Recap of 2009

This was originally posted on blogger here.

This has been an interesting year. Incredible life changes have meant I've gone between screaming excitement to the doldrums of depression.

The good:

• Made an amazing number of new friends this year. In alphabetical order I can think of Alex, Barbara, Brian, Chris, Eric, Jacob, James, Jannis, Jeff, Jesse, Mike, Niall, Rich, Shawn, Steve, Zain and others I'm certainly forgetting to my undying shame. Thanks for your support and also thanks for opening my eyes to what the world can be really like!

• I went to the West Coast for the first time! In California I visited friends in San Francisco, Palo Alto, and San Jose. In Oregon I visited Portland. The fun and food was amazing. California was vacation, Oregon was work.

• Got involved in the Python, Django, and Pinax communities, reviewed talks for Pycon, became a Pinax core developer, started up NOVA-Django, started up the still nascent Django Education Foundation.

• Worked another year in Python related technologies.

• Tested for my third degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. Worked my Muay Thai. Got better at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Learned a little Capoeria.

• Almost up to 6 years without a broken bone!!!

• Stayed with NASA, for five years total now. Saw good people hired like Chris Adams and Tom Rando. My team set up a collaboration space. Launched a big internal Pinax powered application called SMD Spacebook and am helping on a major outreach application.

• Began my new side consulting efforts which will be mostly educational based. I like teaching anything, from martial arts to technology! Worked on a course for Holdenweb, and am teaching a long tutorial at Pycon!

• Reconnected with some old High School and Middle School friends. Am able to give one of them some business.

• My son turned 18.

• Grew a goatee.

• Kept teaching martial arts.

• Got a new road bike.

The bad:

• My marriage of 12+ years fell apart. I've lived in a lot of places since, but none of them my own.

• Participated in a well done project that lost out to a mediocre project that won because of resource attrition and refusal of customer to effectively market the effort.

• Didn't push hard enough to prep my house for sale until December. Going into more debt to finance the work.

• Didn't really practice much Eskrima all year.

• Lost a cat named Ao-Chan to kidney disease on Obama's Inauguration day. She was an aloof, regal, agile beauty who deigned to give us lots of love and affection.