Happy Thanksgiving – This year I am thankful for…

It is the festive time of the year. With leaves turning colors and trees going bald thereafter, the season ushers the festivities – Diwali, Durga Puja, Halloween, Thanksgiving and finally Christmas.

Well, it is Thanksgiving and it is customary to thank people who touched your lives. On the personal front, I am thankful to my wife for being a great companion and for being the love of my life. I am thankful to my beautiful kids to be part of my life. I am thankful to my dad, mom and sister for their blessings and love. I am thankful to all my friends for being there for me, supporting me and being part of my life. Above all, I thank God for everything he has bestowed upon me and my family.

On the professional front, it has been a great year for me. It was the year I planned to step up my freelancing efforts. I was blessed and I nailed a few projects. During the course of the year, while I dabbled in code, I am thankful to a lot of people.

I am thankful for the great plugins by Rick Olson (technoweenie) and John Nunemaker, that I used in my projects. I am thankful to the team behind Aptana for providing an excellent Ruby on Rails IDE for free. I am thankful to Ryan Bates for his invaluable screencasts at Railscasts.com which has helped in numerous occasions. I am thankful to Unfuddle and Github for hosting the source code for my projects for free. I am thankful to the numerous bloggers who’s postings have inspired me and helped me learn along the way.

I am thankful to Olimpiu Metio at Rails Magazine to make me part of the editorial team. I am thankful to the great team members Bob Martens, John Yerhot, Khaled al Habache, Mark Coates, Starr Horne and Carlo Pecchia at Rails Magazine. We had a blast. By the way, Issue #5 coming soon in Dec. I am thankful to all the authors for their cooperation and all the people I interviewed for their time.

I am thankful to RailsBridge Builders for giving me an opportunity to work on open source projects and helping non-profit organizations. I would like to thank Mike Gunderloy for his leadership and vision for RailsBridge. I would like thank Mike Breen for his help and support in various projects.

I am thankful to Sarah Allen, Grace Liu, Chris Lerum, Thomas Jack and Petros Amiridis for an excellent team experience while working on Sunset PTA project. I learned a lot in team work and gained insight in working with people in different time zones.

I want to also thank my good friend Wynn Netherland for keeping my hopes high, giving me advice, showing me the path and encouraging me. Thanks a lot for inspiring me with your work.

Finally, last but not the least, I want to thank all that have subscribed to this blog and my other blog, followed my tweets and encouraged me with their comments and feedback. Please keep them coming.

I wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving!