Chris Holmes Online

Some folks have asked recently what happened to my blog. Well, it’s pretty simple: On July 14th, 2008, my wife gave birth to our son, Cameron.

A newborn, as anyone with children knows, sucks up some free time. In addition, his big sis, Jessica, is becoming a handful as well.

I also spent some time this summer doing some .NET consulting for a friend. It was a great opportunity to share some knowledge and solve some problems. The consulting also took away some blogging time, but it did help pay for a couple new guitars, because…

In January, I co-founded a hard rock cover band: Day of Rain. When we started the band it was just two of us, a drummer and myself (on guitars). We had both been playing our instruments for 15+ years, but we had never done anything with that skill. Now seemed like the right time to both of us.

I’ve found the band to be a great source of fun and a great outlet for my musicality. Having to learn new material and having to be at my best so I don’t let down my band mates has forced me to practice and really become much more proficient with my instrument.

At the same time, putting together the band has tested our collective patience. The first several months were marked with one failure after another in our attempts to recruit a quality vocalist and bass player. Musicians are weird people, and often they lack in the areas of dependability and professionalism (or they lack in talent, which seems to be the case with so many people who think they can actually sing).

Recently, we did add a vocalist, and she is one of the best singers I’ve ever heard. We’re fortunate to have her. We’re still short a bass player, but our list of known songs is growing each week and we all believe we’ll be gigging next year.

I’m still working at Nez Perce County and still trying to do cool stuff with .NET. We just upgraded to version 3.5 and we’re now able to take advantage of some very cool Linq goodness. I hope to have more to say about that and what we’re doing with it in the weeks to come.

There’s so much to write about, and so little time.