Hi Chris! Welcome to IFI! You're initial projects, hook and fork look great. You'll find more than one of us here are also IT people. It's great to get away from mind numbing computer issues (usually end user issues!) and just deal with hot steel and hammer. Depending on how complicated a fire poker you plan to make, that might take you longer than you think. While it's great to work on more complicated projects and have a finished product. You might want to just concentrate on basic things until your hammer control is better. Make lots of those hooks and forks, give them out to friends and family. There are many variations of bottle openers you could also do. What you can also do for idea's is to browse the photo gallery here, see what others have done and use those for project idea's.
Best of luck and welcome to forging!
Larry