So, as LinuxJedi so eloquently noted here, Rackspace and Drizzle are parting ways.  While they were kind enough to offer other opportunities with them, my preferences were similar to Andrew’s – to remain in the MySQL/Drizzle world.

I was fortunate enough that SkySQL had need of my services and am happy to announce that today marks my first day as a Senior QA Engineer with them.  I am very honored to join such a promising and skilled group and am very excited about the opportunities ahead.

My work will have me developing QA solutions (tests, code, whatever) for a wide variety of things.  Naturally, this includes SkySQL’s Reference Architecture where I will work on tests to ensure the delivered packages work perfectly for our customers (among many, many other things).  Additionally, I’ll be working with tools such as LinuxJedi’s modifications to Domas’ oh-so-tasty mydumper.  Basically, a little bit of everything ; )  One of the first things I’ll be doing is adapting dbqp to work with MySQL.  This will allow us to handle a wide variety of testing challenges from a single, adaptable platform in the MySQL world as well.  Drizzle will be replacing the legacy test-runner with this tool in the very near future.

Speaking of which, I’ve also been encouraged to continue contributing to Drizzle.  I have been speaking with Stewart recently about beefing up xtrabackup tests and putting the random query generator directly in the Drizzle tree.  It’s quite amazing to be in a position where I can collaborate on projects across company lines.  I also think it is particularly cool that Henrik notes SkySQL were the first to do a production install of Drizzle for someone!

With that said, I have plenty on my plate already and it’s time to get back to work : )