Apologize for the unfinished blog post

I accidentally published an unfinished draft blog post today, it was something in my queue that I have been trying to finish, but was not able to dedicate time to it. I published it by mistake after I clicked a wrong button.

I sincerely apologize for the confusions that it may have caused. I will try to make the post(s) available as soon as I can.

[UPDATE - May 10, 2012] The series of blog posts is available now, it is still currently working-in-progress.

Reached 50,000 Page Views!

I happened to have noticed today that my blog has just reached 50,000 page views this week, based on the data from Google Analytics. You may have noticed that I have a Blogger pageview widget which is only counting to about 43,500 views as of today. The reason for the difference is, PageView stats function was not available on Blogger platform in the very beginning. Believe me, I didn't lie to you, the following is the Google Analytics stats information that I took the screenshot about 90 minutes ago.
Please don't think that I'm trying to show off here. With only 50,000 Page Views in total in one and half years, there is nothing to show off about. IMHO, I am nowhere close to the page views of any Lady Gaga fan blogs, and I don't think that I would ever be able to make this blog as popular as they are any time soon.

About two years ago (Apr 29, 2009 to be exact), I felt a little bored so I started the journey of writing a technical blog. Did I just sound very politic? YES, I suppose that I was a bit. In fact, one of the important reason is, I don't usually keep track of every details in a very organized way, sometimes I can lose track of what I just did a few days ago or probably a few months ago. In China, we have a say, "The palest ink is better than the best memory". So writing a technical blog not only helps challenges myself, but also has helped me keep track of such details. However, there is another important motivation, which should be kept just between you and me, I have been sick of walking into an interview room with a piece of resume in my hand, which doesn't prove anything nowadays. So I thought writing a technical blog would prove that I am capable of doing some little things, that was just the selfish part of myself. However, I didn't realize in the beginning that writing a blog was actually quite a challenge. As you may not appreciate, it did take me quite a lot of personal spare time to keep this blog updated, even though I am well aware that I haven't actually written much so far. I have to admit, my writing was terribly slow and my English was often broken (thanks for bearing with me all the time), and often times I had to revise my blog posts again and again just trying to make them readable. On a side note, I have quite a lot other topics in my mind that I just haven't got the time to write them down, including some pretty cool (only in my own opinion though) ideas that I wanted to implement on MSCRM platform.

My blog has been mostly focused on MSCRM development practice to this date. I might be switching to some other topics in the future, as MSCRM is no longer something that I am working on daily basis. But I will try to write some CRM posts when I can find time.

Thanks to the CRM community for your support all the time, and more importantly your patience while listening to my mumblings.

Taking a Break, and Looking for Business Opportunities

After three years (3 years and 5 months to be accurate) of hard working days with my current employer, I decided to take a short break and give myself a little bit time to think about what I am going to do next.

As a quick retrospect of the last 3 years, I believe I have gained significant experience with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, SharePoint, .NET, and Enterprise Application Development. I worked hard, thought hard, and made sure that I have been doing the right thing for my project and the applications that I was developing. I tried to discipline myself by leveraging the best practices that I have learned from the community, which has been a great achieving 3 years.

March 31 is going to be my last day with my current employer, which means on April 1st, I will be jobless (What a April fool's day!).

We have a small local community of Microsoft Dynamics CRM development work in the city where I live. What this means is, I might have to go with different development practice, such as .NET, SharePoint (admittedly, I much prefer MSCRM when comparing to SharePoint) or even something totally different (maybe Ruby or Python). In other words, I might be leaving MSCRM community for a short period of time. But I will still try to keep an eye on Microsoft Dynamics CRM, particularly I will stay on Microsoft Dynamics CRM Development Forum by helping the community whenever I can find time.

Speaking about the business opportunities that I am looking for, I am listing what I can offer to help for MSCRM platform.

1. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Development
2. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Solution Architecting
3. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Planning and Implementation
4. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Data Migration and Data Integration
5. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Document Automation and SharePoint Integration Solution
6. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Development Training

When it comes to training, most people tend to overlook its importance. Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a complex business application platform, which requires quite steep learning curve. Training not only helps you save your investment, but also helps you get the job done faster with better quality. I have an extreme passion about writing quality software code (you may argue that I am actually writing poor code, but at least I am trying to be better everyday), so I think I can help build up your team resource in one way or another, by sharing the lessons and experiences that I have learned during the past years.

If you want to offer me a job or a contract work (it doesn't have to be MSCRM), please do so, I am very positive that I can help in certain ways. If in any case that you may want to offer me a technical executive position, you will have to buy me a cup of coffee so that we can sit down and have a talk. ;-)

You may reach me by my personal email at (danielwcai at gmail dot com).

Cheers!

[Update - Mar 23, 2011] I have decided to pursue a local contract position, which is not relevant to MSCRM. Thanks for your time. I apologize if this blog post has caused any confusions in the community.