Earlier this year, I wrote a post about my upcoming plans for the year in response to a question asked by Jen McCown (flat out, one of my favorite people, blog|twitter). It was supposed to be about resolutions, but I just don’t make those. I make plans.

Here we are, close to a year later (11 months). How did the plans work out?

The first one, hinted at the time, was to start a new job. Well, that’s done and it’s going swimmingly, thank you very much. The job has turned out to be harder than I thought it was going to be. I travel more than I thought I was going to travel (although we’re keeping it within the limits we agreed to, I love my new company). Frankly, I’m concerned that I’m doing a good enough job, pretty much all the time. But, I love it. Thank you, everyone at Red Gate Software.

Next one was setting up the home office. I’ve got that done too. It proved to be quite difficult, but with lots of help from Glen Berry (blog|twitter) and several other people on Twitter and elsewhere, I finally have a functional set of systems. Currently I have three computers, my glorious Lenovo W510 laptop (sporting lots and lots of flair), a POS Dell desktop (which, as soon as it crashes & burns again, I’m replacing), and a nifty little HP Proliant MicroServer that I’ve named Bob. I even have a little Iomega raid array. I’ve learned how to set up AD and have these things humming along well enough. I’m able to set up tests and get done what I need to get done for my job. I won’t lie. It’s been a pain in the bottom having to set it all up myself. I’m still spoiled from working at a large corporation where I didn’t have to sweat this stuff, but I’ve managed to get done what was needed. I learned how to set up virtuals and I’ve been using a couple of them for most of the last year while working with SQL Server 2012. Trivial stuff for a lot of you, but a leap forward for me.

Then I promised to drill down on a new set of tools. Once again, referring to my glorious job at Red Gate. Man, I had no idea those guys worked so hard. They are releasing new software and new functionality constantly. I can’t keep up. I love it. I rate this goal only about 1/2 accomplished and I think I could have done a somewhat better job at it. I’m going to try to improve on this in the coming year.

The last one, writing more… Unfortunately, I accomplished this one all too well. I did rewrite the execution plans book , but we’re looking at rewriting it again (some structural needs and to capture 2012 stuff). I’m close to half way through rewriting my performance tuning book . That one slowed down because I took on another project, SQL Server in a Month of Lunches, which I’m also about 1/2 way through. Oops. If you’re counting at home, that’s three books this year. Not good. Oh, and did I mention I wrote a chapter for the MVP Deep Dives II? And, I’m maintaining my chapters in Beginning SQL Server Administration (2 of 3 done as I write this). Yeah, five (5) books this year… no, no, no. Stop. That’s on top of all the new articles for my most excellent job, maintaining this blog, starting another blog… Yeah, writing successful. Don’t do it again.

On the whole, I’d say I accomplished what I set out to accomplish on 3 of the 4 goals. The incomplete one, getting better with Red Gate tools, is going to be ongoing anyway, but I still need to improve.

Oh, and by the way, thanks for reading this blog over the last year.