newguy

I have just cut the number of goals I have listed on 43things from 23 to just 8. Each time I logged into my page, I felt overwhelmed. I just had too many long term goals and I just felt I wasn’t achieving anything. It was really difficult deciding on what goals were REALLY important to me.

To make my life easier, I’m going to set myself a number of rules for using 43things:-

Rule 1: I can only have a maximum of five long term goals
Rule 2: I can only have a maximum of five medium term goals. These are goals that I should be able to achieve in a 1-2 year time frame.
Rule 3: you got… I can only have five short term goals, e.g. take my car for a service.
Rule 4: Under no circumstances should I press the “I want to do this” button when viewing other people’s goal.
Rule 5: 43thing is here to help me. Don’t adopt a goal because it looks good, do it because I WANT TO DO.

Last Friday, I had a really horrible day at work. I just couldn’t wait for it to be over. I’ve had a very difficult relationship with one of my office suppliers for some time. Basically, he and his company haven’t provided a very reliable service. It all boiled over on Friday. He told me exactly what he thought of me and told me to take my business somewhere else. I don’t really care what he thinks of me but I do care about what my boss thinks. I felt very stressed after my telephone call with the supplier. I did manage to speak to my boss and to be honest he was OK about things but yet I still kept replaying the telephone conversation in my mind. I felt so bad.

My job is to get the best possible deal for my company. I have great relationships with all of my other suppliers. I made a mistake taking this company on in the first place and I should be glad to be able to get out of our contract with them. They have not lived up to their many promises.

I should not care what anybody thinks of me. I need to believe in myself more.

I’ve been using rails since October 2005. I now feel I’ve got a really good understanding of the underlying principles. It is time to move up to the next level.

• The rails community is fantastic. If you have a smart question you will get an answer on the mailing list.
• TextMate for the Mac, is the coolest editor I have ever used. I really don’t want to use Eclipse again!
• Plugins are cool. My favourites are Textmate Backtracer,
  EZ Where, Asset Timestamping Plugin and Bundled Resource Plugin.
• DHH has strong opinions and I actually agree with most of them. Structure is good, makes life easier.
• Dave Thomas has written a great book that all coders should own.
• Chad Fowler’s Rails Recipes is looking as it could be very very good.
• Rails can be a pain in the arse to setup unless of course you use Locomotive.
• Rimuhosting has excellent people. If you have a problem, they will sort it.
• Ezra Zygmuntowicz is a top bloke and I’m going to be first in line to buy his Rails book when its released!

Rails is fun and I’m enjoying coding again. Hopefully I can avoid Java for a long time.

The next level should be good.