[Phoenix-pm] Introductions and Good-byes

[Michael Friedman]

In the spirit of introductions, I'm Mike Friedman, the red-headed guy 
who showed up to most of the meetings until his baby was born (last 
August, 10 monts ago). I live in Tempe, but am usually willing to drive 
to meetings. I am one of the lucky few who gets to write perl code all 
day at work, where I designed and maintain (with help) a huge perl 
installation with hundreds of Objects to handle putting scientific 
journal articles onto the web.

My interests lie in 'getting things done' with Perl, but I try to keep 
up when Scott starts explaining Perl internals and I find architecture 
questions really interesting. I *love* Perl's object model and use it 
to great advantage when I can and think automated testing is the best 
thing ever. I also do Java programming and have been a long-time 
Macintosh fan/evangelist. Outside of computing, I have a 10-month-old 
daughter who takes up all my free time. :-)

I've attended every Perlmongers meeting I could and would love to get 
the group back together. Most of the time there were 5-6 of us at 
meetings, which meant we fit well around a conference table. The only 
trouble I have with meeting at coffee shops or bars is that most 
presentations involved the computer & projector, which doesn't work so 
well w/o a screen. Perhaps we could all crowd around a laptop for 
presentations, but that seems uncomfortable. (And as for paper -- 
paper?? What's that?)

Now for the sad/happy news. My wife, who teaches at ASU, has won a 
prestigious fellowship to do research at UC Santa Cruz this upcoming 
academic year, so we'll be moving to the Bay Area in about 5-6 weeks. 
We'll be back in AZ a year from August, a.k.a. as *late* in the summer 
as possible. :-) So if there's a meeting before I leave, I'd love to 
attend, but otherwise, I'm not going to be able to make them for a 
while. :-(

I really enjoy Phoenix.pm, so I'll stay on the mailing list even though 
I'll be in CA. (There's no PerlMongers group in the Bay Area anyway. 
They're all defunct.) I hope you can get the physical meetings back 
together, they were always interesting and fun. (Thanks Doug!)

I'm looking forward to seeing y'all either soon or in a year!

-- Mike

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Michael Friedman                  HighWire Press, Stanford Southwest
Phone: 480-456-0880                                   Tempe, Arizona
FAX:   270-721-8034                  <friedman at highwire.stanford.edu>
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