Steve Smith's Blog

Musings on Software and the Developer Community

Goals for 2010

I recently wrote about how I did with my 2009 goals, now it’s time to set a few for this year.  Let’s start with two that didn’t go so well for me last year:

1. Get In Shape.  By the end of 2010 I will be under 200 pounds.  I will have achieved my Brown Belt in karate.  I will have biked 100 miles.  (I have a Wii Fit Plus now, so I’m sure I’ll also get better at many of the games on the system).

2. Blogging.  This year my goal won’t be for post quantity.  Rather, I want to increase my readership.  By the end of 2010, I will double my readership (RSS) from about 1250 now to 2500.  I will double December 2009’s 14,499 pageviews in December 2010 (note, 8,231 views in December 2008).

And one more:

3. Give Blood.  I will give blood to the Red Cross four times in 2010.  You can only donate blood every 56 days in the US, and you also shouldn’t give blood if you’ve recently been sick or medicated, which further limits the window.  The theoretical maximum one could donate within 365 days would be 7 (6.5 but if you time it right you could fit 7 times in one year).  I only gave blood once in 2009 but I think four should be attainable this year if I get started soon.

I’d like to continue to be active in my local community and to focus my blogging and speaking efforts on software craftsmanship, which I think is an important concept that many developers overlook or simply don’t care about.  I’ll continue to build up our local software craftsmanship group, which is one of the only ones in the country (I only know of one other, in Chicago), and perhaps I will make it to an SC conference this year.

    kick it on DotNetKicks.com

Monday, 18 January 2010

Comments

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James Bender said on 18 Jan 2010 at 4:29 PM

Giving blood is a very noble persuit, and if you are someone who is comfortable with the process (I would NOT do this the first time you donate!) a great option is to make an platelet apheresis donation.

These take a bit longer (about 90 minutes) but you can make up to 24 donations a year. Platelets are desperatly needed for patients going through Chemotherapy, burn treatment or have had organ dontations.

www.redcrossblood.org/.../platelet-donati


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Oleg said on 11 Feb 2010 at 5:03 PM

> I want to increase my readership

Think about updating your blog design ;)


ssmith avatar

ssmith said on 12 Feb 2010 at 12:25 PM

@Oleg,

Any particular constructive comments to make about the blog design? Also, I expect most feedburner readers are reading the blog in Google Reader, so they don't much care what the layout/style/colors of this actual site are, most of the time.


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Peter Maxil said on 13 Feb 2010 at 1:41 AM

Good luck on your goals! Getting in shape is suely not easy, but it is well worth it! As for giving blood, this is very generous of you.

Oh, BTW, the design is fine. :-)


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