Wow, it’s the new year already. A time for everyone to make new years resolutions to make promises that they’ll not keep. This year I’ve decided to actually make a few resolutions for myself, even though I usually don’t make new years resolutions. I’ve put a lot of thought into these and decided to not make the same resolutions that everyone else does about eating better and getting more exercise, as evident by the sudden influx of people at the gym these past few days, I’ve already resolved to doing that a long time ago and don’t need a special occasion to give me an excuse. Rather I’ve made a couple of hopefully attainable goals for myself in this new year.
Finish Idle Projects
Over the past few years, I’ve started several projects that have never seen completion. The trim in the bedrooms that has yet to be finished. The drywall in the basement utility room from when we discovered that the previous owners of our house had tried to make a closet for the play room, and ended up walling in one of the basement windows. The drywall patching in the bathroom where we discovered a gaping hole that the previous owners didn’t bother closing up, but rather hid behind the hideous giant mirror. The book that I’m writing for Manning, granted this one has not sat idle like the other ones, but still needs to be finished. Finally the cedar strip kayak that is about 90% finished and has been hanging from the ceiling of my garage for the past few years. The kayak may be difficult to achieve this year as it is wholly dependent on how busy I am this summer as it needs to be fiberglassed, and the epoxy needs to cure at 60°F for like 12 hours, so I’m hopeful, but as long as I finish the other goals I’ll be happy.
Rediscover the joys of social gaming
A couple of years ago several of us used to have regular gaming nights where we would get together and game. At the time it was HorrorClix, which as most collectible games do put a huge strain on my wallet. So eventually the gaming tapered off and we quit getting together. Last summer my sister in-law got my wife hooked on Settlers of Catan, who in turn got me hooked on Settlers. I had forgotten how much fun a simple strategy board game could be, so I’ve resolved to breathing some life into the gaming nights that we used to host regularly, but this time we’ve decided to keep it simple (and hopefully cheaper) by playing non-collectible games such as Settlers or Axis and Allies, which are just as fun if not more fun.
Keeping it Simple
Lastly I’m resolving to keep things simple this year. I’ve been reading Bob Martin’s Clean Code and it’s inspired me to work on improving my code quality this year, which really distills down to keeping your code simple, concise and readable. Sometimes I forget that attaining that level of simplicity, is not simple at all. It takes a skilled craftsman to take something as complicated as software development and make the resulting code appear to be simple. I think Leonardo da Vinci said it best with “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” So over the next year, I will be striving to keep things as simple as possible.
