The beginning if a new year is a common time to look back over the past 12 months to evaluate what you did, where you went, and where you are going.  Without boring you to death, I thought I'd share a few things I learned and a few things I hope to do better in the coming year.

Learned

1. If you aren't growing, move

I had become stagnant in my previous job and had known for a while it was holding me back professionally, but it is hard to leave a secure job.  However, last spring it become very clear to me, I was going to continue to get frustrated in my position and this summer found a new opportunity closer to home that I'm happy with.  My new job keeps me working full time in the technology that I enjoy and has cut down on my frustration 10 fold.  I feel less stressed and I'm becoming a better developer every day.

2. Don't be afraid to share

For years, I kept thinking that I should get involved helping with an open source project.  I thought about many projects at many times, but was always a bit timid to dig in and submit patches and new features.  It was easiest to keep on the fringe and do nothing.  Early this year however, I decided to stop procrastinating and do something.  I ran across the BlogEngine.NET project very early in its life cycle and offer to do whatever was needed to help.  It has been a wild ride that has been a great.  I've met a ton of nice people, learned quite a bit, and have a something I'm excited to be a part of.  I only wish I had done something like this sooner.

3. I can't learn everything about everything

I spend a lot of time every week reading, studying, and trying new technologies.  It seems the more time I put in the less I know.  In years past, I tried unsuccessfully to read and learn a little about anything and everything.  In the past I've kept a huge reading list I would never get through a feel a bit lame about not having learned some of this stuff.  This year, I just learned to let go of some things.  I still like to get a general idea of most of the major topics in my development world, but I've focused my studying on smaller areas and going deeper.  No guilt, no stress, and better learning.

For 2008:

1. Get more active in the developer community

I see this as an extension of my open source lesson from 2007.  I can only see advantages of getting more active, learning to know new people, sharing ideas, and working together.  I guess we'll see how I do this, but I think it will be a combination of live events, participation on community sites, and blogging.  I'm already registered for the January Philly Code Camp and Mix 08.  If you're going to either of these, introduce yourself.

2. Prioritize my time better

This will be a daily challenge for me.  I think I made some good strides in this area in the past year, but I want more.  I know my priorities in life.  However, it is easy to get off track and waste time on something that I really don't need, care about, or even enjoy.  I've already started to plan better over the past few weeks and hope to continue to do so.  I need to come up with better ways to take advantage of small pockets of time that I come across as well.

3. Reach outside

Sometimes you just need to add something different in the mix to see how it works.  I've started to read a few blogs that our outside of the development areas I work in.  I hope to find a few more gems over the coming year.  I don't want to study these things in depth, but just get a little insight into what others are learning, enjoying, and interested in.

Landon Xavier Nyveldt joined the family this past Friday morning.  We had a scheduled C-section so while he wasn't a surprise, the "he" part was.  (We elected to not know the gender beforehand.)  Landon was born at 10:39am weighing 8 lbs even and measuring in at 19 and 1/2 inches long.

Shelah, Landon, and I spent just over 2 days at the hospital.  It was a time of sleep, rest and more sleep for Shelah and Landon.  Dad got plenty of rest too mixed in with trying to be helpful and catching up on some reading.

Shelah and baby are doing fine and just got home from the hospital yesterday afternoon.  In the evening, the rest of the Nyveldt clan (Betsy - age 5, Jack - age 4, and Bria - age 2) came home and the party has begun.  The kids seem very please with their little brother.

I'll be spending the week at home helping out and enjoying some quality family time.  With Shelah recovering from the operation, I imagine I'll be plenty busy.

I've posted more pictures over on our family web site for friends and family.  The private galleries were these pictures are require a password however.  (Friends/Family who read this and need the password, should email or call me for it.)

With many apologies to Eric Sink, I'm finally getting around to paying up for my sourcegear shirt tonight.  Many moons ago, Eric offered sourcegear t-shirts for the simple price of posting a picture wearing the shirt.  I figured it would be easy, but alas, I never got around to holding up my end of the deal.

A recent hard drive crash has me looking at backed up pictures and I noticed a few included me and the shirt.  This jogged my memory and had me search through my file for the note that came with the shirt and the details of my end of the deal.

So here are some pictures with the shirt for your viewing pleasure along with my calves who were born in October.

Note: the pictures aren't likely exactly what Eric and his team were looking for, but they will hopefully give a smile and even us up none the less.  The calves (Flower and Woof) seemed to enjoy tasting the shirt after there evening meal.

Our family went to Lake Tobias today.  It is a small safari/zoo and was a great place to take the kids.  We had a great time.

While there, we saw a pen of Alligators.  I was enjoying watching them when I noticed this awesome sign along the back of the pen.

In case you can't read it, it says "Those who throw objects at the Alligators will be asked to retrieve them."

Well, it is the week of one of the big conferences of the year and I'm conferencing!  However, while the developer world I'm most interested in is at Mix 07, I'm at a different conference in Orlando. 

While I'd guess the average person would be thrilled to be in Orlando for the week, I'm not average. As a matter of fact, I was doing a little BlogEngine.NET work this evening instead of more typical conference activities and I began thinking about the late afternoon session I attended at the conference.  The question which came from the audience in the session rings in my head, "is it reusable?"

The session was on using Crystal Reports with this companies product.  Yes, that is right, while others are hearing about DLR, Silverlight, and other cool things, I'm learning hearing about Crystal Reports....  (Breath in... Breath out.... It's ok.  Stay positive.)

Where was I?  Oh yeah, the presenter had just finished talking about the crystal function to add a SQL command (basically putting a SQL statement in a textbox to be sent to the server for processing ) instead of the using the standard Crystal UI of selecting tables, linking tables, etc.

After the presenter finished telling us about this and making a command (by copying and pasting the SQL generated by Crystal by the way), someone asked about the newly created command, "is it reusable?"

The response left me stunned on many levels.  He said matter of factly, "Yes."  He quickly expanded his answer by saying that you could copy and paste the SQL text to a new command in a new report.  He went on to recommend pasting it into Word or Notepad and saving it there for future reuse. I'm not going to focus on the reasons why this didn't sit well.  I'll simply say this was the loosest definition of code reuse I'd come across to date.

I'm not saying I've never copy and pasted code, I'm just saying I would never have thought to describe that as reusable code.  I could go so far as to say duplication is not reuse, but that is not the point of this entry. The point of this entry is to brighten my spirits and you, the reader, are just along for the ride. 

With this new definition on my mind, I could think of anything that I could get to the clipboard as reusable. As of now, I've decided that in order to stay positive the rest of the conference, whenever things aren't going as I'd hoped, I'm going to remind myself that every piece of code I've ever written is completely reusable while I'm at this conference.  I almost feel like a better developer already.  I'm just wishing I brought some of my old FilePro code..