Wow, it's that time again! This is going to be a huge year for us in many ways. First of all, it will be my 33rd birthday! Yikes! Hongyun will get her BA from Berkeley this year too which is awesome except for the fact that the UC will graciously boot us from our little townhome so we'll have to move again...ugh. It will also be the year Hongyun's folks emigrate here to help around the house and bother us to death (I kid! I kid! not really...). They'll be coming in anticipation of us having a kid (or two) sometime in '09. Anyway, I thought I'd go through and list down what I have cooking up as goals.

1) Websites, websites, websites! - I've lumped most of my rantification all into one big clump here at dodoskido and it really hasn't gotten me anywhere. I mean, i can find it but I think for the most part people like compartmentalized sections of life in the form of focused blogs like finance, sports, college life, design, etc. Anyway, I don't plan to be prolific or anything, but I do plan on putting in some serious time to experiment with various formats and sites. Ideas:

I have quite a few domain names sitting idle that I need to do something with. So I will do something with each of them.

My priority of things to do:

• Figure out a new setup for Hongyun's art site. Her art really is awesome, but it's my fault that the site has languished.


• Redo dodoskido...it's a freakin' mess of Movable type, php includes, and all sorts of awful stuff. That's what I get for learning how to do this stuff without a class or books


• Passive Moola launch. I spend a fair amount of time on my endeavors to make money outside of my day job and would like to track my ideas and finances a little bit more self-contained manner. Taking my inspiration from other personal finance blogs, I'll focus on my efforts in building a base of wealth within a certain time frame. I'd like to have the framework of the site up and running in January sometime so I can tweak and track for a full year.


• MarshYellow is a site that I have been toying around with in my mind for quite sometime. I'm not sure what it's going to really be about, but I think at the very least it will become the umbrella for the various ventures I, my sister, and my wife undertake.


• Hello My Beer Is.. will be a site focused on my beer and beverage related designs for T-shirts. They sell well during St. Patrick's Day so I would like for this to get up and running in January as well. I have a feeling I'd better bust out the project planning software and project manage myself to death.


• Black Friday Beauty is my sister's company that creates handmade cosmetics from ethically-traded organic products. Everything is handmade by her on a small scale. She needs help with a site and identity creation so I should help


• PreFab Dream will be an interesting experiment in financing and building my dream home.


• PunDirt will be a pundit prediction tracker. I hate it when pundits on TV and the blogosphere make predictions that are quickly forgotten. I'd like to make something akin to Yahoo Finance for pundits so you can see their track record in getting things right. May need to get some help with this one


• Twinkle and the Star. I have no idea what this will be. I registered it for my sister when we were thinking of ideas for her business and we never used it. I keep it around since it's got a nice ring to it...maybe it'll be used for truly whacked out art projects or something.


• Million Dollar Bling has a nice ring to it, but not sure what this will be either. I'm thinking of a contest site run by ad revenues or something. Could be fun.


• Clean up MyTVLife and Sushi Superstar as they were thrown together in haste. They generate a very minimal amount of money, but they could do much better if I redesign them and put some effort into them

So, as you can see, I have my work cut out for me. Where the hell am I going to find time for this? (nice transition to my next new year's resolution)

2) Time management - I have a lot of distractions...way too many in fact. Google reader is both a god-send and the devil when it comes to information ingestion. I mean, there is no way I would be able to read hundreds of posts each day without it, but I think I've gotten to the point where I'm spending way too much time on it. The remedy will be to chop cut 75% off the blogs out (painful but necessary) and only read for 15 minute each day. This should free up some time to accomplish the above tasks. Also, I'm going to not take any classes this coming semester. While I enjoy the learning and what not, I feel that it does eat up a lot of time and I'm not really getting much out of the classes--if I reach most of the above goals then I'll come back to to school in the fall. TV is another drain. Even though Tivo has helped me time compress, I think I'm going to bring it down a notch and only watch shows or movies after hitting a midterm milestone in my project plans. I'm sorry, but my life has been geared around software engineering for my entire working career and for the most part it works. I'm going to have to project manage myself.

3) Go for it - I generate a LOT of ideas. Like way too many for any one person to accomplish. I feel like I should pursue some of these but I think I get into analysis paralysis and this deprives me of the experience to actually do something, learn something, and fail (or even succeed). I am going set aside time each month to list out my ideas and discuss them with Hongyun, my sister, and my friends. They will help me flesh each one out and I will be open to their critcism.

4) Be open to criticism/Tone down the criticism - Those that know me well, know that I'm a very critical person. I dig deep very quickly and find root flaws in many ideas. This leads to my analysis paralysis from above and I need to fix this if I want to get my ideas off the ground and help others around me to do the same. Is it better to create something, fail, and learn from it, than not to do it at all? I think the answer is a very scary yes.

5) Make something - I love seeing things being made around the blogosphere (hence my Google reader addiction in #2) but I haven't really gotten anywhere making much on my own except for a few of the slightly off kilter blogs you see before you. Anyway, that's gotta change.
6) The usual - I've picked up tennis and I still suck at it but I'm going to start playing regularly. It's fun and you get some good exercise. Biking around town is also nice since everything is a mild upslope from us. It gets us warmed up to bike to the tennis courts. Eating right...I'm over at The Daily Plate which is an excellent dietary and exercise tracking site.

So there you have it. Over ambitious you say? I think so too. I'm sure I'll revise this as I start to plan and do some projections. That's ok, that's what life is all about.