming industry they usually call the AI folks "Gameplay Engineers/Programmers" or "AI Engineer." What a dream to work at Epic, Ubisoft, or Blizzard. This also means my family will be moving to the U.S. as well, and will begin their journey of living abroad and learning all about my country including building great relationships with the university and taking courses in English.
