Three quarters 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

  1. Code Complete - Steve McConnell (yep, I’ve never actually read it)    No progress.
  2. Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture - Martin Fowler    Ready to start here soon.
  3. Domain Driven Design - Erick Evans    Done.
  4. Working Effectively With Legacy Code - Robert Martin    I think we’re getting close to needing a messaging framework, but I’m not quite ready to introduce the knowledge overhead for the team yet.

Tools/Techniques/Processes @ Work

  • NHibernate and all its trimmings (FluentNHibernate, LINQ to NHibernate, etc), which I’ll need on a project here real soon.  Done, but still picking up stuff.
  • 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.   No 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.    Our meetings are still halted, but I’m hoping to do an intro IoC/DI presentation if they ever start again.
  • Have at least one meeting of the CantonALT.NET group and see if it can ever get up on its feet.   No progress, but we’ve had quite a few more Code & Coffee get togethers, and we’re talking about getting a meeting together that’s not quite as tied to ALT.NET (some of the guys used to run them back in the early oughts).
  • The two blog posts per month target John put out there seems doable, so I’ll borrow it :)    Still on target, thought I’m starting to run out of post ideas. Might need to think up another series on something.
  • At least 3 feature/patch submissions to open source projects.  No further progress past the last update.

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.  Down to 89. Went on a feed cutting spree a few weeks back, mostly dead ones and others that have wondered into other topics that don’t interest me as much.

I’ll just point to the reading again. No more excuses - I just can’t read technical books for long periods of time, especially dense ones, which are oddly the ones I want to read.

I’ll update again in the beginning of November.