I am striving for simplicity. I’m trying to clean up my office of clutter. I like clean simple UIs. I liked my website when I initially set it up, but now I don’t. The black background no longer appeals to me and even writing blogs using WordPress’s tools is no longer fun. After reading a post on a friend’s site, I looked further at his site and just plain liked the simple, but clean look and feel of it. I saw the Octopress tag at the bottom of the page and looked further. After talking with Dave, I was convinced this was the system I wanted to use for blogging.

I hate conflict, personal conflict that is. More to the point, I hate fighting with my wife and kids. Most, if not all, of these heated “discussions” are due to improper planning or poor communication…the common signs of the lack of being proactive.

However, be more proactive is not a SMART goal. It is generic and immeasurable. To make it SMART, I need to break it down into a list of specific objectives that can improve my reactive skills. So here is my list:

1. Re-read David Allen’s book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by the end of next week (1/13/2012). I read his book years ago and even attended his 1-day seminar, but I failed to apply what I learned. I consider myself my own worse critic, and with that revelation, my planning skills stink. And one of the first steps to planning is know what to plan, and the key factor to GTD his gathering and trapping that which needs to be planned.

What is SMART? It is a method for managing goals.

• Specific - Set specific goals, not vague ones. Answering one or more of the W’s can help.
  • Who is involved?
  • What do I want to accomplish?
  • Where will I do this?
  • When will I do it?
  • Why do I want to complete this goal?

Vague - “I want to lose weight.” Specific - “I will go to the gym three times per week so that I will lose 10lbs in 6 months.”

• Measureable - If you cannot measure it, how do you know when you are done? Ask these questions:
  • How much?
  • How many?
  • What does done look like?

At the start of each new year, everyone makes resolutions and informs the world of the changes they are going to make to improve their lives. I usually do this, but without much success. So, we’re trying something different this time. The reason for lack of past success is that the resolution(s) was just a list…a wishlist so to speak. For a list of resolutions to succeed a plan is needed. Let’s define these to show the differences:

1. A resolution is a commitment that a person makes to one or more lasting personal goals, projects, or the reforming of a habit.

2. A plan is a list of steps with timing and resources, used to achieve an objective. A commitment to a goal is great, but without a plan to detail how the goal will be achieved, success is unlikely.

In previous post, Haiti Missions Trip, I gave details of my upcoming trip to Haiti. I leave in 3 weeks but still have to raise almost $1700 for the trip.

Please donate at PayPal by clicking  Or, you can send a check made out to: Help End Local Poverty, PO Box 26716, Raleigh, NC 27611 - in the memo please put “McAlister - Haiti November Trip”.

Please watch these videos from Help End Local Poverty to see why we are going and who we are helping.

Hello Friends and Family,

This November, I will be on a team heading to Haiti. We’re partnering with Help End Local Poverty and local Haitian leaders to love and serve the people of Haiti.

As most of you know, Haiti suffered a severe earthquake in January of 2010. Haiti is considered a 4th world country, or what’s called a least developed country. Extreme poverty has created a massive orphan crisis. The sex-trafficking industry is exploding, hunger and disease runs rampant and many people are suffering! However, there is hope and God is moving in Haiti through local Haitian churches and leaders. We want to come along side of these brave men and women and help serve Haiti together. We want to co-partner in the work God is already doing!

It might seem like I had fallen off the edge of the world. Not sure why I stopped blogging (not that I was prolific before), maybe with my work struggles I didn’t feel like I had anything worthwhile to post about. I may still not have anything worthwhile, but I am going to start back up blogging.

Look for a website redesign in the future and more posts, both technical and well, non-technical.

- nock an arrow

Version 1.3 was released yesterday on the App Store. It had 2 user visible fixes and 1 not visible to the user. The 2 visible were:

1. A check all requirements feature - a useful quick-entry for the scout that has already completed all the requirements.

2. New Geocaching patch design The not visible feature was a minor change to the underlying database. The problem with changing the data model of your database is that previous versions are not compatible with the new version.

However, the iOS SDK provides the tools to migrate previous data to the new model. As long as the migration works, this change remains invisible (other than a slightly longer startup delay while migration occurs). If it doesn’t work, then the app crashes. That was the cause for the delay in being released last week. Apple saw this happen in their testing. I was able to repeat it with the build I uploaded to Apple for approval. So, I did a clean rebuild of the app, and it worked fine. So, I concluded that my build was bad for some reason, such as I got in a rush as a I got closer to release and missed a step in my build process, etc.

I’m heading back to the “real working world” next week. I’m not giving up on the solo-venture. I’ve been enjoying it. It’s just that the startup funds, i.e. savings account, has run dry and I need to keep paying my mortgage and feeding my family. 4 Arrows Media will continue, but on a part-time effort until app sales can support us or I develop enough iOS dev skills to do contract work.

What makes a milestone day for an iPhone App? Well, for ScoutTrail, today marks the day of it’s 100th purchase. There are also currently 268 followers on ScoutTrail’s Facebook page.