And so 2021 finishes and 2022 begins. 2021 has been a different year, not the least because I changed jobs and joined SixPivot in February! (more reflections on that next month).

View across Happy Valley reservoir

Looking back on 2021, some of the technology highlights include:

  • Passing 2 exams (and failing one)
  • Getting a Synology NAS, a new laptop and other related hardware for the home office
  • Digging into Azure more deeply
  • .NET 6 and Visual Studio 2022 launched

I've enjoyed helping out with the video streaming and production at my local church. I'm looking forward to continuing that in the new year, and as a result of that, I also decided to step down in my role as a Sunday school teacher - something I've been doing since my own kids were very little. I'll definitely miss building some awesome train track layouts!

For the year ahead from a family perspective, there's some milestones as our kids move to the next stage of their schooling.

I don't have any plans to travel overseas. Microsoft have again decided to run the MVP Summit as a virtual event, which is a good call. Maybe one day I'll get back to Seattle and Redmond, but not this year. It would be great to be able to safely visit interstate. There are friends and new colleagues I'm really looking forward to catching up with.

COVID has obviously been ever-present, if not so much physically in Adelaide and South Australia (compared to some parts of the world) but certainly in the news and impacting life. That's changing now, thanks to the government relaxing restrictions now that vaccinations have been taken up by most people. Unfortunately, that's also coincided with the Omicron variant, so now all of a sudden we're dealing with growing community transmission for the first time here and growing hospitalisation. That is concerning and a little scary.

Time will tell if 2022 sees the return of in-person events within Australia. We had a good run in 2021 with many of our .NET user group meetings being able to be held physically. I hope we can continue that, and ideally we'd be able to bring back DDD Adelaide. I'll be taking a cautious approach - I don't want to risk the health of attendees, or my own family.

Sign on big old gum tree saying 'Trespassers Prosecuted'

I'm on leave for a couple of weeks over the Christmas/New Years break. We've been making the most of a local reservoir that's opened up to the public and going for some great walks in the evenings (daylight saving makes this easier too). I must admit I was a little sceptical when they first started the building process, but now having access to areas that were previous off-limits (hence the old sign!) is great. And it's been taken up by the local community with the car park often overflowing. Not sure what the large mobs of kangaroos think of all these new visitors coming to visit their home, but at least the ducks don't seem to mind!

I do hope you have a safe, happy 2022.