This blog has been pretty quiet for a year now. There's a few reasons for that. Probably the biggest reason is that I view this as a space where I talk about .NET things. Or software development. While I've been doing the latter for the past year, I haven't been doing the former.Yes, I took a trip to the dark side. I started with Ning 11 months ago, in Palo Alto, CA. I had the chance to work with an incredibly talented group of software engineers... in PHP and Java.That was definitely an eye-opening experience, in terms of technology, process, and culture. It was also a pretty good example of how acquisitions can get interesting. I'll talk more about this, I'm sure.Last week, I started with a company called Dynamic Signal. I'm a "Back End Engineer" now. Also a very talented team of people, and I'm delighted to be working with them. We're a Microsoft shop. After a year away, I'm very happy to be back. Coming back to .NET is an easy transition, and one that has me being fairly productive straight out of the gate.(Some of you may have noticed, my last post was more than a year ago. Yes, it's safe to infer that I didn't get renewed as an MVP. Fair deal; I didn't do nearly as much this year as I have in the past. I'll be starting to speak again shortly, and hope to be re-awarded soon.)At any rate, now that I'm back in the .NET space, you can expect to hear more from me soon!