As a software engineer for many years, I spent all day (and many nights), sitting in front of my computer, in a virtual world. While I did well, I eventually felt a need to get up from my desk and work with my hands and body, and not just my mind. That's when I started to remodel our house. Boy, did I have a lot to learn! (and a lot of tools to buy!)

It turns out that this physical labor was something that I really loved, plus my wife loved the improvements to the house and it gave us something to work on together. From the planning to the shopping to the execution, we've tackled all kinds of home improvement jobs, big and small.

I decided to keep a kind of online journal (hey, isn't that what a "blog" is???), about many of the projects we did, or interesting bits of information that I come across in my quest to figure all these tasks out. I've put them here on my blog, "SoftwareVirtuosity.com" as a kind of homage to where I came from that has allowed me the freedom to discover this new passion, plus an acknowledgement that no matter what, yes, I will go back to the computer keyboard at night!

- Zackary A. Thomas, www.softwarevirtuosity.com