We’re 1/6th of the way through 2009. How am I doing on my goals for the year? Let’s see (comments in italics after each goal):

Books

I’ll be honest, I haven’t been too good on the book front. I was already about half way through Jimmy Nilsson’s Applying Domain Driven Design when I made these goals, and figured I’d finish it, then move on to the next book. Well, then I realized I’d probably be better off reading Evan’s Domain Driven Design book first, so I put down Nilsson’s version. I need to pick up the pace on the reading front, so I think I’ll commit to a certain number of pages each night, even if small, so there’s always some forward progress.

Tools/Techniques/Processes @ Work

  • NHibernate and all its trimmings (FluentNHibernate, LINQ to NHibernate, etc), which I’ll need on a project here real soon.  I think I can say this one is slain. We’re successfully using all three tools widescale in our project, and I’m learning more about them each day that passes.
  • Actually move from CC.NET to Team City (last attempt didn’t go so well).  No progress.
  • Build a more robust build script and management process - including production deployment scenarios.   Other than some tinkering around, no real progress.
  • Messaging framework, either MassTransit, NServiceBus, or Ayende’s new Rhino Service Bus if he’s able to release it in time for our current project.  No progress as we haven’t needed any yet.

Involvement

  • We have weekly meetings to catch everyone up on what we’re doing, but I want to present on an actual topic during at least 2 of these - and present in a way where the other development teams will see the use in picking up the presented tool/technique.    My group did a quick ~ one hour presentation on NHibernate, but we did virtually no pre-planning, so it was sort of rushed through and I think went over most of the other developer’s heads. I need to plan a presentation out next time and bite off a smaller chunk to talk about.
  • Have at least one meeting of the CantonALT.NET group and see if it can ever get up on its feet.   No progress.
  • The two blog posts per month target John put out there seems doable, so I’ll borrow it :)    So far so good - at least 2 each month.
  • At least 3 feature/patch submissions to open source projects.  No progress, but I think I’m going to stretch myself and look at submitting a patch to Linq for NHibernate to support date part comparisons (ie TransactionDate.Year == 2009). It currently blows up on that.

Productivity

  • Trim RSS feed size by 1/3 (presently at 127, so trim it to at least 85) and cut time viewing it by half. I’ve gotten much better this past year at cutting through the useless stuff, but there’s still a lot there and it sucks up too much of my time.  Still at 127, though some are from Craigslist searches for items I’m looking for, so I did drop a few unread development blogs.

All in all I think I’m doing a bit below par. I’m behind on the reading, but everything else isn’t too bad, as they’re longer term goals. I need to decide on the next action for each of these to get them moving.

How’s everyone else doing with their goals?

I’ll update again in the begining of May.