New Year, New Resolutions

Happy New Year!

This whole "new year" thing is really interesting. I know it is really just an arbitrary milestone based on the rotation of a single planet around some star on the outskirts of one of the many galaxies. And yet I still can't help but feel a sense of renewal. What can I say? I'm a human being and we're a bit odd sometimes.

So far 2008 looks to be one heck of a year. I'm expecting my 3rd child (and 2nd son) in April, I've got two products about to go into beta (more on them in the coming months), and a bunch of challenging new projects to architect involving everything from data centers to multi-language telephony. I'm very excited.

I've also got a few new years resolutions:

• Switch for black coffee. We're talking the difference between 150 calories and 15 here. At the rate I drink coffee I can afford an extra helping of Pad Thai on what I'll save!
  
• Spend more time at home. I am notoriously bad at using my vacation time. I get wrapped up in projects and free time feels anything but free. For the last two weeks I've been home in order to use up my vacation time (how bad am I? I still have over a week to roll over). This year I'm going to use all my vacation time and maybe even work from home once and a while so I can save the two hours a day I commute. In the end I love my family and I'd rather they not forget what I look like.
  
• Learn LINQ / Entity Framework. I've played with both an really love what LINQ brings to the table. I'm not so sold on the the Entity Framework but that I've never been a real ORM guy. I'm using WCF in one of my projects and plan to use LINQ in it as well.
  
• Learn Ruby. Last year I spent some time picking up Python. This will fill my one language per year quota. Python is nice but I quickly figured our I'm a "bracket" guy. Although I do I have to say I found some serious problems with Python (and dynamic languages in general) that leave me still leaning towards compiled languages. I'll have to post my experiences and see what the community has to say - maybe the issues I've have can be mitigated (I hope so, I really like some aspects of dynamic languages).
  

So there you go. I've now publicly posted my resolutions so I might just feel a bit more obligated to keep them this year. I wouldn't hold my breath. :)

[update: fixed typo]