Happy New Year!

I’ve been thinking about my plans for the year and have made a list of things that I’d like to start learning or do this year. I had planned on devoting January and possibly February to finishing the floor in my house. However, this isn’t exactly a great plan. I do plan on working on the floor a lot, but it won’t be all the time. It can’t be. There will be long stretches where I just have to let things dry or when I’ll be physically too tired to keep working. So, while the floor will be the main job, it won’t be the only thing I’m working on.

Here’s a list of things that I came up with, in no particular order:
Finish floor
Learn more C
Use Blender to make a model and send to Shapeways to get fabricated
Arduino game of picking out states on map
Get and use Eagle to make a simple PCB and have it fabricated
Get a better understanding of how and when to use JSON
Drawing lessons
Piano lessons
Learn some basic statistics
Get started with GPU programming
Build a workbench
Learn to weld
Work on a novel
Set up a Win7/Linux workstation for development work
Write up PDF on how to make linux as domain server and put it up for sale somewhere
Learn how to animate with Blender
Organize my tools/workspace
Learn an alternative mail system to Sendmail
Go to some Ruby meetups
Pay for myself to go to a technical conference somewhere
Make a dining room table and bench
Get my digital camera working with my telescope and go somewhere dark to see if I can get a good picture
Travel someplace that I’ve never been

It’s a long list and there’s little possibility that I’ll accomplish most of these. But I figure it’s always better to try to do too much than too little. It looks like quite a bit to learn, but that’s also by design, since I’m also going to be attempting to save as much money as I can. Last year, I benefit a lot from all the money I’d been saving over a number of years. So, it’s time for me to rebuild that nest egg.