Every year I try to do a Tech New Year Resolutions. These are the things that I want to do in my professional life.

Learn Flex 3
This was a goal for last year but didn’t seem to pan out. Now that AIR and Flex are getting a lot of momentum it is a good time to go ahead and start learning them. I have some great ideas for AIR apps and need to get to learning flex. I won a Flex 3 getting started book at the Nashville ColdFusion User Group Christmas Party so that has got me started over the vacation.

Learn Action Script 3
This kind of goes hand in hand with the Flex 3 but I really want to get a grasp on AS3 so my Flex apps can be really dynamic. I picked up one of the Action Script 3 Classroom in a Book at the Christmas party so I will be using that

Learn how to create Wordpress Templates
Wordpress is such an awesome publishing platform that I want to really dive in to the templating and create custom templates.

Blog More
I posted almost 122 posts this year which is pretty good given that I haven’t blogged much the last part of the year. My goal is 150 this year so we shall see what we have. I also picked up a free copy of Blogo courtesy of BrainJuice so that will hopefully inspire me.

So what are your tech New Year resolutions?

Thanks to everyone that came out to the NCFUG/615Flex Christmas Party. we had a great turnout given the nasty weather. Though everyone seemed to show up about 30 minutes late it was like a large wave! Congrats to Andy Matthews and Eric Cobb for both winning the $2100 worth of software from Adobe; Shawn Oden, Scott
Dowling, and Albert? for winning the Flex Builder 3 Standard licenses; and to Jim Rising for winning the awesomely cool custom Flip MinoHD video camera (design courtesy of 615Flex Co-Manager Boaz Reynolds)

We had a great time and look forward to more joint stuff in the future!

I know this is pretty overplayed but I wouldn’t feel like I properly promoted myself if I didn’t post this here. I have a presentation that I give on jQuery and I have been nominated to do it for CFUNITED 09 and need your vote! I am pretty much an underdog since I am going up against Ray Camden but oh well.

Go here: http://cfunited.com/go/survey/166

and look for “Introduction to jQuery for the ColdFusion Developer” by J.J. Merrick

I have a bunch of servers over at The Planet down in Texas and they are a great bunch of techies. One of their DBA’s just posted a very interesting tidbit that I didn’t know about as far as using EXPLAIN with MySQL to get an explaination as to what is happening in a query.

You can check it out here:

http://blog.theplanet.com/2008/11/13/mysql-explain-yourself/

ColdFusion Blogger and fellow Nashvillian Steve “Cutter” Blades just announced that Learning Ext JS that he co-authored is now available from Amazon.com. If you have done anything or want to do anything with ExtJS then you need to get this book!

Simon Free is going to be LIVE IN PERSON tonight at the Nashville ColdFusion User Group. He is coming on his own dime so let’s make this a large turnout!

Details here:

http://www.ncfug.com/go/meeting/meetingId/2FF6B098%252DA6C8%252D07F7%252D403E6199D0D8FC1D/

It’s our first ever CF_LUNCH!

Join us tomorrow at Blackstone Brewery in West End. Go ahead and get the details and RSVP below:

http://www.ncfug.com/go/meeting/meetingID/F16E657F-D8AB-3E3A-B4324C465651B618/

I meant to post this last Friday but I had to play Mr. Mom all weekend with the wife gone. Needless to say computer use was at a minimum. So here are the files that go with the jQuery Presentation.

jQuery Presentation Files

Want to thank everyone that came out to the jQuery presentation out at the Nashville ColdFusion User Group. Also big thanks to Scott Gordon at Vaco Technology for providing the Pizza and the NIN tickets!

If you missed it here is a link to the recording:

I want to start this off that I am a huge fan of Dave Ramsey. I have listened to his show for about 8 years now and have seem him grow a company into a very large entity based on something he believes in.

As I was washing dishes this morning a thought came to me. I started to think about the stance that Dave takes on finances and then thought “You know what? He should support Obama”.

Now I don’t know if Dave has come out against one candidate or not but based on what he has said in the past it seems that he is leaning towards the republican candidate.

There are 2 issues that I think he should support Obama on.

1. Tax Policy

I have studied the tax policies of both candidates and I feel that Dave should lean towards Obama on this one and here is why.

One of the biggest things about Dave’s program is that no matter how much income you make you can be “rich”. Yes it might take longer depending on your “shovel” as he calls it (Your income) but regardless if you follow his baby steps and stay away from debt that you will end up “Living like no one else”.

The thing is that about 95% (My statistic) of people that have called in to his show all have incomes below $200,000. They are good people making 50k-80k and yet are able to pay off their house and build wealth. Old men will call in and say “Well I got about a million five in the bank” and Dave always follows up with with “How much did you make a year?” And the answer is usually something like “Oh never more then $35k a year working at the factory”. These are the exact people that will be helped with the Obama tax plan.

Think about it: What kind of jobs make $200k or more? Not many unless you are a Doctor or a Lawyer or some top notch sales man… rarely do you make $40k a year and then all the sudden got a promotion into $250k. Joe the Plumber supports a candidate based on a pipe dream (pun TOTALLY intended) that if he was to buy a business that he all the sudden is going to make $250k a year. Even the boss that owns the business says that it probably would only be a $100k a year job and would require a lot of expansion to make it to $250k.

We need to get off this kick, and Dave would agree with me, that to be rich you have to have a “rich” income. And the true rich are those that have saved and are working the baby steps to build slow wealth with medium shovels.

And on that platform he should support Obama.

2. Health care

One of the leading causes of bankruptcy in America is medical debt according to a Harvard study done in 2001. Dave hates bankruptcy with a passion and discourages it to anyone that suggests it. I think in the 8 years I have been listening I have heard him say once that someone should get a bankruptcy. He didn’t actually say it out right but the guy basically had $500,000 in (oddly enough) medical bills and made like $20k a year. He didn’t say “oh you just need to file bankruptcy” but allude to the fact that he didn’t know of any options and that it would take you years to ever get out from under this.

The health care plan of Obama works to make health insurance not only affordable but also reform the industry so that we don’t have people who have $20k in medical debt even after paying $1000 a month for insurance!

Again, Obama.

The policies of Obama really help the middle class keep more of their money and that seems to be what Dave should be supporting.

In all I guess this is just an idea and I should probably next time think about the Red Sox losing and not on anything intelligent while washing dishes.

Just something to generate discussion on the matter. So please… discuss away! :-)