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    Started.
  3. Domain Driven Design - Erick Evans    Done.
  4. Working Effectively With Legacy Code - Robert Martin    No 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.  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.  We mentioned needing one a few times in discussing potential solutions to a few problems we’re having.

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.    Meetings still halted - no progress.
  • Have at least one meeting of the CantonALT.NET group and see if it can ever get up on its feet.   No progress, and more than likely dead in the water :(
  • The two blog posts per month target John put out there seems doable, so I’ll borrow it :)    Slipping a bit, mostly due to lack of things to talk about for a while. I have a few interesting (at least to me) posts in the works though.
  • 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 85! Lets see if I can keep it around that area. I’m trying to delete a feed if there’s one I want to add.

Not looking like I’ll be finishing everything before the year’s up.

I’ll update again in the beginning of January.