What kind of blogger would I be if I didn't do a recap of the year?  Well I guess since I've never done this before, not a very good one.  2008 was a phenomenal year.

Me

I started out the year doing my ASP.NET MVC Tour of Texas, where I visited San Antonio, Austin, Fort Worth, and Houston talking about ASP.NET MVC.  It must have gotten some notice, because shortly after I was invited to be a co-author for ASP.NET MVC in Action.  The book is getting close to being completed, so expect to see it on store shelves in the coming months.

In April, I attended the 2nd ALT.NET gathering, which inspirational and eye-opening (Day1, Day2, Day2.2, Day3).

In May I became an ASP Insider.  This has been the very best way to give my feedback to Microsoft about upcoming releases.  Also in May I started holding semi-regular Houston ALT.NET Geek Dinners.

In September, the nasty hurricane Ike rolled through Houston, luckily we made it through with little damage.  Others were not as fortunate.

In October I was given the Microsoft MVP Award for ASP.NET.  I'm looking forward to going to the summit next March & meeting other MVPs from around the world.

I attended KaizenConf in November, which was really great.  Every time I go to one of these conferences I feel energized to go out and do good in the world.  It sounds cheesy, but it's really great.  I hope that others find their way out of the mainstream marketing jungle of conferences and attend one of these open spaces.

In December, my wife and I found out that we are having twins!  For those counting, we'll now have a full basketball team :).  Needless to say 2009 will be a busy year.

The blog

This blog has gone under some transition too.  Originally I was using dasBlog hosted at WebHost4Life and things worked pretty well.  I wanted to have some more control over what I could do with my server, so I ordered a VPS plan with VPS Land.  That turned out to be a big mistake. 

I quickly moved over to a VPS over at GoDaddy which worked out okay for most of the year.  It turns out their domain service is better than their hosting service.  My blog kept making it run out of memory, so I moved my blog over to Orcsweb.  I also ported the content over to Graffiti, and so far it has been smooth sailing ever since.  I still host my wife's and sister's blogs on GoDaddy, as well as my uncle's furniture business.

What's in store for 2009?

I have a few goals for 2009 that I'd like to publicly share, if for no other reason than to really commit to it.  I'd like to wrap up the book.  It is time consuming like you wouldn't believe, and I'll be glad when it's over. 

I'd also like to read more.  It seems that I only read 6 or 7 books in 2008, and that's pathetic.  At the rate that my book list is growing, I'll never read all that I want.  So far 99% of the books on my list are about software development, and I'd like to change that.  I'm starting to get interested in other things, like GTD, organization, fiction...  I need to broaden my horizons.

I'd like to do another long series of posts, similar to my Journey with NHibernate series.  It still remains my all time most popular set of posts, and now the material is a little dated.  I've learned a lot since then.  I'm definitely open to ideas.

I'm also going to get back into guitar.  In 2008 I really didn't play more than once a month, and it shows.  My fingers are soft, I've forgotten how to play many songs, and I've definitely lost my technique for fingering.  It's all chords now.  I'm looking at purchasing a new electric guitar to help give me the nudge.

Lastly, I would like to do another speaking tour, only this time I'm not sure what topic.  It was a ton of fun, and maybe this time I can get a sponsor to help me visit more cities.

So long 2008, you were great.