I read a lot of skeptics blogs. This is good, and bad. It’s bad because some of them go way overboard in the casting away of anything unrational (not irrational, just unrational). A prime example of this is the New Year’s Resolution, as well as the whole concept of the western New Year. Some skeptics come out of the woodwork to question the utility of the New Year’s celebration because it’s just an arbitrary marker during the year.

I agree. It is entirely arbitrary.* But, who cares? These types of mileposts are perfect because they give us an opportunity to come together, as friends, family, coworkers, fellow terranauts, whatever, to celebrate another arbitrary time period. Birthdays do this. So do our various national holidays. Given our penchant for numbering our orbits around the solar furnace we call the Sun, it only makes sense to pick a day, and call it the first day of the New Year. Or, we could be entirely arbitrary and increment the new year every time we reach opposition with Mars, but that would be weird.

The New Year’s Resolution falls firmly into the unrational category. It only makes sense to have goals, but why don’t we emphasize New Month’s Resolutions, or New Week’s Resolutions? Why only write down these firm resolutions every year?

Tradition! And I’m a firm believer in some traditions, despite any unrationality.

Therefore, my New Year’s Resolutions:

• In 2007 I did quite well with one of my resolutions, to get into better shape. Since January, 2007, I have run a Triathlon, a Half Marathon, broken my PR’s in the 5k and crushed my PR in the 10k, all while being injury-free. This is a trend I wish to continue. I doubt I can show the sort of improvement in the next 12 months as I did in the last, but simply maintaining what I’ve got will be satisfactory. I resolve to maintain or improve my physical well being! As a caveat, in 2008 I resolve to keep better track of my training, faithfully maintaining my log.
• 2007 also saw the beginning of a potentially career-boosting web project, the nascent Talking Traffic podcast. For 2008 I resolve to miss no more than three bi-weekly episodes of Talking Traffic. Which means I better get crackin’.
• Along with the necessary discipline to orchestrate the Talking Traffic episodes, comes the time requirement of writing the things. The shows are full of enough information that I don’t feel a “rambling diatribe“** is the best solution. Scripts allow me to compress information better than chain-of-consciousness speaking. But, with the dedicated time for writing, I should finally sit down and throw some words on a page for several story and/or book projects that have been rolling around in my head for a long while. In 2008, I resolve to complete at least one crappy short story and do serious research on my other project.
• Similar to the Talking Traffic project, I have in mind another web project which needs to get off the ground sooner rather than later. This ties in with the fitness theme because the project revolves around a race. More details later, but in 2008, I resolve to not let this embryonic project die.
• Lastly, but certainly not leastly, in 2008 I resolve to be a good husband to my wife, and a good friend to my friends. What time is necessary will be afforded, and I’ll damn well get 2007’s christmas cads out before 2009.

*The weirdest part of this New Year’s eve was when our neighborhood dry cleaning provider, a very nice lady who is obviously a former chinese national, wished me a “Happy New Year!” I wondered to myself if I should come back next month to wish her one, as well.

**Steve Runner is the podcaster at the helm of Phedippidations, a running podcast. His tagline is, “thoughts, opinions, observations, and rambling diatribes composed during distance long runs”. Thanks, Steve!

One year ago today I underwent LASIK surgery (don’t click on the link unless you’re not afraid of close-up images of eyeballs!)

So far so good! No issues. No haloing or dry eye any worse than what I had with contacts. I have my last post-surgery checkup next week.

I wake. I ache. I sit. I drink coffee. My head go throb.

I race 10k.

Silliness.

I’ll let you know how it went in about two hours.

Today I hearken for the heady days of no electronics. Why? Because it’s really damn difficult to keep all of my gadgets and computers and infonodes synched up to current information. At the moment, I’ve given up a bit. My 5 year old PDA has kicked (sort of), and it’s a pain to try and synch my home computer calendar/contacts (Outlook) to my work computer calendar/contacts (Outlook). Jenn and I have just started using Google Calendar for most of our scheduling, plus there’s this wireless talkie device I have in my pocket. Like I said, At the Moment, none of these things talk to each other. Additionally, Jenn and I will more than likely be purchasing snazzy mo-bile dee vices come this spring when our two year committment to T-Mobile is up. Thusly another set of doo-dads to keep in contact. It’s a pain, and I’ve got to figure out where the main repositories need to be. They’re not going to be all in one spot, for example my work contacts generally happen at work so I can’t give up keeping info on my work computer, but then there’s no need for all of my personal contacts to be kept there (and backed up by the company, which bugs me a bit). My calendar has already made the jump to hyperspace by transferring to Google, but google calendar is still a bit flaky so I feel I need an offline (or at least off-web) version to view when necessary. This would optimally be both of my Outlooks, if I could get them to synch up with Google. It would be GREAT if I could get my phone to talk to everybody, but the phone I have now is memory-anemic and not up to the task, even if I had the cords and software to do it.

I’m exploring a utility called ScheduleWorld that might allow me to do all of the above. I’ll let you know how it goes.