Opposable Thumbs

I'm not big on resolutions or anything, but sometimes I feel it's good to draw an arbitrary line in the sand in order to make changes you'd like to see in yourself, your life or whatever. So here's a few thoughts on what I'm going to take a stab at doing in 2008. Maybe none of these will work out or maybe they all will, who can say. Some of them are just half-formed ideas afterall.

• I'd like to make this the year of green tea for me. I know this sounds silly, but having once been a near green tea junky, I've since slid back to being a devoted coffee drinker. Mind you, I don't plan to stop drinking coffee or anything. I just hope to at least get back into the habit of starting my day with a small pot of the green stuff.

• My back is in awful shape. I regularly suffer from headaches and all sorts of other discomfort becuase of a bad back. Part of this is just a life long habit of poor posture, but it was made worse by a rather nasty car wreck I was in nearly 10 years ago. No permanent damage was done, so really it's just a matter of training my muscles to do the right thing. I've done physical therapy and chiropractic and all that, but I'm now convinced that building core strength using some rather simple and well-tested approaches is the right thing to do. That leads me to...

• Re-establishing a regular exercise habit. I grew up as a weakling. I was never good at sports. However, I found out in the latter part of my twenties that not only can I do exercise, but I actually really enjoy it and my body type is such that I respond to it quickly. Who would have thunk it? I've been pretty lax about doing any real consistent excercise for a long while, but my goal is to get back into regular strength training and then add in a good bit of cardio over the next few months.

• Related to that, I need to spend a lot more time outside. It's a dangerous trap when you're a technical sort to get caught sitting in front of the computer for FAR too many hours a day. This isn't itself a bad thing (well, one could argue about that), but the problem is when it takes away from doing other things. Like breathing fresh air, getting exercise, etc. My goal is to start taking a nice walk outside at least once a day. Of course, having dogs makes that a lot more likely and easy, but I'm talking a real serious walk. Something that gets the lungs pumping a bit and clears the head.

• Reading is something I love doing, so this one will be easy: I'm hoping to start reading a lot more regularly. I'd like to quantify this and say I'll read a book a week or something like that. But it's not easy since so much of what I read takes other forms (online, printed material, etc.). I'll just leave this one be in terms of setting goals and promise myself that I'm going to read as much as possible.

• The next one is also pretty hard to put into specifics, so I'm going to leave it for another post. To sum it up, though, I have a plan for an autodidactic program I'll be putting myself through. It's not fully expanded, yet, but I'll try and get it into more complete terms as I talk about it in my later posts.

• Again, something to be expanded up on later: the "career" plan. I'm not sure how much I'll spell out here in terms of what I want to be doing, but I'll definitely talk a bit more about what I'm going to do to get there. Expect more on the subject in the near future.

Ok, that's quite a list. As I said, I don't really expect all of these to be stunningly successful this year, but I also don't think any of them are that far from the direction I'm already moving in. so it shouldn't take huge leaps to make things happen.

Here's to another great year. Happy 2008!

Ok, so here's the deal, my laptop (supplied by my employer) is kaput. The BIOS started report SMART errors about a month ago, but I didn't worry about it too much. I never got any errors while using it, so I just backed everything up and figured eventually I'd get them to send me a new drive.

But then it got worse: the LCD started going crazy. It would randomly fade to a sort of greenish, off-white color. I could usually get it back to normal by moving the lid around a bit. It was acting like the connections were going bad in the hinge, but it just kept getting worse and worse. I was really afraid that the cable would just give up completely at some point. Yesterday, it got to where I couldn't reliably work on it at all.

So its about to head off back to Austin, likely never to return. Hopefully I'll get a replacement soon, but probably not for a couple weeks at the soonest. Instead I'm tied to my desktop now.

Mind you, my desktop is one hell of a machine (again, its worked-supplied). But I had grown into the habit of moving around to various positions around the house to do my work. My favorite spot was sitting in the recliner in the living room. It was a lot easier on my back.

See, I've got a bad back. I've had issues since I was in high school, roughly, on account of my bad posture, but it all got much worse when I was in a bad accident in my mid-twenties. It's usually not a big deal, but something I did about a week or so ago messed it up again pretty badly. It feels approximately like a mild pinched nerve. Anyone who has ever had a pinched nerve in their back will know that even a "mild" one is not fun.

So I'll be limiting my time in front of the computer to strictly what is necessary to get my work done and the occasional checking of email. Of course, maybe it will mean I'll be more focused when I am sitting here. We'll see.

I figured this was as good of an excuse as any to finally update this blog. Ever since I set up my del.icio.us posts, it seems as though the automated portions of the blog are overtaking any semblance of human presence around here. I've got to make sure that isn't the case, of course!

So, I've got more to say, but I'll save it for tomorrow's post. Yes, there will be a post tomorrow. You can count on it.

My good friend Justin just sent me this nice little bit of memorabilia. This was a brief lived band called Masterbuilt. Fun band but we just couldn't keep it happening for some reason. That's Kirk on the left, me in the middle, Justin on the right and Zack hidden back behind those drums.

Nicole, the doggies and I went to Cannon Beach this last weekend. It was gorgeous weather for it and we had a splendid time. I've upload some of the photos to flickr. Check them out here and here. That second set is of the sitka spruce we saw on the way out there. It's the tallest of it's kind in the US. It's an amazing site, but this place is full of things like that.

I think I may have mentioned this before, but as it happens I'm going to be returning to school this fall. I'll be taking classes at Austin Community College since I came to the decision too late to apply for readmitance to UT and get the tuition loans and all that.

The plan is that I take a fulltime load at ACC this fall while working 30 hours (so that I can maintain my benefits, cover my bills, etc.). If this goes well and I can handle the load (I'll be taking 14 hours of classes) without losing my mind, I'll transfer back to UT. In theory, I could continue taking classes full time at ACC and still get lots of credits that would be transferable back to UT. The problem is that I've already exhausted the classes in my chosen major math. I haven't actually changed it officially with UT and still need to go talk to an advisor about this decision, but I'm setting my sites in that general direction anyway.

So the dilemma is, how do I continue to work productively towards this degree plan without wasting too much time. Ideally I'd like to try and finish within two years. I've got about 60 hours completed (I believe the degree I'm seeking actually requires around 125 hours), so I'm halfway there. But most of what I'm going to need to finish is in the actual math department.

So my options are either to transfer into UT this spring. That's all fine and well, but a couple of the courses I'm taking have a second semester that I'd like to finish up at ACC (chemistry I and engineering physics I). So I could be part time at both schools, but I believe that would make it difficult to get financial aid of any reasonable sort.

The other option is to continue taking the classes at ACC and sign up for whatever applicable math courses I can get through UTs extension program. The problem with this approach is that, first of all, they're really pricey (about $500 a piece on average) and it's questionable whether they will even offer the courses I need (last time I signed up for one of these it got cancelled at the last minute).

Suggestions?