About
I’m Bill. I’m a 41 year-old who grew up in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area, specifically in the town of Piedmont. About nine years ago I moved to Vienna, Austria, after meeting my beautiful wife, Daniela, who is Austrian. We married in June 2001 and live in a flat in Vienna’s third district. And we’re super lucky to have our amazing little daughter, Emily, who was born in February 2009.
Professional Stuff
Professionally speaking, I’m a programmer. I’m technically independent (not salaried), though for the last several years here in Vienna, I’ve worked consistently for one client. I like to stay independent because it gives me a lot of freedom regarding hours, vacation, etc. It’s tough too, of course, since I don’t get paid for vacations! And Austrian companies are very liberal with vacation — most people get about 6 weeks of paid vacation, so in that sense I’m missing out. But still, I’d rather stay independent.
My programming life has been dominated by Microsoft, going back to VB6 and up to .NET. For kicks and laughs while geeking around at home, I like to program in Python and play with Django. In my “perfect world”, I’d be getting paid to work with those technologies; I haven’t really looked for opportunities in that area and I probably should.
XING, the biggest online business social network here in Austria and Germany, has the latest and most up-to-date information concerning my professional profile.
Other Interests
My real interest outside programming is History, specifically German and Austrian history. This interest precedes my re-location to Austria; in fact, I met my wife during a trip I took to Austria after finishing my B.A. in History from Cal Berkeley. While studying at Cal, I’d done my best to concentrate on German and Austrian history, though of course, as an undergraduate, you’re not allowed to concentrate too much in one area.
My outlet to enjoy history these days is my website German History Blog. If you’re at all interested in the topic, I recommend you stop by.
Why billdawson.com
So that leaves this blog, billdawson.com, for topics such as programming, life-in-general, and whatever else comes to mind and doesn’t fit with the German and Austrian history topic. It’s the outlet for my “non-history-geek” persona, I guess you could say, while German History Blog is the outlet for that very specific interest.
Old billdawson.com stuff
By the way, if you ended up at billdawson.com because of articles I wrote ages ago, or files that I once made available for download. The articles I wrote for Builder.com back in the day have been re-located to TechRepublic. As for the files I once offered for download, check my old Downloads page. Some of those links might not now work — sorry, I won’t be able to help you with that. I simply did not keep a lot of the work I did years and years ago.
Ciao
Thanks for coming by and I hope to see you around here more often.