2010 Things to Get Done

In the spirit of new years I decided to do what everyone else is doing, create a list of things I want to accomplish this year, i.e., my New Year's Resolution.  I remember I created a List of Things I Want to Do way back in 2008.  Let's see how I matched up 2 years later:

• Improve my writing skills
• Ruby/Apache Wicket and Hackystat
• Practice Puzzles
• Play with Python
• Give a speech to a group about something technology

The things I didn't complete are in red.  How sad.  Two years later I still haven't tried out Python.  I think I have improved my writing skills a bit, but I had a blog hiatus in 2009.  Hopefully we will miss that episode this year.  I tried implementing a Hackystat UI using Ruby on Rails in 2008.  Other than mentoring a student for Google Summer of Code 2009, I haven't done any new work on Hackystat.  The Collaborative Software Development Laboratory has started new work in the smart grid energy field.  It's an interesting area with mounds of real-world application potential.  I'm excited to see the direction they take their research.  Perhaps I might find an opportunity to contribute to their work.

I didn't create a list of things to get done in 2009, but I did have a Periodic Resume Update that talks about what I've done and where I'm headed.  It seems that I believed that Openmbp was the direction I was headed in 2009.  That idea has passed and now it's onto new things.  I'm a year older and starting to think about new things.

In the past two years I was concerned with everything technology related.  I wanted to improve my hacking skills and learn new technologies.  Learning new technical skills is important, but I now believe that other aspects of life that should receive attention.  That's what I want to accomplish this year in addition to continuing my technological advancement pilgrimage.  I debated on creating a list by priority, but I decided that everything on this list should get done.  I ended up categorizing the items into financial, personal, and technological goals.

Financial Things to Get Done

• Stick to my budget - I'm a failure at sticking to budgets.  I spend enormous amounts of time tracking where my money is going, set up a budget, and then buy a digital camera.  Or a snowboard.  Or a wine fridge.  Or some other thing that I probably should have saved up for first.  My new strategy is paying myself financially and to use cash when possible.  Paying myself first financially means that I put money away before I start paying my bills or buying frivolous things.  Using cash helps me to be conscious of where my money is going.  Credit cards are evil and they own me.  (Hopefully not this year)
• Save 10% of income - Paying myself first will allow me to accomplish the next two goals.  There are things I want to save up for in the future.  I can't purchase them unless I start saving now.  I think 10% is a reasonable number.
• Save 5% of income for life's experiences - For the past three years I've never saved money to spend on vacations or things I'm passionate about.  I was in the financial bias of saving as much as possible and would feel guilty if I decided to take a trip or spend some cash on something I took pleasure in. No more!  Over the past year I've become extremely interested in personal finance.  So like I always do when I want to find out more on a subject, I look for reading material, i.e. online blogs.  A recurring theme that I found that struck a cord with me was: Spend money on things you value.  After all, money is just a tool to live life.  So this year I resolve to save money for that snowboarding trip or a trek to foreign country.  I'm going to save and spend with no remorse.  I'm going to live this time around.

Personal Things to Get Done

• Continue to pay myself first - I recently wrote a blog paying myself first.  I want to continue to go to the gym in the morning.  
• Read one library book a month - I've been using the library for about a 1.5 months now and I'm going to say that I can't imagine my life without it.  I paid 10 dollars for a new library card and the first books I checked out were worth at least twice the library card fee!  I've found that I won't have the time to read, but I'm saving money instead of wasting it. I can always renew books I failed to read or just return them and check them out later.  The goal here is to continue to read.  One book a month is totally doable.

Technical Things To Get Done

• Play with Python (Really) - It's time to get off my ass off my crappy chair (My home chair.  My work chair rocks!) and learn a new language.  I wouldn't say I'm stagnating since I'm still absorbing Ruby and Rails, but I need to get some new code perspectives into my brain this year.  Python will be welcomed.
• Complete 2 resume updates this year - The periodic resume updates are a good indicator of my current technical and personal development progress.  Stagnation equals Fail.
• Increase my stackoverflow reputation to 1000! - I think I'm the most excited about this thing to get done.  I've been frequenting Stack Overflow(SO) for the past couple of weeks and have decided to join the game.  I want to raise my reputation points to a certain level before the end of the year.  Since it's a game with rules and points, my progress can be measured.  I want to have a goal of 1000 reputation points before 2011.  I'm at 96 right now.  An idea I had to use SO as a learning tool was to try to answer questions in unfamiliar areas.  For example, I'm not a pro Rails hacker, but I want to be.  So my task is to try to answer Rails questions even if they already have answers.  At the end of the day, reputation points don't matter, what I learn does.
• Practice developing with Ruby on Rails - It's still here.  Rails hacking.  It's fun, but I really need to get a move on.  I have a side project that I wanted to deploy by the end of 2009, but I failed.  Let's shoot for the end of 2010.

Phew.  That's a lot to accomplish. Onward!