NewsGator was a great experience for me over the past five plus years. I made some good friends, and I learned a lot about SQL Server. I am sure I would never have become a Microsoft SQL Server MVP if not for the experience I learned at NewsGator. As I told the founder of NewsGator, Greg Reinacker at my going away party, the fact that he usually said no when I wanted more and bigger database servers, forced me to learn other ways to improve scalability and performance besides just throwing hardware at the problem.

At some point, I will probably do a series of blog posts about the technical challenges we faced at NewsGator as we went through a period of very rapid growth in our database workload. It was an interesting journey, as we moved from 32-bit SQL Server 2000, running on a Dell PowerEdge 1850, all the way to SQL Server 2008 R2, running on slightly better hardware.

I am going to be staying in Parker, and working remotely, at least initially. I am staying on Bainbridge Island, at the Island Country Inn, for an initial three week period (which is a long business trip). Two more weeks, and I will be back in Parker. The crew at Avalara has been very helpful and welcoming. Steven Dunston wrote a very nice blog post about me here.