2004 arrived
uneventfully for me. I was at home playing Diablo II -- not even
watching television. Outside there were some local fire crackers and
such but otherwise it was pretty quiet around here. I don't know if I
have any New Year's resolutions. I didn't last year and it's not as if
I kept to previous resolutions. Still, it's tradition and at least with
a list you know how far off you are -- kind of like having a budget.
My first resolution is to finish upgrading my web site. Gone are the
stupid frames that were a pain to navigate. I've tried to compact
everything to save screen real estate so that most of the time people
don't even have to scroll down. For example, note how I use the Title
Bar for the page title and don't have it on the page itself.
Unfortunately, most browsers don't print the Title Bar (though Mozilla
does) which makes the page somewhat printer unfriendly.
In any case, I'm also integrating the older web site that I had, That
site got to be a mess as everything went into the Journal folder when I
couldn't keep up with writing entries. Meanwhile, the old (not older)
site has thousands of pictures in the collections section, most of
which I want to reencode to save space and resize to a different
standard. It's probably going to take me most of the year to fully
convert to the new site.
For my DC Heroes campaign, my goal is to run through the end of Volume
2. I've already run four issues and have another forty-six to go. This
means I have to bear down and run almost every week, something I was
doing towards the end of Volume 1. The trick is less prep and writeup,
which is not that easy. I also want to run small "lightning" adventures
for Shannon, Pick, and Rowe since otherwise they'll only be playing
about one-fouth of the adventures.
|
Financially I
would like to pay off my internal budget debt account. This is all the
money I owe for the previous budget when I kept overspending. It
includes a 60% penalty fee so it's quite a bit higher than the amount
of money I actually spent, but it's still at $1680.15. Since about the
middle of last year when I reset the budget I have been able to keep
expenses under control and not overspend. Now I need to save enough
that I can start paying off the budget debt.
Health-wise I do need to start exercising more. I say this every year
and not quite do it. And even though my weight hasn't really changed in
the last 15 years I think I'm getting fatter so I must be losing muscle
mass. Weight is not a good barometer but it is easy to measure.
Basically I want to get my cardiovascular system more in shape. Maybe
basketball is part of that picture but, as I've written before, it's
not my favorite sport to play just one-on-one.
The last half of last year I really started slacking off at work,
mostly to work on my DC Heroes campaign and then Diablo II dominated my
time for over a month. I need to get back into work and stop goofing
off so much and start getting things done again. It's not as if it's
not fun once I get going. I've just had a hard time getting going. So
this year: work harder.
I guess that's about it. Five objectives seem plenty and two of them
don't even have concrete targets. Will I actually accomplish these
things? Maybe a couple of them but at least it gives me a direction to
go in. New Year's resolutions are a way for people to clean the slate
and start over. Sometimes it helps but a lot of times it doesn't seem
to. They're more like mini life goals, or life milestones that you want
to do that year.
|