2007 in a Nutshell
I know these will probably follow in short order from most of the friends I've gained this past year, so I figured I'd follow suit for the sake of posterity and do an annual recount of the past year's experiences. So, here goes.
First off, I started this blog! The time had come to establish a more permanent residence for myself in the blogosphere. Being known for my inherent laziness, I'm glad I'm finally got off my laurels and saw the effort through.
I turned 25 in March, and hopefully am a little wiser for the wear as well as being a little older. I celebrated my fourth wedding anniversary, and it still doesn't cease to amaze me how long it's been. My children are now 4, 2, and 1; it's the only time in their life when they'll have ages that are consecutive powers of 2, which I think is pretty cool! We got to celebrate our first Thanksgiving and Christmas together in our home, which we hadn't been able to do last year. It's been just over a year since we bought the house.
I switched jobs once, which ended up not working out. Thankfully my former (and now current) employer was gracious enough to take me back. Despite the commute subtracting significantly from the time I have in a day, circumstances make it seem that it's where I'm meant to be for the time being.
I got elected to position of Vice President on the Baton Rouge Oracle User Group Board of Officers for 2008, which now has a presence on Facebook by my suggestion. I also got to attend the first meeting of the Lafayette .NET User Group, the first such organization to appear in Lafayette in several years.
I attended my first conference and got to meet many of my friends from the PHP Community, as well as make some new ones. While there, I tested for and received my ZCE certification. I published my first podcast and later my first professional magazine article. Toward the end of the year, I received my first request to review a book for a publishing company, which should come out shortly. I also submitted my second Zend Framework proposal and had it approved for incubator status.
And last, but certainly not least, I made it up to being able to hold my own on Hard in Guitar Hero II and III. Had to get that one in somewhere!
I have a number of aspirations for the coming new year. I don't know that I can accomplish even a fraction of them, but I certainly plan on trying. If nothing else, the list will give me something to look back on and continue to strive for. Here are the ones I can think of off the top of my head at the moment.
- Serve well in my duties as Vice President of BROUG and help to revitalize the organization.
- Catch up on reading the backlog of books I've been building up, including Sara Golemon's Extending and Embedding PHP which I recently received as a Christmas gift.
- Submit one or more papers to one or more conferences (and hopefully get accepted to speak at one or, that notwithstanding, at least get to attend one).
- Have additional magazine articles and podcasts published.
- Begin seriously looking at getting a book published.
- Get Zend_Service_RememberTheMilk into the Zend Framework core.
- Examine the possibility of migrating this blog to Habari.
- Start a project to do for content management what Magento did for e-commerce this past year.
- Restart an old project to establish a web site for the local music scene here in the Lafayette area.
So, wish me luck! Happy New Year!
Plug for Hosting
I currently get DNS and web hosting for my blog from my good friend Graham Christensen. He's in the process of collecting customer testimonials to put on his site and I agreed to contribute one. I also thought I'd give him a plug on my blog.
The infrequency of issues with my hosting, his excellent availability when I do need an issue addressed, and the flexibility in his pricing in regards to what my needs are have made him an excellent provider for getting my blog live. I highly recommend that you check him out if you're considering hosting a site.
Bidding Farewell to the Cardboard Crack
Those of you who know me well probably know that I had an unfortunate case of serendipity recently. I spend approximately three to four hours each weekday commuting for my job. The interstate, of course, is not the safest place in the world to drive. A few weeks ago, a tire tread came off of a truck with me behind it. I didn't have enough time to avoid the tread before running over it, causing one end to snap back and do about $1,600 worth of damage to the body.
It's not enough to render the car unfit for the road, but it is enough to prevent it from passing inspection, which became overdue as of the first of this month. As someone who's been ticketed for that offense once in the past, I can say it's not a cheap ticket. The car has also been hurting for an oil change, alignment, and new set of tires, which all got done this past weekend and will make for a very tight budget between now and next payday.
So, it appears that my attempts at saving for ZendCon will be going toward car repairs instead. Additionally, since I haven't really been doing much with them anyway, I'm selling my Magic: The Gathering card collection off on eBay. In order to optimize their chances at selling, I'm auctioning off the rares, uncommons, and commons/lands in separate auctions. If you enjoy the game and would like to give me a hand through this difficult period, please place a bid.
Also, you might have noticed that there's a new wishlist section in my navigation. It's configured to credit my Amazon Associate account for any purchases made by following the link in that section. If you're planning on buying anything you happen to see in that section anyway, please consider doing so from my blog. As they say, every little bit helps...
And now back to your regularly scheduled programming...
Now on Ohloh
I finally got around to getting an Ohloh profile and setting it up to reflect my work on the Zend Framework and Forkr. Hopefully my list of work will grow as time goes on.
I'm here!
The title of this post is a bit of an obvious way to make the statement, but it's the whole reason for the post, so there you go. No, I didn't drop off the face of the earth, I just got busy with graduating, getting a job, moving into a house, having a new baby arrive, and not wanting to deal with the issues I was having with the homegrown blog. After a great deal of looking around, I finally settled on Wordpress. Here's to hoping it grows with me a bit better.
For those of you who might be attending, I do plan on making it out to ZendCon this year. It will be my first time in California, my first time going to a conference, and the closest thing I've had to a real vacation in quite a while, so it should be quite a treat. I'm looking forward to meeting a number of familiar names from the #phpc channel on Freenode, learning more about PHP, and hopefully having too much to drink somewhere in there.
I've come across a number of interesting things to post since I've been "gone" and it will likely take me some time to catch up on them, so just bear with me. Hopefully this blog won't be suffering from lack of activity anytime soon. I have decided to attempt to take up writing (not of the code variety) again and I may from time to time post related material on this blog. I'm also toying with the idea of starting a podcast, though I don't know on what topic or when I'd find the time to record it.
I guess we'll see what happens...