School’s out, let’s read books.

At some point, I’m just going to have to accept that blogging is not my forte. Or, that it’s an infrequently-done activity ’round these parts. For now, though, I’m reveling in this fact: I have fulfilled the requirements for my Associate of Applied Science in Computer Programming degree and have graduated this week from St. Paul College. Next week, I become a full-time web developer over at Room 34.

Life is good, and I’m reading a lot of books. In fact, I’d been working on another blog entry about that which never came to fruition, so I’ll just mention it here. Last year, I participated in the Goodreads reading challenge and surpassed my goal of reading 24 books in 12 months (I read 28). This year, I upped the ante a little bit and am aiming to read 35 books. With 7 1/2 months still left to go in the year, I’ve finished 19 books, and I’ll likely be at 21 or 22 by the end of the month. Some have told me it’s time to up my goal, but I say what’s the point of setting reasonable goals if you can’t complete shatter them? I’m not threatening to double my book count, but hey, who knows how the rest of this year will go now that part of my free time doesn’t have to be dedicated to higher education?

If you’re curious what I’ve been reading (or what’s slated to be read), you can head on over to http://www.goodreads.com/jmichaelward. So far this year it’s been a pretty mixed bag of programming and web design books crossed with some fiction novels and an occasional memoir or non-fiction work. At some point, I’m planning on digging into the Goodreads API to hopefully integrate my reading list onto this site. There are other things I need to take care of first, though, such as updating the home page (since hey! I’m not a student any more!) and fleshing out the rest of the content to better reflect what I’ve been up to.

Tomorrow, however, I’ll be digging my bike out of the basement, because it hasn’t seen daylight since two summers ago.

Here’s to new beginnings.