My  name is Bill Kennedy the first, and I am a software consultant in Dallas. My email address is bill.kennedy@scapromo.com.

I worked for  almost 10 years at a company called HighwayMaster (now called At-Track). We made tracking systems for trucks and service vehicles (there is a HM unit in every Southwestern Bell telephone service truck, for example). I mainly wrote software for the mobile unit, which we wrote in C but attempted to make it "object-based". It was a painful process in the beginning to get everyone thinking in object terms, but in the long-run the effort paid off.  Maintenance turned out to be fairly easy as we had done a good enough job of partitioning that changes tended to be localized.

Lately, I've been doing a lot of C++ for MicrosoftWindows, and have been enjoying learning about the ins and outs of C++. Right now, I'm reading Modern C++ Design, by Andrei Alexandrescu (cool name).  Unfortunately, none of the very cool code Alexandrescu develops in his book will compile under Visual C++.

My second pasttime is PersonalDevelopment. I have been involved in various approaches over the last 10 years. Lately, I have settled on RadixBodyCenteredPersonalGrowthWork as my approach of choice and am a trainee at the Radix Institute (http://www.radix.org). In browsing around the WikiWiki, I started thinking that it would be interesting to try and capture various "patterns" I have come across and used in PersonalDevelopment. I know it's not exactly apropos for this Wiki considering it's focussed on SoftwareDevelopment, but I think the two areas are related, and perhaps some interesting software patterns might come to light from PersonalDevelopment and vice versa.

I have also been training in BrazilianJiuJitsu with Carlos Machado (one of the Gracie family from Brazil) and find that to be a stimulating and totally different thing to do. I used to take Aikido, and the difference between the two is fascinating. In Aikido, we learned to cooperate with each other and to roll out of a throw as a means of protecting ourselves, but often it helped the person doing the technique to have his partner go flipping over to get out of a wrist lock. BrazilianJiuJitsu is very different - your partner is doing everything he/she can to keep you from doing whatever you're trying to do - it's basically wrestling, and it takes a completely different mindset than Aikido.
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