With being 18 days into 2018, I feel like I have had a pretty strong start. One of my big goals for 2018 (outside of continuing to learn) is getting out of my comfort zone. So we started 2018 with a bang.

  1. Enrolling In School - My enrollment at Arizona State University is finalized and starting in Spring B semester (March 2018) I’ll begin working toward a Bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering. Some of my advisors thought it was a little weird that I was enrolling in an undergrad program since I already have both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree, but for me it’s all about learning new skills. I’ve also had folks be confused since I’m currently an IT director.

    Here’s the deal. I like to build stuff. Full stop. And I believe I’m good at it and that’s where I bring value. This is an exploration of whether this is a route I want to move down long term. We shall see.

  2. Hack Arizona 2018 - I made a last minute decision on January 10 to head down to the University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ to participate in Hack Arizona 2018 on January 12. Honestly, this was so far outside my comfort zone. On Friday night I was questioning why I was even there.

    By the end of the event, though, I was all-in. I had a great time with the team that we had (I traveled down with 2 guys from the FreeCodeCamp community in Phoenix and we met another guy there from the same community). We were able to produce a web project that we are potentially going to continue refining to flesh out and make even better. I don’t regret this decision one bit, and I look forward to the next hackathon I can attend.

  3. 100 Days Of Code - I’ve finally committed to the 100 Days Of Code challenge (read more here), though I am altering it just a little bit to include my learning time as part of my 1 hour per day. I originally anticipated starting this on January 1, but with some of the health issues I had in the last 2 months of 2017, it just didn’t work. Instead, I started it yesterday, January 16, 2018. I won’t be blogging every day as part of it, but I plan on posting progress/daily on Twitter, so you can follow me over there.