Making and Breaking Resolutions

I have already broken my three New Year's resolutions.

1. Inbox Zero
2. NaBloPoMo
3. Decluttering

Inbox Zero advocates a philosophy towards email that seems antithetical to how many people treat their email. Using Gmail gets me part of the way there by archiving and keeping most every bit of mail I get. I only delete a few very specific items of mail, and part of my resolution this year means tweaking my filters to delete more unneeded mail. I have a much larger problem with actually answering/replying and acting on mail. I want to foster a better habit with email response.

NaBloPoMo riffs from NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month. Sub "Blog Posting" for "Novel Writing" and it's the same schtick. I only wrote EIGHTEEN blog posts in 2009. This is not acceptable. I need to get back into the writing habit. I'm not hiding behind writer's block; I have plenty to say (as evidenced by the volume of words I output via Twitter), I just need to work on my long-form writing.

Decluttering remains on my mind. With an infant on the way, I anticipate that we'll acquire a mountain of stuff, stuff, stuff. I don't want to live a spartan life with no material anythings, but I do need to get rid of old things I don't need. I'm imposing another game buying moratorium and adopting a one-in-one-out rule.

How have I broken these resolutions already on the second day of the new year? One, I still have months-old mail I haven't replied to. Two, I didn't write a blog post yesterday. Three, Cat and I bopped into a thrift store and I bought two new games today.

How does this not bother me?

I'm making the effort with email. I might re-read Getting Things Done when I find it, but the first system in my head from an old boss is TRAF: Trash, Refer, Act, File. My good buddy Marc also left me a thought: "[With too much email,] that's archive 'em all and let god sort 'em out territory." I'm not there yet, but I have less than thirty pieces of mail in my inbox. Last month, it was probably closer to sixty. Facebook is part of this problem.

I'm writing a blog post today and not post-dating it. Good enough for me right now- the more I write, the more I have other ideas that I want to write. It's just a habit to foster, which makes it easier than other kinds of writing problems. (I still agree with the notion that Twitter makes you a better writer.)

I'm looking forward to trying the one-in-one-out rule to at least break even with material items- mass will never factor in to the decision (I buy a battery and sell the car), but I'm going to try to at least remain in the same class of item. Right now, I need to get rid of one book, two games, and a calendar. I don't know how long I'll give myself to meet each goal; maybe a week's worth of Craigslist before trashing or donating. I'm also happy with my current "play unplayed games" strategy, and my game-buying moratorium will merit at least a whole 'nother post. Or four. But seriously, I spontaneously bought two games new-in-shrink that I wanted to play for two bucks per. Does not count as a planned MSRP purchase and triggers the one-in-one-out.

Overall, I feel confident that I have achievable, positive resolutions that I actually want to follow. Hope you do, too.

Life's to short to give up chocolate.

Communications convergence

Non-ironically, I want to opine about the various forms of communication I have at my fingertips, despite the fact that I've barely managed one blog post a week this month.

First, an examination of last month's NaBloPoMo experiment-slash-activity. Out of thirty days hath November, I wrote twenty-five posts. Not surprisingly, five of those days I went to BGG.Con and twittered my words. After con, I did up a Geeklist of the things I taught and played. I had thought that blogging once-a-day in November would have gotten me into the blogging habit; I think that BGG.Con and Twittering disrupted that nascent habit. Even though I cheated a little with some timestamps and missed a few days, I consider my November a blogging success.

Why the slowdown? Some of it is Twitter and my Google Phone. Right now, I get email, SMS messages, Google IM, Twitter, voice mail and phone calls on my telephone. I feel like I am communicating enough. Couple the tethering to my phone (sorry dear) with my sharing nifty RSS stuff, I know that I'm scratching my communications itch.

I still feel that blogging is/should be/is to me/feels like op-ed pieces; I want what I write to be interesting to everyone that I know reads it, plus the strangers who I don't know. Success is a variable here. Tweeting is the opposite of blogging.

Caving in to Twitter

Feh.

http://twitter.com/mischakrilov

On the other hand, I'll have a lower barrier to entry than the old way. I never finished expanding this from last year, so here's what I've got.

Games played at BGG.Con 2007:

• 1001 Karawane
• Army of Frogs
• Axiom
• Ca$h 'n Gun$ : Live
• Chateau Roquefort
• Cheeky Monkey
• Circle, The
• Crokinole
• Die Kutschfahrt zur Teufelsburg
• Fairy Tale
• Felix: The Cat in the Sack
• Fire
• Garden Competition
• Geistertreppe
• Gheos
• Glik
• Jungle Speed
• Kakerlakensalat
• Kapitän Wackelpudding
• Laborigines
• Los Mampfos
• Lumberjack
• Master Thieves
• Metromania
• Passe-trappe
• Piratenbillard
• Piratenhändler
• Quelf
• RattleSnake
• Rukshuk
• Ruse & Bruise
• Santorini
• Saturn
• Säulen von Venedig, Die
• Shocking Roulette
• Spinball
• Time's Up!
• Tumblin-Dice
• Uptown
• Vitrail
• Viva Pamplona
• Was Sticht?
• WeyKick
• Wicked Witches Way

Games acquired at BGG.Con 2007:

• Adam & Eva *
• All-Zeit *
• Atlas & Zeus *
• Buy Word *
• Chains of Fenrir *
• Conquest *
• Corsari *
• Covert Action
• Employee of the Month *
• Feurio *
• Filthy Rich *
• Flickwerk *
• Fraud Squad *
• Halli Galli
• House of Whack *
• Konig Laurin *
• Kreta *
• La Strada
• Laboriginies *
• Martinis & Men
• Neuroshima Hex
• Paris Paris *
• Pick & Pack
• Santiago
• Scream Machine *
• Siena *
• Taktika

* means unplayed


Done is better than perfect, but it's a royal pain to fix and create links for these.

Tech toys

I bought the bullet and bought a fancy Bluetooth headset.

Like many recent tech purchases, I tend to listen to other people's experiences and do a decent amount of research before plunking down dollars for a gadget. So far, I like my little cybernetic ear roach.

You want one? Check it out. They come in red, too.

UPDATE:I've got an Amazon link there to a black Jawbone that should come through an RSS reader.

Voice to text to screen to...

Yikes, I almost missed my daily post.

I don't like to drive, and my mind tends to wander quite a bit. I tend to view almost all travel as a waste of mental effort- where the hell are my flying cars? I've got better things to do.

Yesterday, I wanted to remind myself to do something, and I didn't want to dig out my cheapie 99-cent pocket notebook out while driving and try to write. I thought about leaving myself a message and tried to find the voice memo feature buried somewhere in my phone.

Lifehacker mentioned a service called Jott, one of these hip new not-perfectly-named Web 2.0 kinds of beta services. The practical upshot is that you call the 800 number, talk, and both human and automatic transcription turns your message into an email or a text message. I found out that you also get the source audio, too.

Seems like there's some nifty potentials here: talk a text message to a group of contacts seems very handy these days, as well as possibly just voicing a blog post: Call Jott, Jott transcribes and sends to Blogger, Blogger autoposts. I'll give that a try soon, I think.

In other news, I obtained a copy of Leopard (gotta back up!) and had buffalo steak and garlic potatoes for dinner. Yummo!