1 year, 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days, 8,760 hours, 525,600 minutes, 31,536,000 seconds and for once, I am happy with the way I spent them. Most years I look back and think “I should have done better” but not this year. Satisfaction with everything is easier to attain when the bar is not perfection.
For me perfection was debilitating and would keep me from finishing, or worse, starting projects. My bright ideas were perfect until they were brought into the light. That’s usually when my drive to finish a project would wain or completely fail me. So to help me avoid my need for perfection, I made sure that I produce something. Even if it was a total pile.
Produce I did.
Professional Accomplishments
www.PrintToPress.com
Is a vanity book printing website that takes PDF files and produces perfect bound books. These are the books that you find in the bookstore but better quality. Nice million color glossy front covers thanks to my c# skills and a mess of 2D drawing math. This project is not perfect but we have produced over 13K books in just a short 9 months. Profitable it’s not but fills a need in the publishing industry, and it does it well.
www.Foojal.com
Foojal was a food photo journaling application that allowed people with camera phones to take pictures of their food to track how and what they ate. The site is no longer up but the code for the whole site has been open sourced and placed under my Github account for all to see and use. The site was a challenge because I coded it in Python using WSGI stack on Google Appengine. It was a wonderful learning experience and it’s not perfect.
Wells Fargo and NRT
I have a dirty little secret, I love Microsoft WCF. I don’t know what it is but I love connected systems. Most of my employers know this secret and Wells put me to work writing a cross platform web service for their PeoleSoft HR data. The best part was getting an email that the Mainframe can connect and successfully use the service. Yes the Mainframe!
Personal Accomplishments
Motorcycle
For as long as I can remember I have wanted to ride, so this year I did it. I have taken and passed the Riders Edge course put on by my local Harley Davidson motorcycle dealer and I am the proud owner of a new Honda Phantom. I love riding and in Arizona I have plenty of days to ride it. Even in the winter.
Concealed Carry
My uncle used to take me to the range near where we lived. The only problem was I was a better shot than he was. I guess it’s hard on a man when a 13 year old can shoot repeatedly through a bullseye at 30 feet and he can’t. I tell people that duck hunt was my teacher. One of the nice things about living in Arizona is all of the freedoms a citizen in good standing has. One of them being the right to carry and bear arms. So after some lengthy training I now have my concealed carry permit. I love putting little holes through paper at 30 feet. No, I do not carry all the time, especially not at work.
Well that’s enough tootin my own horn. 2011 was a great year and 2012 is shaping up to be very productive albeit not a perfect year.