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December 2016 Goals

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December 19th seems a bit late to write about December’s goals, huh?

Nonetheless, I’ve had some, and I will still have them through the end of the month.

I did post a review of November a few days ago. This should really be rolled into that. A “monthly review/going forward” evaluation makes way more sense than splitting it into two pieces.

See? There’s value to these reviews. I’m streamlining my own workflow. :)

My goals for December are mostly an extension of my goals last month. November review here

  • Deepen knowledge of front-end development*

  • Rehab my wrist effectively

  • Read seven more books (goal for the year is 80. It’ll be a stretch…)

1. Deepen Knowledge of front-end development #

  • wrong terminology. I mean front-end because “back end” in my mind is WAAAY in the back-end, like you .NET and C++ guys doing things where you never touch an interface or create a button. I’ll technically be a back-end developer by mid-2017, but I’ll be comfortable in HTML/CSS/JS and all those traditional front-end parts of the internet.

Also, I’ve been working on general comfort around simple networking and my command line. I’m learning along through Vimtutor (open your terminal if you’re on a Mac, type in “vimtutor” to see what it is.) Also, I’m writing this post using Vim. Admittedly, free-form typing in Vim is just the same as any other text editor, but moving around without the mouse and between modes takes some getting used to.

I’ve been inspired on Vim by OverTheWire.org. Vim goes hand-in-hand with regular (or heavy) command line usage, and I want to get more fluid in the command line. I’m motivated by small, incremental challenges, so their “Bandit” wargame is perfect. I’m on level 15 right now, to continue right after posting this.

I’ve gotten stuck twice, and you can google around to find good hints easily enough. Don’t just blindly type in commands, though. Understand them.

Oh, I finished up all the Turing school pre-work, and am taking a short spin through non-Ruby/Rails topics for fun. I’ll dig back into building things shortly.

2. Rehab my wrist safely/effectively #

I injured my wrist five weeks ago. It was minor, but for a few days I was pretty out of commission on some key every-day-things. (Grinding coffee was a bit of a challenge.)

I’ve been able to climb again. For two weeks, I climbed exclusively easy problems, and over time am slowly stepping up the difficulty. I can climb hard-ish routes again without pain, but I don’t feel safe trying hard or moving dynamically. But still, it feels good. I’m out of town through January 3rd, and have just my portable hangboard with me. So, I’ll use that, and hopefully be 100% by the time I get back to Colorado.

3. Finish seven more books this month #

I’m almost done with two books, and that will put me at 75 books for the year. I’ve got two or three more short-ish ones on deck (~150 pages) and if I can knock those out quickly, I’ll be close to reading 80 books for the year. 80 is a nice, round number, so I’d like to do it.

Later this month I’ll highlight the most dangerous books I’ve read in the last year. Could be interesting.

That’s it. It’s been odd writing this post in vim. So far, I don’t really like the experience. I guess I feel more at home in Atom. Also, Atom has markdown specific syntax highlighting, spell check, and even checks for “weak” words (like “really”). I’ll pop this text in there and do any last edits in Atom. Then it’s off to the internet with these words.

:wq