Its been quite a busy week for me again. I've spent the last week at a training course in Hammersmith. It's been really good and has been a really tremendous learning experience. The course was called Guerilla Enterprise .NET, which is run by the folks at Developmentor. I'd been on the Guerilla .NET course back in 2005, and it was good to get back to seeing what's going on out there in the real world. Another really cool feature of these courses is that they are really international affairs. Out of 15 students, only 3 were British. Only one out of the three instructors was English too. I think there were representatives from Switzerland, Slovenia, Germany, Belgium, Latvia and France. Probably more. They all, of course shamed the Brits with their language skills.

What I like about these courses is that there's a tremendous breadth and depth to the coverage of the courses. This one was primarily concerned with the two out of the three frameworks that appeared in .Net 3.0, the Windows Communications Foundation and the Windows Workflow Foundation both of which I''m really excited about getting to grips with and deploying into real world situations.

I don't want this article to be a whine, but over the last six months as I've concentrated on other aspects of my life, it's not gone unnoticed that in my professional life I've got to pick up the pace a bit. I discussed the pace of change in technology with one of the delegates on the course. We both agreed that the pace is quickening to a point where it's getting impossible to keep abreast of everything as we were once able to ten tears ago. But my main problem is that I'm not doing this stuff every day of my working life. And that's got to change. I can't afford to fall behind. It's a problem that so many of us in the industry are grappling with.

This presents me with a bit of a problem. I know that there's potentially fertile ground to apply these sort of technologies at work, but I'm also aware of the pace of change there. My greatest fear is that by the time we're in a position to deploy this type of technology, the ground will have shifted once more.

So what's a geek to do? I think the key as far as I'm concerned is this: Become knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the goodness that the new technology brings. Tell people about what you can do with it as often as you can. Impress them with it. If you fail to impress them with it, and you truly do believe in what you can do, then it's perhaps time to talk to someone else.

When push comes to shove, I'm not one of those guys who's always on the bleeding edge. I never will be. In fact I'm quite the opposite. "If it ain't broke, why fix it?" is a fine maxim. But it's inevitable that things in software change. You can either embrace the change of bury your head in the sand. The danger in not moving forward is that your software becomes more and more difficult to support as the skills required to do so dry up. Before you know it, your software is broken by default. No-one can fix it. Worse, no-one wants to fix it.

Time waits for no man. Least of all for a software architect. Every day, the clock ticks ever louder. I'm going to have to run faster just to stand still. Fun isn't it?

To anyone who regularly reads this blog, it can't have escaped your notice that it's not been updated recently. That's not been intentional but I've been otherwise engaged. Nothing exciting mind - it's just left me with little energy or inclination to keep the blog up to date. It's not permanent, so for the record I'll be back to updating it a little bit more regularly.

So what's kept me so busy recently? Well, I've been debating whether to share this with the outside world or not, but, what the hell. I've spent the last three weeks cleaning, cataloging, cleaning, recording and cleaning. What, you might be asking, would necessitate me to do that? I've had a wee domestic problem caused by bed bugs.

Like many other people, I didn't even realise that they still were a problem, but they are as I've just found out. I've got no idea where they came from, but they came to light when I did my spring cleaning about a month ago. Naturally, I was horrified. I called in the professionals. I'm glad I did. According to the man who came round, it seems that they're a growing problem in London. The company I engaged do not merely spray the affected areas. As part of their treatment program, the client is required to monitor and inspect the affected areas rigorously. After two weeks, a thorough deep clean is also required.

The problem is that the buggers are adept at hiding even in the smallest places. This means that the clutter that I'd had around my bed (books, papers, magazines etc) needed checking page by page. That's right. Page by page. In addition, I've been laundering like you wouldn't believe. I've bought storage boxes for the laundered items. I've thrown stuff out. I've even invested in a steam cleaner. In short, it's not been any fun.

But the good news is that it all seems to be working. And I'm of course really happy about that. But, I'm guessing you might want to know why I'm sharing this with the world. After all, it's not something you really want to share with all and sundry. I'd put it on a par with acquiring an STD. It happens (although thankfully not to me), but it's something you really want to keep to yourself. But it's one of those things that I think I want to make sure that people are aware of. Especially if you live in London, or indeed any big city. Once established, they're not easy to get rid of. It's best to know what you're looking for in the first place. So from me to you, my advice is this. Make sure you know that these little creatures do exist. Check carefully that there are none living with you. Do it regularly, because according to the chap who came to help me, the problem only looks set to get worse and worse. Be warned.