400.5 hours of learning RoR in 20 weeks!!!

"Houston, we have lift off!" I can't believe I've finally hit 400 hours and going strong, it went by really fast! My original goal was to study 500 hours by my birthday on April 7th, I can still meet that goal if for the next 4 weeks I study 25 hours per week, I'm going to try and make that happen!

+Jason Wieringa  showed me a really cool thing http://awilliams.github.com/RTanque/ it's basically using Ruby code to have tank wars with other developers. This Sunday it's +Jason Wieringa , +David Bock , +Joshua Kemp to battle it out in WW3, bet your money on me! I'm going find a way to be truly invincible with my tank, and knock out those other 2 tank noobs :)

So much to do, so much to learn and yet we all have the same amount of time! I have a list of 20 - 30 ideas of stuff I wanna' do or make in regards to Ruby on Rails, but just to name a couple that I absolutely must do before this year is out:

1)  Do a Hackathon preferably a 4 person team.

2)  Make my database scheduling app.

3)  Give at least 1 lightning talk at a Ruby Meetup

I will absolutely not be content with this year until I've done at least those three, but I have a ton more, but one thing at a time.

I also have some new thoughts to think on in the near future as the second part of edX Berkeley SasS 169.2x winds down on March 31st. I will be having about 10 - 12 hours of free time that I would have otherwise used to study my homework and watch lecture videos. I could work on some open source project, work with my brother Cody on an idea he has, or do some of my own things, or other stuff we'll see.

I'm also thinking of asking Ruby Motion to be a sponsor for our 4 person Hackathon team, in exchange  everyone on the team would write 1 - 2 blog posts on things we liked about using Ruby Motion. That would save us the $200 software fee per person, which frankly as all of us are training/ intern/or junior level developers we are kinda' on the broke side of life right now :)

 We could also wear Ruby Motion t-shirts at the Hackathon for even more exposure for them, and I would be willing to put a Ruby Motion sticker on my laptop, and then when we of course win, we would mention Ruby Motion as the ultimate nice sponsor, helping out new developers :)

First to find an event, then a team :) I'm thinking of +Cody Kemp , +Jason Wieringa, +Christopher Sigg , and myself. Since we are all somewhere along the path of beginner - junior developer. I would ask +David Bock but then that would be just cheating for our team.I haven't asked these guys yet but, I'm thinking we'd make a well balanced decent team.

 Please let me know if anyone out there knows of a Hackathon coming up in the D.C. area, although I wouldn't rule out driving to N.Y. either if it was a cool Hackathon, and I could convince the rest of the team to drive up as well :) - Josh