Status: RESOLVED; Resolution: FUTURE.

01/05/2007

Yesterday, I talked a bit about my 2007 thus far.
Schrep and I were discussing New Years Resolutions yesterday, and he said he didn’t believe in New Years resolutions: “It’s never too early or too late to make a change in your life.”
I’d never thought about resolutions that way, but that’s a really good point.
As I mentioned, I’m more a fan of birthday resolutions; birthdays are like our own personal New Years and I tend to be more introspective about my life around my birthday anyway. New Years is mostly arbitrary timing in relation to our individual lives, so it’s never really done it for me.
I guess the New Years resolution thing is helpful because it throws the possibilities of change to make our lives better right in our faces. New Year does provide a bit of synchronicity since many are simultaneously thinking about changes in their past tense and what the future tense could, and should be.
Whatever you think of resolutions, I spent some time thinking about what mine might be:
Mozilla-related goals

  1. By year’s end, the automated release harness will be able to basically perform an entire release, in one1 step. Extra points if signing is automated as well.
  2. Create a clear separation between the gloop that we call “Tinderbox”, which actually is a mess of Tinderbox interface code (which we may not care about in the long term), our build harness (which we probably care a lot about, but needs some serious love), and the build system, which I hear is in line for some serious love.)
  3. Work on improving the way I personally communicate regarding build projects we’re working on that could make everyone’s lives better. This is something that’s only recently come up because we’ve been so bogged down, we haven’t been able to focus on changes that are sweeping enough to make a difference; that’s starting to change, and so changing the way we communicate these developments is important (more on that later this weekend…)
  4. Work with an eye and a nod towards more self-service services for developers; there are lots of things that we, as build engineers, need to track to ensure a successful release. That doesn’t mean we have to perform or even be involved in everything to track it. It does mean we need to create systems were people can work within a framework that works for them, but captures the information we need.
  5. Participate in, and hold, more postmortems, where it makes sense to have them.
  6. In numerous forums, I’ve heard the sentiment that more could be happening in certain contexts if we had more build/release resources (not to be confused with build/release people); I’d like to work with an eye towards making it so I don’t hear that as often. 2
  7. Become larger than #bs and crazycapsguy.3

Personal goals

  1. Stay off thedailywtf.com.4
  2. Get my instrument rating this year.5
  3. Move. I’m still in my just-out-of-college apartment, and… it feels like a just-out-of-college apartment.6
  4. Average one “notable” (defined as requiring-at-least-two-weekdays-off) vacation per quarter.
  5. Take more pictures of myself. Or have more taken of me. Either way.7
  6. Execute—as pilot-in-command—a cross-country flight that’s actually across the country. I’ll loosely define this as across ARTCC boundaries (but Los Angeles Center doesn’t count), and likely involving another state; I’m thinking PDX or PHX.

In general, I think my resolutions boil down to having—not trying, but having—a better year than the last three8; I’m going to be my-favorite-number years old this year, so I think that means this year is basically required to not-suck.
Despite the first few days thus far of 2007, I have this weird feeling that it’s looking quite possible.
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1 At least, from a build engineers’ perspective
2 This is, admittedly, a pretty fluffy goal; I’m not quite sure how this one will turn out.
3 Would this require SPEWING BS IN CAPS?
4 Which at first glance, might seem easy, but if we’re refactoring Tinderbox client code…
5 And I mean this year, not mumble-mumble years, like my private took.
6 Imagine that!
7 P.S. Flickrsphere!!!
8 Combined, if possible!