Trivial Matters

As of writing this, I’m about 90 minutes from next year. Actually, it’s 90 minutes and an extra second since they have to adjust the atomic clock to account for orbital wobble.

I’ve been thinking hard about the goals that I want to set for next year, and I’m not sure I want to set a goal for December when a lot can happen in the 11 months between now and then. So, instead, I’m going to limit my goals to just the first three months. Come March, I’ll check back, see how they came out, and adjust fire as neccessary. That being said (typed… whatever), here we go…

January

• Score above 240 on my PT test at the next drill. I’ve done this before, back in May, and then slacked off for six months so that when I had to take it again, I put up my worst score ever: 183. (For those unfamiliar with the Army PT test, there are three events at 100 points each. You have to score at least 60 in each event to pass. So while 183 can be a passing score, it wasn’t in my case.)
• Start on a draft of the Acuff response paper I said I’d write during my History of the Middle East class. Basically, we read a paper about the “Cultural Revolution” in Iran and how that was the only applicable model to use to describe a revolution. However, the author failed to apply that reasoning to any other revolution in history, and I proposed that his model relied too much on previous models to stand alone. I also tried to incorporate a “divine catalyst” for revolution, which I want to work into a fifth revolutionary model.
• Finish the HP Graphing Calculator series that I started for Bright Hub back in November. They’re retooling the site right now, and I want to get back into it as soon as they are up and running with the new system.

February

• Average at least 20 unique visits per day on Trivial Matters. I think that once I start my training/fundraising the numbers will go up. The blog averaged just under 10 UVs per day for December, so I don’t think doubling that in two months is all that unreasonable. I also know that I’ll have to step up my writing if I want to keep readers comming back.
• Have a new apartment to move into. I’ve had to push it due to financial reasons, but I should be able to get a new place by February.
• Get back into a regular pub quiz routine. Mostly Confused hasn’t made a strong showing in several months now, and I don’t know how busy they all will be in January. I made sure to request Tuesday nights off from my new job on campus so I can make the Bridgeport game, and I just have to get the rest to join me.

March

• Be ready for the Portland Half-Marathon. And by “ready” I mean actually running 10+ miles in the weeks leading up to the race the first weekend of April. I have everything I need except someone to run with on a regular basis, and that is my biggest motivating factor because I always run slow when I run alone. My hope is that there are enough TNT teammates in the local area to do a few regular runs each week.
• Finish all of my classes with an A. Surprisingly, I’ve managed to get a 4.0 in the last two terms which has drastically improved my pre-military GPA that got carried over. If I can do it for the rest of the year, I might be able to raise the GPA enough to get an additional $1000 scholarship for Pacific U.
• Be back into a regular meditation routine. Part of this relies on my having a new place when I can set up an appropriate space to meditate, but it’s mostly a discipline issue. Ironically, meditation helps me gain discipline in a catch-22 sort of way.

So those are my goals for the next 90 days. I suppose you could call some of them “resolutions” with a little bit of rewording, but I always think of resolutions as being to vague to be of any use. “I resolve to be a better writer.” “I resolve to get in shape.” Um… yeah… sure.

Feel free to share your own goals/resolutions here. Perhaps you’ve set similar goals and want to help me keep a check on mine, then by all means. Part of what will make this better blog is to get feedback and create a sense of community that I can write for.

And now there is 60 minutes (and 1 second) remaining on the West Coast. See you on the other side.

I’ve been racking my brain trying to come up with a great fundraising idea for TNT. I want to hit the ground running next month and not have to worry about whether or not I’m going to make my goal.

One of the webcomics I read, Crtl-Alt-Del, posted a notice about a TNT participant who is offering a free year of World of Warcraft to three individuals who donate more that $25 (she works for the software company). She added that if she exceeded her $5000 goal by another $500, she’d give a lifetime subscription to one lucky individual. When I first saw the post, she was about $300 shy of her goal (word had already gotten out at this point). I checked back in today and she has now cleared $17,000! More than three times her goal. And the drawing isn’t for another 2 weeks, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she got above$20,000.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of her for raising so much for LLS, I just wish I had something to offer as well that would raise as much money. 1) Because it is a good cause and 2) because I want to spend all of my energy on training, not fundraising. And right now, all I can do is brainstorm ideas because the sign-up meeting isn’t for another few weeks. (I think she’s a Spring participant and I’m signing up for the Summer events.) After that, I’ll have an official donation page, etc.

With the setup of this blog, just having visitors raises some money for the cause, but I’d need about 25,000 unique hits every day to meet a $5000 goal. I’m not deluded enough to think that could happen. Hell, I’d be happy with 1000 hits a day. So once I get everything set up, I’ll be counting on all of you to post, blog, tweet, and do everything else to get the word out.

So, what would you guys like to see me offer? I might be able to get a couple of iPod Touch(es) and raffle them off. Or some other piece of cool, new technology that just hit the market. Or maybe a membership somewhere. Or any other number of things that I can’t think of, but I know you all can.

Drop me a line or comment below to let me know what you would be interested in seeing offered in exchange for donations.

Grrr…

I bought a hard drive several months ago in preparation for my deployment. I wanted to increase my music library in the likely event that I was asked to play some music while I was over there, and my MacBook HD just was not big enough to hold it all. (My current iTunes library is about 10 GB larger than the MacBook’s HD.)

So I got a Smart Disk FireLite 250 GB drive with FireWire connection. I got everything moved over and started importing more songs, TV shows, and movies. Pretty soon I was on my way to complete domination of the music scene (ok… maybe not). The drive worked so well that I started using it as my backup for the MacBook itself.

Then, a few weeks ago, the drive suddenly went offline. I checked the MacBook, and the FireWire port works fine. After a while, I plugged the drive back in and it stayed connected for a while, and then fell offline again. Thinking it may be a power problem, I tried to get a power adapter for it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any specifications on the type of power to supply beyond 8-33 VDC (there was no amperage rating), so I got an adjustible power adapter from Radio Shack: 1 A, 13.5-30 VDC.

That worked for a few hours and then it fell offline again (after I trasferred all of my new music from the MacBook to the drive). Now it won’t connect at all, so I got a new external drive (a 400 GB USB Western Digital Passport HD) and am in the process of manually copying the library off of my iPod to the new drive, after which I have to go through the library in iTunes and remove all of the old file references.

That means that I will also lose my play counts, but I think that’s for the better as it gives the new tracks a chance to catch up in my Top 50.

I’ll probably take the drive apart at some point and use a new case to see if I can recover anything I might be missing, and maybe use it again as a backup drive.

Wow. 2008 is a few days from completion. I look back on the year, and I find myself in a much different position that I expected. Is it a better position? Maybe. I’m not getting shot at, so that’s saying something. Though, sometimes a man just needs to be shot at to get his life in order.

I spent the better part of the year learning how to be a Soldier (and trying to forget how to be an Airman). I spent the later part of the year trying to be a civilian again, and more importantly, a student. I acomplished something that took me 13 years to finish, and found myself still years away from my goals.

I’ve formd bonds of friendship with a number of people over the last year. People whose support I’m not sure I would have been able to go without. I ended a relationship that I had hoped would last much longer.

Finally, I made mistakes, and corrected past errors. And I’m sure that I will continue to make new mistakes while I try to fix the old ones. Unfortunately, that’s just a part of life.

Now, it is time to plan for 2009. I’ve decided to set at least one goal for each month. The goals will vary in nature (personal, economic, spiritual, etc.) and will be atainable. Maybe a year from now I will be in a better position.

Part of my job with the Army involves analyzing messages, but not the coded kind that most people think of. No, I get to look at marketing messages (for lack of a better term), usually sent by the enemy, and figure out what makes them work; what makes them effective.

That skill, it seems, has spilled over into my TV watching. I cannot watch a commercial these days without trying to dissect every little bit, from the actors used to how the words used are arranged.

I find this ironic because, as a kid, I avoided any sense of commercialism. I never had to have the Air Jordans or whatever else was popular back then. I work plain clothes without labels or markings. But it wasn’t because I knew about target audiences or anything like that, I just never had the desire to “fit in” that way. As I grew older, some of the idealism went away and I find myself sporting symbols like the Nike Swoosh over other brands, or even the plain (and cheaper) versions.

So even though I much better at reading through the marketing BS, I’m apparently more susceptible to it. I’m not sure what that says about me, but it can’t be good.

I might turn this into a regular thing here, where I take apart a popular commercial. Or not. I can’t give away all of my secrets on here, can I?