Registration... check. Hotel room reserved... check. Flight booked... check. Sunday February 22nd I start the cross-country journey from San Jose to Sarasota for a week of training with Hal Helms.

The course is Real-World OO Programming, and I've been looking forward to this since I first read about it on Ben Nadel's blog a few months back. I've been struggling with the transition from procedural guy to OO guy, and I think a classroom environment might do well to help me over some of the hurdles. I've gone through a few books, and I think I understand the foundations at a conceptual level. Sitting down with someone like Hal will help put those concepts into practice, I think.

I've been a big fan of Hal's since he and Jeff Peters did the aptly-named Helms and Peters - Out Loud podcast. Topics ranged from writing code to planning to running one's own business. Very diverse topics but always relevant. I always found that both Hal and Jeff just had a way of conveying their meaning very effectively. The material never sounded dry or forced. I'm really looking forward to 5 consecutive days in a classroom environment led by Hal.

Big thanks to my company, Amcom Technology. Amcom's a relatively small shop, and this particular course is a bit more than what they're used to paying for conferences. I appreciate that they recognize the difference here (5 full days, 8 hours per day, small classroom environment) versus a traditional conference and that they agreed to foot the bill.

I also need to send out a thanks to Hal and company, for deciding to include the cost of the hotel in the price of the training (and not increasing the price of the training). It's probably fairly safe to say that I don't think I'd have been able to make it if it were a case of paying for the class, and paying for airfare, and then paying for a six night hotel stay.

Anybody else going? If so, my understanding is that the free hotel stay is only valid 'til the end of January. Also, I've seen a few discount codes posted... but not quite sure if I'm supposed to be re-posting them. If you're aware of a code, and you're aware that it's OK to post, feel free to leave it in the comments for others.

UPDATE:
Register with code "charlie" and receive a $250 discount! Are you still here? GO GO GO!

Oh, and if anyone else is arriving in Sarasota at 10:45pm Sunday evening and wants to split a cab from the airport, let me know

the much anticipated new-look of the http://www.halhelms.com web site was unveiled today. aside from the face-lift is an assessment to determine your "OO-Readiness". of course, i failed miserably with a score of 46.9%. altho admittedly that's about what i'd have expected, so no big surprise there.

think you're OO-Ready? take the quiz and find out.

UPDATE: as mentioned on ray camden's blog:

Be sure to scroll down when you get your results. I didn't notice it under his ad, but he goes through every question and explains the ones you get wrong. This is where the really valuable advice is."

so remember a few months back when i was all like, "i'm going OO, and i'm going to document my progress so maybe other folks will learn what i'm learning"? yeah, that didn't go so well. for me, my OO journey has been decidedly hit-and-miss (more miss than hit, unfortunately). i think my attempt to document that journey reflected that.

for me, i think the issue is that i wasn't working in OO day-to-day. i'd learn how to do something, but then i'd get confused as to what the next logical step should be. or, i'd talk to somebody who would suggest that what i had learned wasn't necessarily how they would do it, and i'd step back. what i really needed was a mentor. one person that i had access to during the course of the day, that i could bounce ideas off of. one person that could show me *their* way (regardless of whether or not it was how others did it), and i could journey down that particular road. later on, i'd hope to have enough of a conceptual grasp that i'd be able to say, "wait... what about doing it *this* way?".

i may finally be in that situation. jon messer recently joined us at amcom. jon's somewhat of an OO god, altho he'll try and tell you otherwise (and he'll be terribly embarrassed at reading this ). in the few months that jon's been here, working with him has been a privilege, and one for which i'm very grateful.

now, this is more than just a "neener-neener-neener-i-have-a-mentor-and-you-don't" post. jon's very much into helping others learn, and has started a series of his own blog posts in which he's going to attempt to demystify the concepts of building OO applications. i think this series is largely going to be what i was previously attempting, with the significant difference that jon's already at a point where he can teach what he knows (as opposed to trying to teach what he's learning).

the series comes out of an evaluation that he had done of some of the coldfusion MVC frameworks, and deconstructs the code that he used.

this promises to be an interesting and educational series. i'd highly suggest that if you're still making the transition from procedural to OO, you sit in. feel free to post questions, or just a comment to let him know what you think about his approach.

hey all. i'm back, and i'd like to officially apologize for going all bermuda triangle on you in the middle of the "going OO" series. i'd like to take a few minutes and reflect on some of what happened, because some of it is actually relevant.

first... the non-relevant bits. we moved (again). i thought it would be a fairly easy thing to do this time around... because unlike the last 2 times it wasn't an across country move (from AZ to FL and then from FL to CA). this time it was from CA (southern) to CA (east bay)... but it still really really sucked. it was just a very draining experience (both physically and mentally) and I never ever want to do it again (but i will).

factor in starting the new job (which is going great so far, thankyouverymuch) and i just haven't even had time to keep up with reading blogs, let alone writing an entry.

but things have settled down (somewhat) so i'm going to try and get back into the swing of things.

So the $64,000 question is... where'm i at with all of this OO stuff? hell of a question. sorta wish you hadn't asked. >sigh< but you did, so...