What are you doing to better yourself with your programming skills?  Here's an update of my progress.

Here is a semi-annual (sort of semi-annual LOL) update on my goals for this year.

Done?	Goal (in no particular order)	Notes
	1. Learn about unit testing with Visual Studio and use at work	The only progress I've done on this one is install NUnit and start looking at how things are done.  Unfortunately I haven't started using it at work yet.  I hope to start doing this more at home, then at work in the following months ahead.
APR	2. Participate in the Ottawa IT Days 2010.  I want to help organize and present.	This one I can say I did and HAD A BLAST!  Working with guys like Colin, Sylvain and Louis-Philippe on the Silverlight track, and presenting my WP7 app was a blast!  It was incredible and I really look forward to next year!
	3. Participate in a local WPF/SL workshop (ala Samedi.NET in MTL).	I'm afraid this one will be dropping off my list.  Reasons?  Too much work for me to organize something like this, especially when I put so much value on the Ottawa Code Camp (aka Ottawa IT Day), very little time to put into creating material and most importantly, my increased focus on WP7 and Visual Studio 2010 this year.
	4. Participate in a WPF certification study group.	There was talk about doing a WPF study group this fall, but this was my initiative.  During the last study group, the masses expressed a desire to do a WCF study group.  This posses two problems for me, one, I haven't done any WCF, therefore creating a study group application just isn't in the cards for me, and technically that means I can't particpate ("everyone has to be equal" right?) and second my focus right now is on WPF/SL/WP7 and not WCF.  Ya, ya, those things will entail doing WCF, but at a high level, WCF is not my target skill-set I want to get.
	5. Complete two screen savers (with MSI, with WPF, and network connectivity).	Oh man, another one I should be doing, should be easy enough to do, but I just haven't done it.....YET!!!!!!!!  I DO plan on completing another SCR, although, maybe not two, but at least one.
	6. Present twice at ODNC.  Working ideas are WPF .net new to compare WPF with WinForms and ASP.NET, and VS 2010 from a developers perspective.	This is still in the cards, but for the ths ODNC season (2010-2011).  Work in progress here.
FEB	7. Help organize Web certification study group.	This I did do!  I did help out Charlie Wiebe setup the ODNC Web Study Group and the last time he told me, they had the largest number of people who've written the exam for one study group!  Kudos Charlie!
	8. Create APCM Archive Viewer in WPF at work.  Dev and demo.	Things have been busy at work, just on other higher priority projects than this one.  This is still on my radar as a project to help me learn WPF and to help other see it's potential.
	9. Create APCM RSS feed for work.	I did start work on this one.  Yup, even created a FogBugz enhancement about it, and started to get some dialog with a QA guy on it.  Sweet!  Ironically enough, I didn't realize logging in is the biggest challenge for this right now.
	10. Create Candidates utility for work (in WPF).	I'm thought about this one, everday we get an automated email telling us the next build number/version in fact.  I just haven't had the time to focus on this.
	11. Create blogs about these topics Federated Searches Creating RSS feeds Serialization Series Win7 Code pack Taskbars Folders Jump Lists	"Lighting up your app on Windows 7" is something I want to focus on in the next few weeks.  A lot of those topics are great candidates for simple console/winform applications to show how to do/use them.
	12. Become comfortable with WPF/SL/XAML/Blend.	Not yet.  Not sure why, but the whole "using Expression Blend" is a bit of a deterance.  No, not sure why, just a real observation I'm finding with myself and others around me.  Weird I know but there it is.
	13. Become a "goto guy" for VS 2010.	I have a loooong way to go on this, but I'm working on it.  I've done some blogs about the early betas, I've even posted some tips'n'tricks blogs, and there's more to come!  There's even talk about doing the Ottawa Visual Studio 2010 tips'n'tricks presentation.  If that happens, I will be walking on cloud nine!  I will be SOOOOO excited to talk about that!  I hope it comes across to the audience as well?!
	14. Reply to EVERY comment people make on my blog postings.	This one I'm proud of!  In fact, a few weeks back, I found a comment I thought I had overlooked and I felt HORRIBLE!  Thankfully, I was just misreading the screen and the comment was just a few days old!  PHEW!  Although my blog's not popular, I can live with that, I'm doing this to help people and I love it when people leave me comments telling me that (if they don't, that's cool too).  I'm very proud of the fact I've been able (so far at least LOL) to reply to each and every comment! The ONLY exception to this note is when I get spam.  Unfortunately I've had some and I purge them without reservation!  If I hate seeing those emails, I'm sure people visiting won't want to see them neither!
	15. Continue to focus on learning for this blog!	I have to admit, I've been a bit relaxed lately.  Something I have to work on.  Taking an honest look at myself, I would like to say it's the lack of the WP7 devices, but that woud be more of an excuse.  Life just gets busy, family takes (and should take) precedence.  As winter approaches, I'm hoping there's more time to learn at night, and more energy to pick it up and remember it all.
	16. Update my DNN to 5.0	Oh man, i tried, this one, I REALLY did try.  I did this back in Jan or Feb I think and it was TERRIBLE!!!!!!!!!!  Everything LOOKED like it worked until I went to add a new blog.  DOH!  That didn't work, and I wasn't the only one!  I do hope I'm able to update it soon though.
	17. Participate in the update of the ODNC website.	Although we haven't updated the official ODNC site yet, I have participated in creating a new "umbrella" site for the three Ottawa Microsoft focused user groups.  This is still in the works (prototype was widely accepted) and about to go live (I hope, we just need to get the DNS setup).
	18. Update my site to DNN 5.0	Please see 16.
	19. Update ODNC to DNN 5.0	Please see 18.
	20. Surround myself with positive people!	I've been lucky enough to be able to continue doing this!  Some important friends have drifted away, but that is just life.  I know they'll "drift" back in again in the future.  But just like some have drifted away, some really cool, smart, funny, intelligent people have come into my life and that's awesome!  More, MANY more opportunities to learn and share!

Ok, so that's where things stand now with me and my progress.  Obviously there's not too many things DONE this year so far.  Crap.  I have a lot of things to work on, BUT this is what having a check list like this is all about!  Next update, probably Christmas, hey, I have to have time to work on this stuff right?!  LOL

Now that this is done, it's time to grab a coffee and get coding!  I have a couple of VS tips'n'tricks blogs to whip up!

 

Resources

Jan 2010: What I plan to do this year to become a better coder!