Wow. 5 months since my last blog post. I don’t even know what to say..where to begin. I guess I should start by listing my excuses for this disgustingly long gap. When I first started blogging in late 2005, I was instantly hooked. Much of my idle thoughts turned into ponderings over what I would write in my next post. I was certain that blogging would continue to be a regular activity of mine forever. As it turned out, “forever” was about 18 months. =)

So why after 18 months did blogging suddently fall off my radar. Well here’s the rundown:

1) In early April I started working at SideStep as a product manager. It has been an interesting transition for me..some aspects good..some not so good. Nevertheless, it’s consumed a lot of my time. More time than I had expected actually. Why? That brings me to reason #2…

2) Facebook F8/Platform. In early May, just a few weeks after I joined SideStep, SideStep was enlisted to be one of the F8 launch partners. What that translated into for the company was we needed a Facebook app ready for public consumption in a mere 2 weeks. I was the PM for the project as well as the lead developer (this part was unexpected but became necessary for various reasons). For those 2 weeks leading up to May 24th, the F8 launch, I worked literally around the clock to build the Trips app. We (barely) finished by the launch date. I celebrated the next day by going to Vegas for the weekend with a bunch of buddies. I quickly realized that it was way too early to start celebrating. Various bugs and other technical issues kept me busy for half of that weekend in Vegas. When I arrived back to work on Monday, I quickly fell back into the frantic development pace of the prior weeks.

3) Once July hit, Trips was less crazy but I had taken on new responsibilities at SideStep. I was now the PM for essentially all our community products as well as a couple other products. However, what really kept me busy outside of work was working on facebook apps of my own. With Andrew (my co-founder of Revunity), I built AnswerBook and with a SideStep co-worker, Paul, I built and launched The Nickname App and Complaints. We’ve also developed some really intriguing apps which have yet to see the light of day. The bottom line is, I’ve been a coding machine. (Oh btw somewhere doing this period I bought a MacBook Pro. Thanks for showing me the light Nick!)

4) Finally, in terms of my personal life, things have also been busy. I still live in SF but SideStep is in Santa Clara. The commute is pretty killer, and even though I crash at my parent’s place in Palo Alto often during the week, the back and forth between the city and the south bay is a serious time consumer.

Anyway, I’ve got one or two more solid excuses to add to the list but I’ll spare you those for now. The important takeaway in all this is that Its Rishi is back from the dead, I once again will be posting regularly, and I’m here to stay…forever. =)