A few weeks ago, six or so, I was offered a position as a Software Developer for the Woodbine
Entertainment Group. The position looked appealing so I accepted the job
offer. I am in a probationary period for the next four months and a bit.
Anything I say can be grounds for firing me. Never liked that part about non-contract
jobs. Ah well.
Woodbine is an interesting company. I knew very little about it until I got
word of the job. Seems I was the only one in Canada who didn’t know the company.
My grandmother, who moved to California 50 years ago, knew about the company.
Even used to bet there – well, the Woodbine Race Track, before it moved. It
has an interesting history.
It is migrating to be a Microsoft shop, from a more Novell focused infrastructure.
We are working towards standardizing on .NET for our custom applications.
The one thing that caught my eye with Woodbine is that the company is the technology
leader for Horse Racing. Not just in Canada, but throughout the world.
Our services can let you place a
bet live, on a track in Australia, and see results immediately. Can you
imagine the infrastructure required for such a feat? It’s sweet! The business-people
behind this are really keen on letting technology do it’s thing, so we can make money.
Lots of money. See our Annual
Reports on that. Check back for latest numbers.
Now, some of you may have noticed that our Corporate Portal is written in what looks
to be Classic ASP. For all intensive purposes, it is. Archive.org shows
the portal went live in 2001, and had a major rebuild in 2003. Since then incremental
changes have taken place, most of which have been built using ASP.NET. We are
working on the new portal. All I can say at the moment is: it’s going to be
awesome. So awesome that a new word will need to created to contain all of its
awesomeness. HorsePlayer Interactive is
pretty amazing, but I’d like to think this new site will be just that much more awesomer.
Yes, I said awesomer.
As for the nature of this site, it won’t change. I’ll still post my thoughts
and experiences. I might need to change stories a little to protect the innocent,
but it’s all in good fun. I may be forced to post details of how horse racing
actually works, because I’m still not sure I get all the facets of it. In time.
More to follow.
