Yesterday marked my 5th anniversary since I signed on the dotted line, and starting working with MySQL AB! I celebrated yesterday with a BBQ with the family, and a few vodka shots for old times sake. 
Interestingly, it was also the 5 year anniversary of the first 5.0 RC being announced.
Since that time I’ve transferred through to Sun, and now find my home to be Oracle (funnily, the user community that I left to join MySQL).
I’ve met a huge number of fantastically talented people, made a lot of new friends, seen a lot of new colleagues come on board as we expanded so quickly, and sadly seen a number of those colleagues leave to go onwards (and pretty much in all cases, upwards) within the IT world. Happily, a large number remain, and continue to amaze me with the work they have been doing, and focus that they have.
I’ve also gotten to know a number of users and customers pretty well, and have to say they are among the most passionate IT community that I’ve ever come across. Your will for MySQL to keep improving is amazing, and remains my inspiration.
It’s also taken me to new places, I’ve gotten to see New York, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Washington DC, Santa Clara, Cupertino, Austin, Montreal, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Hamburg, and Riga (the less said the better on that one).
For my part, I’m still as jazzed as ever to be working with the MySQL group within Oracle. We’re taking great strides at the moment, with performance, instrumentation, usability, and high availability within MySQL 5.5, and the roadmap ahead has a very bright future for both the Server and the tools that I get to spend my day to day life on (MEM and MySQL Proxy).
And so I raise my coffee cup (hey, I’m at work now), to the next 5 years, and to all the great people that have made my working life so enjoyable!
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