So after a long absence from blogging, I have decided to return yet again and try to put up something that someone out in the vast Internet will find somewhat amusing. I actually haven't been completely away from blogging. I just temporarily moved to Sogeti Phoenix Blogs to try to develop the community at my last employer, with various amounts of success and failure.

Now here I am, working with a new employer, resurrecting my wishes to try to find a product that I can develop and turn into my own company, and trying to find enough great content to blog about and build up my Internet community once again.

For those of you that are new to me and my blog, my name is Michael Collins. Professionally, I use Michael F. Collins, III, as it's my formal name. But call me Michael or Mike, or whatever other name suits your fancy.

I am employed as a Principal Consultant for Neudesic in their Phoenix office. I continue to serve the Phoenix metropolitan area to help out in the custom application development space, and occasionally performing business intelligence or SharePoint work when available. I specialize in developing applications using the Microsoft .NET platform, but I'll at times dig out my C++ skills and do other Windows-related things. I haven't had to work with Java in a while, but I will do Java from time to time as well. And then there's grand old Assembly Language, which I will on very rare occasions work with when I have an interest in getting that low-level.

I have been a professional software developer since 1993. I began my career during my time at college at California State University, Sacramento. From there, I moved down into the San Francisco Bay Area where I worked for multiple companies developing enterprise and shrink wrapped software applications. In 2003, I left the Bay Area and relocated to Tempe, AZ. In 2006, my wife and I purchased our home in Surprise, AZ, which is located in the northwest corner of the Phoenix metro region.

My wife is an elementary school teacher with the Glendale Elementary School District #40 in Glendale, AZ. She's East Indian, born in Calcutta, but was adopted as a baby by an American couple and was raised in the United States.

Among the companies that I've worked for are:

• Neudesic, LLC (current employer)
• Sogeti USA
• JDA Software
• Kaiser Foundation Health Plan/Kaiser Permanente
• NONSTOP Solutions (acquired by Manhattan Associates)
• PeopleSoft (acquired by Oracle)
• Health Care Information Services (acquired by Lippincott-Raven Publishers, now Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins)

Welcome to my blog, and stay tuned for the content to come. Also, feel free to follow me on Twitter, connect to me on LinkedIn, or follow me on FaceBook (coming soon).