I was gunning for a big month this month in the 101 Things in 1001 Days project. It didn’t happen.

Items accomplished in May: 1
Total items accomplished: 21/101
Percentage complete: 20.7%

Items Completed in May:

85. Transition to the “Hard” level on Rock Band.

I finally bit the bullet on this one and started rocking out. I’m still nowhere near my abilities at the “Medium” level, but I’m still enjoying the game.

Items Underway in May:

3. Buy a house.

As you’ve probably seen from earlier posts, we’ve started hunting around for a new place. We’ve got a realtor, we’ve seen about a dozen places total, and we’re chugging along. I’m hoping to see the one this month where we can make our offer, so we can close by the end of August and be out of our place ASAP. I’m really sick of apartment living.

11. Get fontosaurus.com up and going and bringing in income.
16. Get all my fonts back on the web and available for download/purchase.

This is underway. I’ve identified my “permanently retired” fonts (the shitty ones), which ones will cost what, and so on. I’m going to turn fontosaurus.com into a gallery site and use it to link to my fonts at their sale points.

19. Get at least one sci-fi short story published.

Working on this. Have the story in rough draft format. It’s going to take some polishing to get it there, but I hope to have it done in June and sent to Strange Horizons right after I’m done with the final draft.

54. Stop drinking soda.

Man, I’ve cut back on this like you wouldn’t believe.

72. Design at least 3 new fonts. (0/3)

Started going through my old sketchbooks looking for ideas and found three of them that I want to pursue. I’ll probably score some scanner software in June and make some headway on this.

80. Create — and release under the GPL — three WordPress themes. (0/3)

The first of the three is nearly ready to go. Have ideas for the next two, which I’ll be knocking out using the H5 framework.

This is an update of my 101 Things in 1001 Days project. Three items accomplished this month, with six more underway, some of which could be done as soon as May. Pretty awesome!

Items accomplished in April: 3
Total items accomplished: 20/101
Percentage complete: 19.8%

Items Completed in April:

31. Find a personal organization system that works for me.

I decided to get my shit back together with the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology. In the old system, I used to truck around a “Hipster PDA” (stack of index cards). Given that I am frequently on the web and always schlepping my iPad around with me, I opted to use Toodledo — the free web service, and the $2.99 iOS app that talks to it. And so far, so good.

44. Build a facility/infrastructure to make custom frames.

Holy crap, I’m basically there. I’d say that at this point, I can basically do about 75% of what I need to do to build frames in the basement. Once I get a blanchard-ground plate and a bottom bracket post, that number will jump to 100%. And that should happen in the next month or so.

69. Build or buy a cat tree.

Ordered one from Amazon on Friday the 29th. It’s on the way.

Items Underway in April:

18. Finish re-writing Bubble.

I’ve been hitting this one in big bursts. It’s been fun.

22. Triple my blog readership.

Well, I’m on-track to do this. I’ll be looking at these numbers in more depth sometime in June.

51. Get my six-pack abs back.

This is underway at the gym. Hoping I can scratch this off by mid-summer.

54. Stop drinking soda.

Man, once I had to lay off the shit for 24 hours while preparing for my colonoscopy, I realized that tapering off this should be a fairly feasible goal. Working on this.

61. Have at least three months’ of salary (Kate’s and mine) in savings.

We’ve been saving a ton of money every month — both into a savings account and into our IRAs. Though I don’t think this is going to be on the accomplished list at the end of this whole process.

62. Be debt-free except for student loans and Kate’s car loan.

This may not happen before the ending of this 1001-day block of time. However, we did take awesome steps toward this in April, when we consolidated our credit card debt and Kate’s car all onto one loan, and re-financed the loan we took out for our honeymoon. We’re saving more than $600 a month by doing so. Pretty awesome!

In 2011:
3. Buy a house.

We’ve already talked to some people and with our credit ratings and debt-to-income ratio, we should have zero problem getting a loan. The question, of course, is whether or not we’re going to buy when our lease is up in September. I’d like to, Kate’s leaning more toward buying next spring after we do a six-month lease extension.

4. Take another trip to Vegas with Kate.

We’re noodling around with this right now as part of a trip to California to visit Kate’s brother and his wife at Fort Irwin.

5. Go visit Carhenge.

I’m rolling this into my road trip plans for #43, the trip to Moab.

8. Earn more than $100K in a calendar year.

This might be the year!

11. Get fontosaurus.com up and going and bringing in income.

Soon, soon. My original plan was to make this a site for selling third-party fonts, but I think I’ll be turning it into a portfolio site with links to places like MyFonts.

14. Find and take a community ed class on running a small business.

I need to get copies of the community ed stuff.

16. Get all my fonts back on the web and available for download/purchase.

Need to start packaging these suckers up, and getting them over on MyFonts ASAP.

18. Finish re-writing Bubble.

Chugging along. I think I can finish this by the end of the year.

29. Use Delicious Library to log all our books, movies, video games, etc.

I’ll probably do this after we move as part of the unpacking process. If we don’t buy a house this year, I’ll do it during the later months of the year.

30. Reorganize house, with Kate, so that things are all in sensible places.

See the description for #29, above.

31. Find a personal organization system that works for me.

I’m getting ready to take another stab at the GTD system.

35. Learn 3D modeling for CNC milling.

I’m noodling around with a couple of CAD programs to see where this takes me.

39. Start track racing at the velodrome.

My class starts on May 16th. The day after the Almanzo 100.

41. Work on my wheelbuilding skills, get completely comfortable with the process.

I plan to hand-build a set of wheels for the road singlespeed I want to build myself this year.

43. Go mountain biking in Moab.

I’ll be doing this in early October, probably the weekend after Minnecycle.

49. Complete the 100 push-ups program.

Going to start this again next week.

51. Get my six-pack abs back.

Underway.

52. Keep my weight under 185 pounds.

Getting there.

54. Stop drinking soda.

Tapering off.

56. Learn to make beer.

Near-term endeavor.

57. Plant a small garden on the deck.

Near-term endeavor.

58. Buy a bartender’s guide and learn to make at least 10 drinks. (0/10)

Maybe before the end of April?

60. Try that berry (miraculin) that makes everything taste different.

This summer.

61. Have at least three months’ of salary (Kate’s and mine) in savings.

We’re getting there.

66. Do two “shoeboxes” for children in the Third World.

I have the boxes, I know what I want to get for them. I want to ship these to the charity in October.

67. Spend at least 50 hours volunteering at a rescue shelter for cats.

I plan to do this in the late fall after my hours get cut-back at the bike shop.

70. Have our cats microchipped. (3/4)

All we have left here is Vinnie — and he should be going in this year for a check-up, given how tubby he is.

72. Design at least 3 new fonts. (0/3)

Already into the sketch stage on all three of these.

74. Find a cool time-lapse subject, make video.

Have an idea for this one. More to follow!

80. Create — and release under the GPL — three WordPress themes. (0/3)

The first of the three of these is well underway. I hope to have it finished by the end of this week and available for download.

85. Transition to the “Hard” level on Rock Band.

No more playing on Medium. Should have this done by the end of April.

86. Buy a telescope kit from Makershed, build it, and knock the rust off the old astronomy skills/bug.

June? Something like that. I want to accomplish this while it’s warm outside.

95. Set up a hummingbird feeder on the deck.

End of April! Cheap and easy, and hummingbirds are seriously cool.

98. Take snowboarding lessons.

December!

99. Re-do my CPR training/certification.

This summer.

100. Go skydiving.

This summer.

In 2012:
2. Have a kid with Kate.

We’re already working on this, but if we were to get pregnant this month, we’d have a baby in 2012.

10. Join MIMA.

The delay on this is a money issue more than anything.

17. Join Toastmasters and improve my public speaking.

Time constraint.

19. Get at least one sci-fi short story published.

Realistic timeline if I start trying in 2011.

20. Finally write The Unforgettable Fire.

Got a great outline for this one.

22. Triple my blog readership.

Underway — I should be able to double my traffic in 2011.

27. Log data about the entire year of 2012 as part of personal data logging project, see what I can learn.

Started this as a 2011 project and faltered. Going to go ahead and get everything prepped ahead of time for a good run at this in 2012.

32. Build at least six custom frames for paying customers. (0/6)

Already underway. By September of 2011, 5 of the 6 will be done. I’m giving myself some breathing room here.

33. Show my bikes at NAHBS.

I’ll have stuff to show for this one.

37. Upgrade to Cat 3, cyclocross.

Might even manage this in 2011. We’ll see.

38. Upgrade to Cat 4, road.

Might even manage this in 2011. We’ll see.

40. Rigidly stick to training program.

I got interrupted in 2011.

46. Achieve 5th geup in tae kwon do.

Got to get moving on this one in 2011.

47. Start taking judo lessons.

All I have to do is start.

48. Get a 3/4-sleeve tattoo.

Already have ideas for artwork. Just need to start saving cash and start looking for an artist.

55. Run a marathon.

Already back to running again. Good!

59. Take a cooking class.

Mmmm. Food.

69. Build or buy a cat tree.

Easy. This is either a 15-minutes/$200 project, or a $50/6-hours project. How much is my time worth?

78. Submit a couple of t-shirt designs to Threadless.

Already have one design ready, but I’m pushing this back to 2012.

79. Become an expert in Ruby on Rails.

Going to build a cool web app with this.

82. Create a cool Arduino-based hack (other than Dashbrain).

I have some ideas.

83. Build a solar powered charger for USB devices.

This would be good to have for Family Camp.

89. Buy a D-SLR camera.

YES PLZ.

92. Upgrade from my Mac Mini to a new iMac.

Need to seriously start saving for this, too.

93. Learn to speak a new language. Complete all 3 levels of Rosetta Stone. (0/3)

Japanese! Underway in 2011.

94. Complete 10 goals on Nuvvo. (0/10)

Huh.

96. Take a firearms safety course, buy a pistol, and practice on a regular basis. (Bad liberal! Bad!)

Later in the year.

97. Learn archery.

Must find a short class.

Probably Not Going to Happen:
7. Take a trip to Europe.

This is constrained by cost more than anything. I may see if I can find a dirt-cheap fare to London and just go for a weekend.

9. Set up two low-involvement businesses, per The Four Hour Workweek.

Not going to happen right now, simply due to time/money constraints. Maybe for a future edition of 101 Things.

24. Write and publish an article in Bicycling.

Hah. Not likely.

53. Get back to the condition I was in when I left Ft. Bragg — 96 pushups in 2 minutes, 120 sit-ups in 2 minutes, run a 10:30 2-miler. (That last might be difficult, given that I’ll be pushing 40 at the end of this.)

Unrealistic. If I can get back to doing 52 push-ups, 62 sit-ups, and the 2-miler in 14:54 or less, I’ll be thrilled.

15. Start in an MBA program.

Simply not going to happen.

34. Build my Dashbrain project.

Too crazy. Might try it anyway. We’ll see.

42. Build a bike capable of winning best-in-show at NAHBS.

I need a few more years of building these things to get to that point.

36. Rewrite the Paterek 2.0 application for the Mac.

No time, nor any need with the advent of BikeCAD Pro.

62. Be debt-free except for student loans and Kate’s car loan.

This is not going to get finished simply because we just rolled our credit card debt and Kate’s car into one big debt consolidation loan. And we’re sitting pretty — we reduced ourmonthly debt surrounding these by about 60%, which is awesome. In the next week or two, we should have everything rolled into one.

65. Find a way to crack $500K in annual income — the threshold at which Kate and I agreed I can buy a Nissan GT-R. Then, obviously, buy a GT-R. (Okay, VERY unrealistic item on this one.)

This was just pie-in-the-sky stupidity.

73. Take a photography class.

No time.

75. Take a class on letterpress printing.

No time.

76. Take a class on bookbinding.

No time.

77. Take a few art classes (drawing).

No time.

87. Become an expert on PHP.

No time.

88. Build/document my “alternate” keyboard project.

No time.

90. Buy a new Macbook Pro.

No money.

91. Get an Aeron chair for the home office.

No money. Seems like overkill.

This is an update of my 101 Things in 1001 Days project. February was a complete debacle — with the disastrous road trip to a funeral, a thousand bucks in car repairs, and a ton of stress, nothing really got done. I didn’t even get a single item done in February, so I put off the updates until the end of this month.

Items accomplished in March: 2
Total items accomplished: 17/101
Percentage complete: 16.8%

Items Completed in March:

25. Read War & Peace.

Holy crap. What a slog. This took me months and I never ever EVER want to go near another Russian novel again.

71. Socialize Vinnie.

I think we’ve actually gotten to the point where I can say this is as good as it’s going to get, and that Vinnie is probably never going to become an attention-seeking, outgoing cat. He actually spent time in Kate’s lap this month (granted Happy was there, too) and he’s getting less wound-up about being pet or having someone sit down next to him unexpectedly. Additionally, he will start coming out in the open when there’s strangers in the house, too. It’s a nice change. Whether or not we’ll see him become outgoing is still open for debate, but he’s definitely more socialized.

Items Underway in March:

3. Buy a house.

Kate and I have been looking around more and discussing purchasing strategies. We’ve bounced around a couple ideas — waiting another year and saving up more toward a down payment on a bigger place. Or, buying a cheaper place sooner and making upgrades/modifications to it every other year or so. I like the latter idea more than the former, especially with our plan to become a single-income family (mine).

18. Rewrite Bubble.

This, too, is ongoing. I’m about 20% of the way through my 100,000-word goal. The first draft I wrote of this was too stodgy and didn’t have enough “fun” in it. I’m playing with the big ideas a little more and letting my smart-assed sense of humor shine through a bit more. We’ll see how it plays out.

44. Assemble my framebuilding infrastructure.

So this month, I purchased my torch, hose and regulators from another local framebuilder. Additionally, I got the stuff together for my workbench, tubing blocks, and the stuff to finish my welding stand. At the rate I’m going, I could be doing about half my production work at home by mid- to late-April.

70. Get all four cats microchipped.

We now have 3 out of the 4 completed, as Happy was taken care of at his vet appointment on the 25th. Feels good to be nearing completion. Vinnie will get his this summer when he goes in for his annual check-up.

80. Create — and release under the GPL — three WordPress themes. (0/3)

I’ve been playing around with the Less framework and jQuery, and hope to have three pretty unique themes to release in April. Would be nice to knock this one completely out of the park.

85. Transition to the “Hard” level on Rock Band.

I think that going forward, my play will only be at the “Hard” level. I’ll report back on this in a month. I should probably start playing Rock Band again, huh?

95. Set up a hummingbird feeder on the deck.

Going to hit up Home Depot in early April and bang this one out. I’ve budgeted for the feeder, a mounting bracket, and a big container of the nectar. Looking forward to this one.

This is an update of my 101 Things in 1001 Days project. I normally post each one of these on the last day of the month, but was running behind on the update and then forgot to post it. So I’ve scheduled it for publication on Monday the 6th at about noon. December’s will be early (on the 30th), as I’ve got pre-scheduled posts already set up for the 31st and the 1st.

Items accomplished in November: 1
Total items accomplished: 10/101
Percentage complete: 9.9%

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