Chris Griego

Thank you iPhone buzz

I originally gave up on this goal 10 months ago. This past month I’ve set to not just reorganizing, but rebuilding it from scratch, mirroring the setup I’ve got at my job now, which embraces my laptop gypsy ways.

You can join too. See http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1173385976&count=1

Thanks to AllConsuming (and a lot of help from their Netflix integration), I tracked over 60 movies that I watched during 2006.

The patent system is broken. Not sure I’d want to do this even if I could.

My brother pulled it off for me, as an early birthday gift. We saw their Mega Rock Star 2.0 concert in Dallas.

Getting a college degree was one of my very first 43 Things. Unfortunately it’s taken me up until one week before completing a degree to come to the conclusion that I really have no desire for a degree, so just in the nick of time, I’m giving it up.

Most people will think I’m absolutely crazy. One week of work away from completing an Associate’s of Applied Science and I’m just going to walk away from it. I honestly wish it was that simple. I also wish that I’ll always have the courage to back out of something I find isn’t right for me at the zero hour.

Before graduating from high school, I went on a crusade to find a college where I felt I could learn something I wanted to. The last thing I wanted to do was attend a college to earn a degree in something I already knew, or even worse to be taught subjects I was not interested in. So me, as a computer geek, went to design school. I faced a lot of challenges early on (try passing drawing classes with zero freeform hand skills), but I managed through these without many issues.

However, at this point I’ve spent roughly the past year repeating the same classes over and over. Did the design curriculum get harder? Did the classes become irrelevant? Nope. It was also never about time, learning, or abilities. My problem was that I had stopped learning, and that was always what was most important to me. It was never about the degree, so I refuse to force myself any further for something I never truly wanted.

I appreciate the support I’ve received over the past few years from faculty, friends, and family alike. I’m sure some of them will feel bad for me that I won’t be graduating, but I hope they’ll understand I’ve already succeeded in getting what I wanted out of the experience and freeing myself, physically and mentally, to move on to new experiences is what’s best.

I spent tonight putting together an initial version of a JSDoc TextMate bundle. The easier something is to do, the more likely you are to do it. So now adding JSDoc comments are easier for me to add, so now to see how I take to implementing them…

There’s more value overall in me building out my officehood in the West End

I’ve been looking at Natural Docs as an alternative to the traditional JavaDoc-based solutions. It’s appealing that it’s an identical syntax and parser for various languages. After a close look though, I don’t think it’s for me. Because of its nature, it’s a little too freeform for me.

Maybe if I were already experienced at documenting code, then I’d be more comfortable with the overwhelming flexibility, but until then I’m going to focus on JSDoc and maybe the new ASDoc by building TextMate bundles.

I’m just not into black, or pink…

This is a goal you can’t accomplish, I’ve chosen to pick more specific goals for testing, automation, and documentation such as:

• Learn to use Selenium for unit testing
• learn rake
• Properly document my source code

Too many of my goals build on one another and are too distant in their nature. I’ve purged before and I’m purging again so I can focus efforts on things I need to actually accomplish instead of feeling guilty over a list I’m not, and cannot, do anything about yet.

I give up! I don’t ever use it anymore so it’s not a priority.

I’ve decided that this isn’t going to happen until I have a cameraphone, and since getting one isn’t a priority, I’m giving up on this for now.

I’ve had Life Balance picked out for awhile as my tracking tool of choice for projects and next actions. I’m one step closer, since I’ve bought and installed both the Mac and Palm versions. I just have to work it into the daily routine now…

Due in part to a small cash emergency, I was recently able to discover the exact cost I incur when I drive to work per day: $13.00. That’s $8 for gas and $5 for parking. If you assume 4 full work weeks, 20 days, that’s $260 a month. Now I haven’t gotten rid of 100% of the gas cost obviously, but $40/month for a public transit pass saves me a serious bundle on parking alone ($100) before considering the gas.

Also, I get that hour to and from back for reading or resting my eyes. By far a win.

I still haven’t been able to convert all my feeds over to FeedLounge, but I am exclusively adding new feeds to FeedLounge and I have fully embraced its way of doing things and upgraded to an annual subscription. Goal complete.

I wrote my first entry about this goal Jan 2, 2005 (remember 43 Things isn’t much older), and it was one of the first goals I added to my list of 43 Things. Now, thanks to Digital Web Magazine I’m going to realize my goal!

I’ve created a few lenses by now, but the one that has done really well is the The Essential Web Developer Bookshelf lens. It is ranked 243 at the moment and was even featured in SquidU and on the SquidBlog.

• Alternatives to Internet Explorer
• Chris Griego (About me)
• N.A.D.D. Nerd Attention Deficiency Disorder