Jeremy Roberts. A Blog

Firstly, welcome to 2010! Glad you made it.

It’s been a long while since my last update. Over three months in fact. I keep having minor ideas about stuff to post, and then think… “who the hell would want to read about that!?” and so I only get as far as writing the title. Lame, I know

I just wanted to take a moment to recap some of our highlights from 2009 before I forget some of them.

It was a very action-packed year. My first son was born, March 26 at 3:17pm. It was absolutely amazing. And, while challenging on the odd occasion, is all completely worth it when I hear him trying to hammer out words such as “mum”, “dad” and “duck” (I think – though this last one will be funny!).

It’s been so strange to hold a baby and know it’s yours. It’s surreal. I don’t ‘feel’ like a dad. Or do I?

The question that occasionally pops into my head and gets me wondering if I’m doing things right, or if I should be feeling differently – I still feel like a bumbling uni student. But, I have discovered that this is completely normal. Phew!

Mere days after the arrival of Noah, my cousin got married! Alas, my wife and son were unable to attend due to obvious reasons. Congratulations again to you both (my cousin and her husband).

Later, around the beginning of July, there was another new arrival in the family and I had a new nephew! (It seemed the glory days of Noah being the newest grandchild were short-lived). Noah now had a fantastic, life-long opportunity to beat up and cause mischief with his marginally younger cousin. Those two have the potential to be trouble.

Such is life. Now, work.

My working life began as a humble web (online application) developer. From the end of 2008 I began to feel slight changes in my role at work…. I was slowly becoming a sales rep! And, by mid 2009, it was official (though I’m told I’m still suppose to spend 20% of my time developing web applications – this is not going to happen).

Within four years of leaving university, I have now worked in two different companies and three different roles! I can’t wait to see what challenges lay in the year ahead.

Ah, the year ahead. What will it hold for this Roberts and his family? More underlings at work (and higher pay)? A new house to rent (fun), or simply evolution? There are no major plans for 2010, apart from maybe getting a new lounge suite. The motto for this year, for me, is “out with the old, in with the new” – enough of old excess baggage and clutter, it’s time to clear out, assess and dive in for the next round! Oh, and hopefully there will be some more blog posts too!

Such an unbelievable sight in Sydney (and most of the state) today as a wild storm passed through bringing massive amounts of red desert right into the city.

Waking up, I noticed that the window blinds was surrounded by a red glow. This revealed a stunning hazy red landscape. It was an amazing thing to see. I said to my little son, Noah, that it looks like we were in a giant glass of Berocca. Photos (at least on my camera) did the sight no justice, so I’ve had to pinch a photo from elsewhere to represent the day.

It’s now 1pm, and most of the redness of the sky has left us, leaving a much greyer haze in it’s wake.

The city is now shadows in a thin layer of red dust.

What truly amazes me is that the red sky was due to the windstorm picking up, and carrying dust from the red centre, that is, the Australian desert. Never before have I seen such a thing.

Just a post to let you all know that yes, I am still here. I have just been a bit busy lately. My wife gave birth to a beautiful baby boy a little while ago, Noah.

We’re both thrilled and love just looking at him (moreso when he quiet and looking back than when he’s screaming for something to eat or because he has to burp/fart). He’s so small and cuddly and has a cool little mo-hawk. The jury’s still out on who he looks like more, though people are now saying he’s starting to look a bit like me! Poor guy.

I’ve just launched this brand new shiny blog site. The aim of this site is to be a place for me to vent whatever is on my mind. At the moment, there will be plenty of blogs about jTips, my life, and my work.

jTips is my own webware project that I have developed for the Joomla! CMS framework. I won’t go into it in too much detail here since it will get its own dedicated page soon enough. However, I better present the gist. jTips is a sports tipping solution that is installed and run by you, on your website. You control what sport(s) you want to run, you control how the points are allocated, you control how it looks. Basically, “your rules, your website, your way” – that’s the tag line

My life is changing, and quickly! I am recently married, and my wife, Rhiannon, is the lovliest person there is, and, she is pregnant with our child! We’re due to be first-time parents at the end of March this year, so things will get very hectic, very quickly. This part of my blog will serve kind of as a diary I guess. Outlining my day-to-day challenges and triumphs about everything a married dad faces… should be fun.

My work. This blog will serve two purposes with respect to my working life. 1 – if something happens at work that I feel like blogging about, or I get bored one day, I will blog. 2 – this blog will act as a portfolio. It will be linked to from other profiles like facebook, LinkedIn and maybe other things like twitter, and will showcase my achievements in the working world (though jTips is a massive achievement in itself).

So that’s it. That’s my goal with this blog. I am Jeremy Roberts. Husband, Dad, Developer, Entrepreneur. This is my blog.

Where you go from here, is a choice I leave to you.