Tag Archives: Plans

New Year's Resolutions 2007

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I just realized that I never posted any New Year’s resolutions this year. That’s probably because I never chose any – which is probably because I’ve done such a lousy job of keeping them up in the past. In 2004, I achieved 2 out of 5 resolutions (eat breakfast every day, and do more design). In 2005, I accomplished 3 out of 5 resolutions (get up at a regular time every day, do more web design, and post more frequently, with more images). And finally, in 2006, I dropped down to 1 out of 4 (attend more web conferences), which is particularly humiliating, since I went out of my way to choose goals that I would be more motivated to accomplish.

The getting up at a regular time and eating breakfast every day probably sound pathetic, but remember that when I wrote those goals, I was working from home or unemployed, and it was actually becoming a problem. I managed to achieve them, though, which I still feel proud of myself for, though now that I have a regular job, it’s less of an accomplishment.

As for this year, it’s already July, so it’s too late for New Year’s resolutions, but I do still have some goals. I want to finish posting my photo archives on flickr, I want to keep posting a newsletter about Zoe every month. Not exactly earth-shattering, I know, but hopefully more realistic than the last few years.

Obvious Productivity Tip: Work when your energy is high

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For a variety of reasons, not least of which the impending birth of our first child, I’ve been looking for ways to be more productive at home, and more efficient with the time I get to accomplish things. As I looked at the way Annie and I spend our evenings, I noticed that there tends to be an hour or so when I first get home, then there’s dinner and some TV afterwards, followed by another couple of hours after Annie goes to bed. I thought I was being a genius when I decided that I would spend that time after Annie goes to be doing computer stuff. In my mind’s eye, I envisioned myself turning off the TV, strolling into my office, and spending the next two hours doing productive things like blogging and updating web sites (don’t laugh, that counts as productivity for me).

As you can imagine, when I set this plan in motion over the last two weeks, what really happened is that after Annie went to bed, I either stayed in the basement and watched a movie, or I played video games. After spending an hour or two relaxing on the couch, my motivation to get up and go do things was shockingly low.

So, I’ve turned the plan on its head. Now, when I get home from work, I immediately do a couple of chores while my energy is high, and then I come into the office and do computer-related tasks like blogging (like I’m doing right now!). Then after Annie goes to bed, if I want to spend that time watching a movie or playing video games or whatever, I don’t have to feel guilty about it.

It’s working well so far, except for one small detail: usually dinner is ready before I finish my blog post, so I’m late getting to the table. I’m hoping that over time, I’ll get a bit more efficient and that will happen less — But right now, I have to go before my dinner gets cold.

To-Do List for Labor Day Weekend 2006

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  • Updated/redesign front page of spaceninja.com to display more content from external sites like flicr, del.icio.us, and last.fm.
  • Post more photos from my archives to my flickr account.
  • Post photos from our third annual group anniversary trip.
  • Post funny movie of Oskar watching his dad cut up a mango.
  • Put up a whole bunch of funny t-shirt designs on cafepress.
  • Put up promotions for those shirts on all my sites.
  • Rework our budget.
  • Get sick, throw out previous list and follow revised list instead:
    • Go through two boxes of kleenex: check.
    • Watch lots of TV, including a VanDamme movie, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and several episodes of Deadwood: check.

I Wish I Could Quit You, Dr. Pepper

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Since starting my new job, I’ve been slowly putting on weight. I’m not thrilled with this, since I was carrying more than my fair share to begin with. While I’m still looking for an exercise solution that I’ll be able to stick with in the long run, I’ve set my focus on other places in my life where I can make some improvements.

I drink too much soda. Out of everything I consume, soda is probably the worst thing for me. Empty calories, sugar water, etc. Getting a handle on this would also be a huge help.

A year or two ago, I came to a similar realization that I was drink too much soda. The resolution at the time was to quit keeping soda in the house, since that’s where I was drinking most of it. That worked really well. The problem now is that there’s soda in the fridge at work, and I’ve been having a can of Coke almost every day, as well as having soda almost every day with lunch.

I’m a firm believer in setting realistic goals. If I said that I wanted to quit drinking soda entirely, it wouldn’t happen. We would go on a car trip, or go out to dinner, or to a movie, and I would have a soda, and end up giving up. But the problem is not the occasional soda when I’m out – the problem is the regular soda as part of my routine.

So starting last week, I’ve quit drinking soda entirely while I’m at work. This means no soda with lunch and no soda in the afternoon. It’s especially hard when it’s really hot in the office and I can hear other people cracking open cold sodas, but luckily, we have a really good water cooler that gives ice cold water, so I’ve been drinking that whenever I get a craving. Wish me luck!

We Moved!

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Sorry for the lengthy silence, but things have been a bit crazy around here. We helped my brother move about a month ago, then packed everything we owned, then we moved into a house in the Alberta neighborhood with Sean. The move went relatively smoothly, and we even got everything done in one long day, thanks to the help of all our friends who came out to spend the day hauling boxes around. Since then we’ve just been trying to unpack and get the house into some sort of order, which finally happened over the weekend.

The first thing we did while moving was lock the kittens into the basement bathroom (one of THREE in the house) along with their litterbox and food and water. We left them there for the next several days, letting them get acclimatized to a small part of the house first.

In the meantime, I pulled together the basement to be the excellent media center I’ve been assembling for the last couple of years. We’ve got our surround sound setup all put together, with the speakers suspended from the ceiling, and the subwoofer in the corner, and it’s impressively loud when I want it to be. It also works well for watching regular television, as we found out with 24 and Galactica last week.

Once the basement was assembled and pretty much cat-proofed, we let them out of their prison, and they have since taken ownership of the basement from us. Sean has a papa-san chair that’s full of pillows and cushions, which they love to sleep in, and the rest of the time, they tear around the open area wrestling with each other.

On the main floor, we’ve got the living room 99% unpacked, with the bookshelves assembled and filled, which is great, but makes it very obvious that we don’t yet have any furniture for the living room. Our next trip to Ikea is going to involve a couple of couches, I’m thinking.

The office is assembled, but packed full of boxes, and I don’t yet have an internet connection on my PC, since the cable modem and wifi router is in the basement, and my PC doesn’t have a wifi card. I was going to buy an Airport Express from Apple, which (I thought) would let me extend my wifi network, and give me an ethernet connection for any computers near it, and even let me hook it up to the stereo to stream iTunes. However, it turns out that not only will it not talk to my home network for some reason, it also isn’t physically capable of hooking an ethernet connection up to a computer. The ethernet jack is only to hook it up to an existing network. So instead, I’m buying the netgear equivalent, which I know for a fact does everything I need, but sadly won’t stream iTunes.

Part of my reluctance to post has been the network problems (which is rediculous, since we have two laptops in the house with wifi), but it’s hard to motivate myself to sit down at the dining room table or on the couch to post, instead of my nice office. Anyways, the solution is coming, and I’ll be back to my usual frequently-posting self.

Oh, and speaking of frequent posting, I have a work blog at Pop Art now. My boss wants us all to start blogging to share our goals and accomplishments, which is pretty cool. Unfortunately, as a Microsoft house, we don’t have any Apache/PHP/MySQL boxes, so I can’t run WordPress. Instead, we’re running a program called DasBlog, which he says is the most downloaded blog program on XXX. All I know is that it’s a bit of a letdown from WordPress. Still, it does everything it’s supposed to (even if the back-end is a big ugly), and it’s skinnable, so I’ll be able to apply my own design to it soon enough. You’re all welcome to read my work blog, obviously, but I’ll warn you in advance that it’s going to be limited to highly geeky discussions of programming, CSS, and web development (even moreso than here).

Photos and floorplan coming as soon as I get the PC hooked up to the network!