Starting the journey....

A bit about myself before we begin....

At the time I write this I'm a month and a bit short of my 43rd birthday. I work in the IT Dept of a group of 5 rural hospitals in south-western Ontario, Canada.
I spent 17 years in the Canadian military, mostly as a medic. When I left the military I opted for IT as I was "good with computers", and, as far as I could tell you didn't get routinely covered with bodily fluids (I've heard that there are people who're into that...I'm not one of them), and no one ever dies on you....although some users act like they will if you don't fix their problem immediately.
When I left the military I went to school for a year, then found a job doing IT support for a factory making insulated cabling for heavy industry. I liked that job...it wasn't too taxing and I liked my co-workers. It was a 3 month contract, which, as the plant was in trouble I didn't opt to extend.
I lived off my pension (and my wife at the time) for a few months. Just when I was getting despondent over the lack of employment I saw an ad on Workopolis looking for an IT type who had a strong background in the clinical sector, and oh, btw, the successful candidate would be sent to Sydney Australia for 2 weeks of training. I clicked the apply button and chuckled to my wife that I would never get that job.
Sydney was lovely...my first trip to a topless beach (I wore a shirt).
The company was an Emergency Dept Information Systems vendor. I gained alot of ED experience in the military and this was my niche. I loved my job for awhile...until I burnt out.
My wife and I got divorced...we're good friends now...she's remarried with a couple of kids. I'm still looking for a girlfriend...so if you're female, reasonably hot with a thing for fat, hairy computer geeks with a weird sense of humour, go ahead and send me an email :-).

Anyway. I got laid off on Halloween of 06. The company closed their Toronto office.

All my friends were glad. The job was killing me.

I went 6 months before finding another job. I lost my house and narrowly avoided financial ruin.

I found a job working for half my previous salary fixing PC based Point-of-Sale devices at quick service restaraunts. I liked the job...and I got alot of free coffee.

I was driving to a call when I received a phone call from the IT Manager here asking me if I'd like to come work for him. My best friend in the entire world works here, and we were a client of mine when I worked for the ED systems vendor....and I'd already interviewed for another position a few months previously.

Wow, look at the time, I need to cut this short....

Anyway, that boss left, we got a new boss whose very much into cutting edge business practice. He recognized my abilities as a programmer (heh, fooled him) early on.

A few weeks ago he walked into my office, dropped a bunch of books on my desk and said, "Learn BizTalk!" and walked out....

That's not actually what happened, it was more discussing business ideas and asking me if I'd be interested in training...naturally I was.

I've had 16 hours of training, and alot of time in books and websites.

Not to blow my own horn but I'm clever and tenacious, so I've been able to solve most of my problems with a bit of help from people on forums.

My friend suggested that I start keeping a blog to use as a reference to all the solutions I'm finding.

So here it is....tomorrow I'll update you on what I've discovered so far.